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“I love the word ‘oomph’,” says Rolf Sachs, sitting with his girlfriend, the German princess and painter Mafalda von Hessen, in the living room of their home in St Moritz. The creative polymath, best known for the playful design pieces he has produced since the mid-1980s, uses the word to summarize his creative practice. But the alpine retreat also has a lot of excitement.
In the middle of the glitzy Swiss ski resort – where steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal, Moncler CEO Remo Ruffini and the Heineken family have homes – Sachs has revived the stadium built for the 1928 Winter Olympics. Once used to watch ice hockey and figure skating, this long, low Bauhaus-style building is today a combination of modernist architecture and local sports memorabilia: hockey sticks cover a staircase; curling stones are hidden under a folk-style bench; and old photographs of skaters, sledders and sleds line the hallways.
In the mix are Sachs’s own designs: a 7m-long glass-topped dining table is filled with salt and neon text; above, one of his Poured lights, from 2006, features an upturned fire cube pierced with small holes; old school chairs are cast in resin; and 2012 Inseparable The coffee table, constructed from two sleighs, is one of several works inspired by the traditions of the surrounding Engadine valley.
“My great-great-grandfather came to St Moritz in 1900,” says Sachs, 68, whose family history spans generations of industrialists and inventors, manufacturers of motorcycles, bicycles, cars and several fortunes. But it is his father, Gunter Sachs, the late photographer, art collector and third husband of Brigitte Bardot, who is known for putting the ritz in St Moritz. He invigorated the bobsleigh club (whose historic track has a corner named in his honour) and founded the exclusive Dracula Club.
At a vampire-themed members’ club dinner, I’m squeezed between Sachs and von Hessen, dragged into the scene of Europe’s elite along with guests that include Sachs’s childhood friends, the head of his studio, and the pinnacle. -up of flaming hair. esque Betony Vernon, jeweler, author of The dresser Bible and close friend of von Hessen. The group stands out from the crowd: a sea of tuxedos, tight dresses and chubby faces moving en masse from the table to the club, dancing to “Murder On the Dancefloor.” A drop of enamel “blood” drips down my wine glass and Sachs removes an ultra-thin chunk from my plate. He is instantly likable; less of a jet-set playboy than his father, more jovial and bon vivaur.
Sachs and von Hessen have long moved in the same circles (“Our parents were friends,” says Sachs). Von Hessen’s connection with the Alps dates back to 1916. His relative Ernest Ludwig, Grand Duke of Hesse, inherited Tarasp Castle, an imposing 11th-century castle northeast of St Moritz. Today, the castle is owned by Swiss artist Not Vital and is open to the public.
The couple began seeing each other romantically 10 years ago. “When I found out he was divorced, I called him,” von Hessen says. At 58 years old, the former model and Giorgio Armani style ambassador is tall and slender, and wears a Victorian-style blouse. Meanwhile, Sachs pairs her signature round-frame glasses with a bright, graphic signature sweater. They find an unlikely couple. Still, Sachs says, “we have a wonderful harmony.”
“It’s wonderful to live with another artist,” adds von Hessen, whose pink-walled baroque house in Rome, Villa Polissena, is both his studio and his main base. “At night I always show my work to Rolf and he laughs because I always say the same thing: ‘He’s coming’.”
Von Hessen studied painting when he was 20 at New York University; “But I didn’t like my figurative work so I applied my art to theatrical costumes and scenery,” he says. In 2015 he launched his own eponymous fashion brand, partnering with Karl Lagerfeld’s right-hand man Eric Wright, but “stopped the business” during Covid-19. After the closure, he used painting to fill the “emptiness” he felt.
This winter, he held his first solo exhibition in Villa Flower – a hotel in the village of S-chanf, in the Engadine. The series explores its “connection with the mountains”, focusing on the interiors and wrought in thick paint and harmonious colors. His Swiss debut was followed by a solo in London, currently at the JGM Gallery. The painting is part of “a whole new chapter,” says von Hessen, who has four children from two of his three previous marriages. “Now my children are out of the house. “I have the freedom to finally do what I want.” Sachs agrees: “We are both free to work with a very clear head. It is also very fortunate that [our practices] They are opposite poles: Mafalda is super academic while I am more of a conceptual idea. “We are very good critics of each other.”
Sachs’ work has always oscillated between art and design, but “little by little I have been getting deeper and deeper into the realm of art,” he says. This renewed fervor has been channeled into a series of projects. Last October, Sotheby’s in London dedicated a sales exhibition to the new Sachs model. Moving Still Images: Photographs of everyday objects such as toilet paper rolls. And in December he inaugurated a solo exhibition in Stalla Madulain in a 500-year-old barn, which became part of Sachs’s mini universe and part love letter to the area where he grew up. It was the first time he showed paintings, crumpled and then unrolled abstract canvases that he calls Defrosting. “It’s a little like showing yourself naked,” he says, but it’s a discipline he plans to follow.
Sachs is now working toward a major retrospective at the museum in 2025. But that doesn’t stop the couple from being a centerpiece of the increasingly bustling local scene. They cruise around the valley in a pair of instantly recognizable wicker basket-roofed Fiat Pandas. “They are the best cars for driving on ice,” says Sachs, who drives at some speed on the steep, winding mountain roads. The area’s creative landscape is “the real soul” of St Moritz, says Sachs. “Not fur coats, champagne and puppies.”
Mafalda von Hessen: Looking In is at JGM Gallery until May 25; jgmgallery.com. rolfsachs.com