Bernard Dubois & Isaac Reina
Bernard Dubois (BE)
A rigorous and analytical approach, a frontal and inclusive aesthetic. The Belgian architect Bernard Dubois blurs the lines between genres. Drawing references in different periods, he creates coherence and brings together what the history of architecture opposes. His works ranges from architecture, interior design and furniture.
Bernard Dubois (°1979) studied photography before he graduated as an architect from La Cambre in 2009 in Brussels, Belgium. In 2014, shortly after founding his architecture firm, Dubois was co-curator of the Belgian Pavillion at the Venice Biennale, with the project Interiors. Notes and Figures. Today, the Bernard Dubois Architects studio is based in Brussels and Paris and produces projects on various scales – both retail and residential – in Belgium, France, Switzerland, Italy, the US and China. Despite a full agenda, Bernard continues to carry out an active reflection on subjects that are close to his heart, notably as co-director of the AA Visiting School Brussels since 2016.
Whatever the nature of the project, the vocation of Bernard Dubois’ architecture is to be informed, contextual and fundamentally cultural. Dubois appropriates ambivalent moments from the history of architecture and plays their contradictions against each other. In Brussels’ Aesop store, he reinterpretes the distinctive brickwork used in buildings across Belgium in the 1930s and again during the post-war period. Valextra’s Paris boutique, is a seamless integration of deep-rooted Milanese heritage with a visual identity that draws equally from Italian and Belgian preferences. Ligne 102 for Ligne Roset and Pin-Up Magazine is inspired by the works of Leon Battista Alberti, Giorgio de Chirico and Marcel Proust’s famous, Parisian, cork-lined apartment. Bernard Dubois subtly and humorously crosses different reference systems and in this way cultivates the doubts and contradictions of architecture.
Isaac Reina (ES / FR)
Isaac Reina (°1968) studied architecture before switching to fashion. In 1991, after finishing his degree, he started working on the men’s collection for Antonio Miro in Barcelona. In the late nineties, his curiosity and quest for quality took him to Paris. Isaac joined Hermès in 1998 at the men’s ready-to-wear studio directed by Véronique Nichanian, where he worked across the entire range of the male wardrobe, apart from the accessories collection.
In 2006, Isaac Reina launched his eponymous line of leather accessories. With distance from a luxury iconography, Isaac Reina is focusing on the simplicity in a noble sense of the material. Without pretention, he is keeping in its way of working an authenticity and crafts quality trough details. His projects are looking for simple beauty, natural and essential.
The first Isaac Reina store opened in 2006, at 38 Rue de Sévigné in the Parisian district of Le Marais. In 2015, it moved to new premises in the same area, at 12 Rue de Thorigny, near the Picasso Museum. A few years later, in 2018, a second Parisian store designed by Bernard Dubois opened at 20 Rue Bonaparte, on the Rive Gauche.
Isaac Reina worked in collaboration with Maison Martin Margiela, Balenciaga, Calvin Klein, and since 2019 with Ami Paris and Paco Rabanne. He is currently accessories tutor at the Ecole de la Chambre Syndicale de la Couture Parisienne (Institut Français de la Mode).