You have never been to Baselworld before. What were your first impressions?
I was blown away by the whole fair. I have done a lot of shows with interior design and furniture, but the level here is impressive. I am interested in the stands not just for the products inside them but also for the design of the stands themselves.
Tell us more about the colours used in the design of the Cvstos watch and the inspiration for the design.
Camouflage is an army fabric, of course, so I can’t lay claim to the design. But because we work with a lot of fashionable clients, whether they are football players or entrepreneurs, camouflage is such a classic fabric that I decided to work with it as a textile in my collection and it turned into a whole range of products, including furniture. Our latest limited-edition book was done with a camouflage textile cover and we also did a collaboration with Mercedes-Benz in the Netherlands, producing a camouflage textile interior for the A-Class AMG model.
We met up with Cvstos, who were interested in doing a co-branding with us, and the choice of camouflage seemed logical, because it is both fashionable and timeless. Being Dutch, orange is of course my favourite colour and it fits well with the camouflage.
Was it difficult to think of the design in terms of the relatively small space available in a wristwatch?
Antonio Terranova helped us a lot with the design, because it is a completely different world to that of interior design and there are so many details. So it was nice to work on the details based on an existing model that we could personalise with our own colours.
The number 14 features a lot in your work. Why is it your favourite number?
It was the number that Johann Cruyff wore and it became my lucky number because of him. I designed a range of shoes that was called “14 by Eric Kuster”; we celebrated the 14th anniversary of the company rather than the 15th; we published a book at the same time, which was also called 14. Furthermore, I have a charity foundation [The Eric Kuster Children Development Fund] which adopts 14 children in 14 different cities around the world. So 14 is a number you will find everywhere in my life, which is why the watch is a limited edition of 14.
But 14 is quite a small number in the world of watches. Will we see more Cvstos watches designed by Eric Kuster?
This is our first collaboration and we first of all needed to see that it works well and everyone is happy. But we have an amazing collaboration with Cvstos so I would be very happy if there is a development in this collection. The reactions at Baselworld were very positive, so I’m looking forward to taking the next step and doing another 14. The nice thing about customisation and limited editions is the small quantities. And the nice thing about working with a small brand like Cvstos is the freedom that it gives me as a designer. And because Cvstos uses so many different types of material I think that the possibilities are unlimited. The creative teams on both sides could do 14 times 14 watch models – enough for the next 14 years!
