A long time ago, before Léa Dickely co-founded her brand Kwaidan Editions—in Japanese, ”kwai” loosely translates to strange or mysterious; “dan,” narrative; so: “strange stories”— she would occasionally meet with the designer Rick Owens as a consultant. At the time, the dark lord of fashion was in the market for ambitious and out-there ideas, so Dickely, in her telling, would show up with a suitcase full of samples and experimental textiles: stuff that might allow for storytelling through fabric and embroidery.

“It was like I could bring him little presents,” she said.

In 2016, Dickely would co-found Kwaidan Editions with her longterm partner, the designer Hung La (the pair would later go on to start Lu’u Dan), and the brand operated on a similar wavelength of strangeness, finding beauty in the uncanny. (The name Kwaidan was inspired, in no small part, by the 1965 horror film directed by Masaki Kobayashi.)

The brand very quickly found its footing. By 2018, Kwaidan Editions was a finalist for the LVMH Prize, and during the pandemic, Kwaidan was praised by Vogue for the “strain of kink that underlines their work” defined by a “trademark sense of provocation.”

Also during the pandemic, Dickely, a fine arts major, started painting again, in some ways resurrecting a practice that had backgrounded itself to allow space for clothes. For four years straight, she painted every day: haunting images of figures obscured in head-to-toe latex, dreamy distortions of humanity plucked from some netherworld.

Kwaidan Editions is currently on pause, as La is focused on Lu’u Dan (Dickely helps out part time). But she sees her art practice as a continuation of Kwaidan, exploring the dark penumbra of her own subconscious. I talked to Dickely recently about it after the couple got back from their summer vacation.

Chris Gayomali

Léa Dickely

How was your Hawaii trip?

We went to Maui. It was beautiful. I mean, it’s obviously paradise, right? I also felt like it was quite eerie. The nature was very strange to me, but very beautiful.

Strange in what way?

I don’t know. I think I had a little bit of island fever. I didn’t expect that. I didn’t expect that at all, but it was a really nice holiday. I mean, I feel really lucky to be able to go to such a place.

I feel like the commercial part of Maui kind of throws me off a little bit, where the colonial undertones shade everything.

It feels very Americanized. Sometimes it feels like you’re in LA. [laughs]

Have you been able to get back into your art practice since getting back, or have you just been trying to get everything in order?

Yeah, I just moved into my new studio. That’s been the main thing, and then just also getting back into the business a little bit and just getting the ball rolling again. So I haven’t really painted that much since, but I am just getting started.

I’d love to talk about how your art practice fits into designing and fashion for you. So when you were originally conceiving of Kwaidan Editions, I see the dark, ghostly undertones of everything. What was the thing that you were excited to start making when you first started?

It was a very different time. That was eight years ago now, and back then I think we were just really excited to start something, so we didn’t really have a huge plan of which story we wanted to tell. I knew it was going to be on the darker side of things. I knew I didn’t want something so feminine. So we got everything aligned with suppliers and the structure, and we just wanted to get going and see where things would lead us.

When I started shooting the lookbooks, around COVID, that’s when things started to be more—I don’t know how to say—but they had more flavor. They started to tell more of a story, I think.

Before that, we just wanted to really make a good product and be more on the luxury side of things, with the Phoebe Philo years and all that. So it was—I think it took us a bit of time to establish the DNA. And then when COVID hit, that’s when I also kind of reconnected with my art practice. So I started painting a lot more, and I think that’s when the two practices clicked again.

What do you see as being the connective DNA between the fashion side of the brand and your art practice? What sort of associations come up in the word cloud for you?

I studied fine art in school, and I think that’s when I really developed my artistic identity, that's when I really figured out what I wanted to talk about. That's when I discovered everything about subjects like the uncanny, the Freud uncanny, this whole kind of darker side of things. Between art and fashion, it's always been this kind of dance for me. So I would go to one and then go to the other and then back.

After fine arts, I went to Antwerp, and then I developed more of a fashion sense and how I could translate what I developed in fine arts into fashion, and then kind of always go between the two like this. I think the older I get, I just want them to be really linked now—to really have a conversation in the same space.

How does the uncanny manifest in the clothes you design?

We were a bit new to the whole thing, so I don’t think it came across at the beginning. But then, as time went on, we started using latex, which in a lot of ways invites you into a subculture that makes its whole world. And then mixing it with the kitsch side of things, like flower prints that I would design. For me, that whole kitsch thing is really ingrained in me from my grandparents.

The house they lived in was insane. When I show pictures to people, they can’t believe how crazy it was. There was absolutely no empty surface. Everything was covered with a pattern, with a flower, with something. And for me, there’s this interesting kind of conversation, between that really kitsch, really heavily decorated kind of dark piece and latex and what that means on the other side and how the two kind of mix. I think it's always really interesting for me.

How did you get your start in fashion?

After art school I went into textile and print design. So I was very much into working on embroidery projects for Dior, for example, with technology, and then working as a print designer for McQueen or Balmain, which was not a good fit for me. And I worked with Rick Owens, which was probably the best one. It was the most interesting job I’ve had outside of the brand.

Was there anything that was super surprising about working with Rick?

I was not working there full time. I was a consultant, I suppose. So I never really met anyone else other than Rick there, which was really interesting. I was just working with him directly, and he just really wanted to have someone to propose ideas to him and come up with cool stuff. So I would just come to him with a suitcase full of samples and trials and experimentation, like textile stuff—stuff that you couldn’t really find anywhere else.

That sounds amazing.

He was always excited to see what could be an interpretation of his brand through embroidery and textile work.

That was really inspiring because I was totally free. Also very difficult because you have to be really on point. It was super interesting to really develop the language for a brand through ideas and samples. And I mean, he’s amazing to work for. He’s the best boss you could ever imagine.

Were you a club kid, back in the day?

Oh, no, I wasn’t. I wasn’t at all. While Hung was partying in London or whatever, I was just studying fashion and being really—I was a nerd. I was a fashion nerd.