Get ready for the funky stuff blowing up out of Mexico City. “El D.F.” (which stands for Distrito Federal as native Mexicanos call their beloved city) is a multi-cultural, multi-class explosion of culture and humanity. Many people are already in the know that the Latin American megalopolis is revving with creativity, underground music and a sophisticated fabric of urbanity. A couple of the hottest designers there can’t even be confined to a category or described succinctly, though we’ll give it a shot here. They’re Tony Moxham and Mauricio Paniagua, the Mexico City-based duo known as DFC, which stands for Distrito Federal Casa (Mexico City Home).
The guys behind DFC met in New York. Paniagua (who is Guatemalan) and Moxham (who is Australian) grew “exhausted with the routine” they found in the design world there, so after a few visits they moved to Mexico City. Buzzing with opportunity for designers, the city inspired them to start DFC three years ago. Since then they’ve been making post-modern artsy décor pieces that double as furniture, ceramics, glassware and jewelry—they’ve even debuted a fragrance called “Magic Drops” (it smells like orange blossoms and comes in a scientific-grade glass Pyrex bottle). Some of their most popular items include ceramic luchador masks, life-size ceramic trophy heads (including pink deer and blue cows), “Zoo Series” animal link necklaces, gold scorpion-shaped hand jewelry, large ceramic pill necklaces (called OXYDFC), hand-blown glass huevos (egg) and church pillows.
“We tend to take a certain inspiration and then work with it in a very strange specific sort of way. We like to straddle the line between art, interior design and fashion. It’s very important for us not to fall into one category,” Moxham states. “All sorts of things affect our lives, and we try to bring them into what we make.
Everything in the DFC collection is handmade here in Mexico by well-trained artisans who assist the designers. Moxham points out that these people develop their skills by handing them down through generations of families who specialize in these artisanal crafts. These artisanal elements are then fused into products and designs that some might put on display during a gallery show, while others might just put in their living room. Using materials ranging from metals, porcelain, glass, silver and even fur—you really won’t know quite what to do with some of their products. You can definitely count on them, however, to stand out as conversation pieces.
That especially applies to the signature pieces DFC initially got noticed for when they began: their life-size porcelain tree stumps.
“With the tree stumps we wanted to create something that was a little larger than life, a little fantastic. Some people use them as stools. Others think of them as pure art pieces. The only kind of tree stumps we’d seen previously were small porcelain kind of things you find in a grandmother’s cabinet, or European porcelain. We wanted to take what was available technically in Mexico and that was much more common for day-to-day use—industrial material—and then apply some of those techniques you’d use on fine porcelain. Then we supersized it.”
The DFC duo work like fashion designers in the sense that they create a completely new line of collections every year. “Our last collection was inspired by sexy robot women,” Moxham notes cheekily, referring to a line of hand-blown vases, plush floor sculptures and beaded cushions. “Our next collection is inspired by plants. We’re working on natural colors, like flesh tones, pastels, but no green in the whole collection. No clouds either. It’s a very fake idea of nature.”
“We don’t like minimalism. When we like something we tend to like a lot of it. We’re not fond of restraint in any way,” Moxham explains. “In the design industry, so many people take themselves very seriously. For us we like to let the work speak for itself. At the same time we’re not snobs, and we don’t want our designs to be considered only for a certain class of people. We don’t like to talk about concepts. We don’t like to complicate people with ideas, because DFC is about magic and surprise and delight and dazzling people. And that’s it.”
DFC products and designs are available in select stores near you (if you’re lucky), but mainly through their website.
Of course there is no formula for success except perhaps an unconditional acceptance of life and what it brings.