Because to say simply creator leaves, right away, an impression of self-deification, of showing up in clothes too big for me. And speaking of impressions, the first one we give is the one that sticks, isn't it? Creator. For one thing, being able to pin an adjective to it brings the whole thing back down to earth. Fashion creator, content creator… And when someone asks what I do, there's always a second of hesitation before I answer. I hear in my voice an unsteadiness that sounds like embarrassment, as if I doubted it myself. I know that if I say creator, they'll want me to narrow it down. Creator of what? In which case I answer: of spaces, furniture, objects, experiences, moments, concepts, stories, rituals, of worlds… And of course, the answer opens more questions than it closes. Which is why I avoid asking the people I meet what they do for a living: so the politeness won't be returned to me.

To tell you about myself, it seems more interesting to step out of the boxes that pen us in, and to show you a little of what happens on the inside when I do what I do. When I create. For one thing, ideas don't come from me. They come to me. When I say "I have an idea," I mean that I'm holding it. The idea, I feel it in my body before it even surfaces into my awareness. It announces itself as a faint effervescence in my belly. A beating of wings. A sensation that puts me on alert, because from one second to the next I know something is about to surface from the invisible, only to return there at once. The detail of a line, form, colour, ray of light, scent, texture, or of a whole structure… I must be available. Vacant. Ready to catch the idea on the wing. And once I'm holding it, for fear it slips through my fingers, I scribble it down in a notebook. And as I do, I know whether the idea belongs to the work-to-come, or not. Even if I see nothing yet of the finished work. Because I'm convinced it already exists in the future, as certain as one is of a word on the tip of the tongue: the certainty of knowing it, despite its absence in the moment.

This is how the work of creation goes for me: becoming a point of contact between the worlds of the invisible and the visible. A channel. Something like what we imagine of shamanic work. But if speaking of myself as a creator is complicated, imagine calling myself a shaman! To create. It's what I do with the better part of my days and nights. Not as an artist, who in the exercise of his art seeks to give form to an inner necessity, but as an artisan of the real, seeking to add to the poetry of the world. Yes. An artisan. These clothes fit.