I am hardly alone in thinking Dover Street Market is shopping nirvana, but it’s not the Supreme or Saint Laurent that draws me. Personally, you’re more likely to find me hunkered down on the floor, scanning what’s on offer from Idea Books, the London-based vintage dealer, and now publisher, set up by Angela Hill and David Owen. (Currently top of my obsession list: a copy of rarer-than-rare 20 Anni Di Vogue Italia seen a couple of weeks ago at DSM London . . . for $750, at the current exchange rate.) More affordable—and likely just as collectible in the future—are the supercool, super-interesting, and super-limited-edition books that Hill and Owen have started to publish by themselves in the last year or so from the likes of photographers Collier Schorr and Willy Vanderperre and designer Gosha Rubchinskiy to, most recently and still available (but be really, really quick), Derek Ridgers, the guy who documented with an exquisitely unflinching vérité lens London’s club kids, from punk to rave, new romantic to fetish goth. And if you don’t happen to score one of the remaining copies of the Ridgers tome, Idea has four publications in the works for 2016, the first of which couldn’t be better timed.
When, where, and why did you found Idea Books?
DAVID OWEN: We have been selling books since the late ’90s, when Sarah [Andelman] opened Colette in Paris with vintage books we sourced. Then came Dover Street Market in London, who we have worked with for 10 years now. Angela and I both did other things, however—photography, styling, journalism, music business, Internet, television, and more! We didn’t shift our focus completely to books until 2009. That was when Angela inquired about the old Philippe Starck Golden Kiosk shop space at the St Martins Lane hotel in London and was handed the store for three months! Then we created the company and gave it a name.
Can you list 10 vintage publications—however big, however small, doesn’t matter—that encapsulate the particular aesthetic, taste, and spirit of Idea Books?
DO: This will be different for each of us—and probably for our customers too—but these are my five:
Paris, Texas: Every scene of film in double-page screen stills.
Ibiza by Ku: The world’s largest outdoor nightclub was in Ibiza, and this was their guide to the island circa 1988.
Fiorucci Panini Sticker Album: The 1985 album and 200 stickers. Got to get them all.
Oblique Strategies: Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt’s 1975 box of cue cards for creative inspiration.
Youth Hotel by Gosha Rubchinskiy: Even for the title alone!
ANGELA HILL: And here are my five!
Charlotte Rampling: With Compliments: Just amazing images of Charlotte Rampling. An inspiring, beautiful, elegant book.
M*A*S*H: The book of the TV series—Hot Lips, Hawkeye, Trapper John, et al.
AppleDesign: Every Apple designed up until 1997. Perfect gray of the early computers = Geek nirvana.
Enduring Performance: The New Balance Story: Yes, please, to those ’80s classics.
Styles of Living: The Best of Casa Vogue: Interiors that go beyond even the extraordinary.
What are people currently drawn to?
DO: That is not easy to answer as we have a very big audience now, so it is incredibly varied. It is also the business of most fashion designers to be drawn to things that everyone else didn’t know they were going to want to look at. Within our closer group of really good customers, then, the enthusiasm is always for whatever is next. We are motivated by the next discovery. What we call “superbooks” are generally books that are new to us and have huge potential to inspire new ideas. We try and find one of these a week and write about them on the weekly email newsletter. They were never published with this purpose in mind—they take on such power. Brilliant examples of these books would include Skinhead Girl, Paula’s Ibiza, AppleDesign, Immagini Dal Rock . . .
How have you seen tastes and interests change since you started?
DO: Tastes in the fashion world, and film and design and other disciplines also, have diversified and multiplied. If in the past there were maybe 10 classic books every stylist had to have, then that is no longer the case. There are so many collections and campaigns and so many magazines for editorials, and they all need references and inspirations. We are publishing six books a day to Instagram and really it could be a lot more.
What impact has Instagram had on your business?
DO: Instagram exploded our business. It only does what we have always done, which is to show people the most amazing pictures in the most amazing books, but clearly that is better achieved with an audience of 200K than it is with one person in one shop on a wet Wednesday afternoon (although we still do that as well).
Tell me about the beginning of your own publishing: Why did you start it, and what kind of books did you want to publish?
AH: I had always loved Gosha Rubchinskiy’s aesthetic and emailed him to see if he would like to do a book with us. I didn’t have then a vision of the type of book I wanted to publish or even why I started—I just wanted it to be good and I just wanted to do it! He said yes and we published Crimea / Kids. It sold out immediately. And we also organized a fantastic film screening and discussion with Gosha at the ICA in London to accompany the launch of the book, and that was a great, great day for me, as everything seemed to come together.
What informs your decision to work with a particular artist, et cetera?
AH: A love of their work (and being scared to ask them).
I love that you’ve kept the imprint small and select, publishing only limited editions—you treasure, or I do at least, the publications I have from you. Why did you want to operate this way?
AH: With the first book with Gosha, we had no idea how many would sell. We published 300 optimistically and it went off the scale coconuts the day we released it and sold out in a few hours! I was very pleased we had kept it to 300. It was a success for us and Gosha and left people wanting more. It has a special, even precious feeling to have an artist’s produced book in a small edition, like owning a secret. I only have two myself—numbers 1 and 2, and they are, of course, signed!
Who’s on the dream list to collaborate with?
AH: Well, that is covered in 2016. We have four projects lined up!
Tell me something about your first project for 2016 . . .
AH: We are doing a limited-edition book with Vetements! Unless aliens land on planet Earth around the 19th of January, then Vetements will remain the most exciting thing that has ever happened! We are launching the book in Paris during men’s Fashion Week.
Why do books still matter?
AH: Because if you love them, then you will always have that buzz, that sheer thrill of being in a strange town and driving along and seeing a shop with a couple of cardboard boxes outside on the pavement and the Used Books sign and knowing however late you are running, you have to stop and go in. As you do, you experience that mixture of anticipation, hope, and excitement . . . like a first date, but maybe without the awkward silences.
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