Ref: article in Cozy Mountain – February 2022
This book, which one reads with gourmandise like a thick illustrated novel where every image is pored over, is more than a biography of Slavik; it is the book of an era, the seventies.
It is because the character, born at the crossroads of two wars in Tallinn to parents who emigrated from Great Russia, has the gift of seeing everything from every angle. He is the first of those whom Cocteau calls the “toucheatouistes.”
Curious about all forms of art, he began by painting, designing screens, wall frescoes, tapestry cartoons, ballet sets… A designer before the term even existed, he invented the concept of ‘ambiance’ for places that owe him everything, like the first Drugstore on the Champs-Elysées, inaugurated in April 1958. His project was judged too austere? He went to the Puces flea market and snapped up all those old trunks that would make the place look like a gathering of departing travelers.
At noon as at midnight, you find everything you want there; the bookstore is Régine Desforges (and the erotic section not far off), the minets cluster outside, you enter through one door, leave through the other, you see, you are seen—it is a total success.
Marcel Bleustein-Blanchet, head of Publicis, created the industrial aesthetics department for him. Clients were delighted: a sewing machine car for Singer, an “egg” record player (it opens in two, the yolk is the turntable), the Police Dauphine dressed in black and white. Restaurants and bistros (more than 21 recorded), boutiques, shop windows, shopping centers—his creations defined the era. Without ever yielding to the gratuitous, always with the objective of uniting form and function.
