The design duo Smeets and Tynagel transformed the catwalk into a "grey tarmac road" in Paris on March 1, 2014

Launched in 2000 by Job Smeets and Nynke Tynagel, graduates of the Design Academy Eindhoven, Studio Job is redefining decorative arts for the contemporary age.

During Paris Fashion Week, this know-how took the shape of a grey set design with the feature of a Gordian knot of circling and intersecting roads. This stage was produced for Viktor & Rolf’s latest AW 14 RTW “Highway to Hell” Collection that was based on “50 shades of grey colour palette” according to Jessica Michault, Editor-in-Chief at Nowfashion.

Thus a perfect match of collection theme and setting.

However as a good fashion show production needs to appeal to the several senses, the lighting – a greyish atmosphere with spotlights on the showcased clothing items and the live music – “the lovely singing voice of Joan as Police Woman strumming on her electric guitar, a melodic version of the ACDC classic Highway to Hell”, reviewed Michault, completed the experience of this fashion show spectacle.

Apart from producing set design elements for international renowned designers, Smeets and Tynagel are creating mainly one-off or limited edition works.

For Studio Job, creation goes over definition. Smeets describes it as follows, “unlike most, we are probably not coming from Modernism. Studio Job’s contribution is that we have rediscovered a lost path. Consciously and carefully, we are positioning decorative arts in the twenty-first century. Is that design? Whatever. Is that art? Whatever, really.”

Their combination of craftsmanship with ornamentation in a opulent, intricate and ironic way, places their style “within an enigmatic, intellectual framework by the number and complexity of symbols and signifiers it conveys”, writes Loic Le Gaillard.

Since 2009, the duo holds its own curatorial exhibition space for contemporary art and design in Antwerp. Meanwhile in 2010 the publishing house Rizzoli launched the monograph titled ‘The Book of Job’, one year later, in 2011, Nynke and Job turned a post war villa into Studio Job House filled with modernistic icons and contemporary pieces. In 2012, the Groninger Museum dedicated a large retrospective accompanied by a new book titled ‘Studio Job & The Groninger Museum’.

- Görkem Hayta