While perhaps best known for his career as a fashion photographer who has shot models like Cara Delevingne, Kaia Gerber, and Jourdan Dunn, Haitian-American Dimitri Hyacinthe wears many hats.
Hyacinthe, who studied interior design in college, has completed a number of restaurant projects and, most recently, launched Bijoux, an intimate speakeasy lounge in the Little Italy section of Manhattan.
Fresh off a busy New York Fashion Week, Hyacinthe shares his background and what led to this latest endeavor.
What led you to become a fashion photographer?
DH: While working on an art project, I decided to learn photography to combine the medium with painting for a Pictorialism installation. My passion for photography grew during the trials and tribulations of self-teaching. Fashion just happened accidentally.
How did you get into interior design?Â
DH: I switched from [studying] architecture to interior design as a cop out, because I had started promoting parties while attending college in Miami. I figured it would be easier while remaining in the same field. My first design project was a 1,200-square-foot club in Miami. The owner found out I was going to school to be an interior designer while having a lot of success as a club promoter and figured he could kill two birds with one stone by hiring me.
How does your experience as a photographer inform your design projects?
DH: Fashion photography has taken me to many places with a different eye. I have to pay attention to spaces and venues as a setting when I shoot a subject in order to make the environment look as luxurious as possible. I shoot high fashion so luxury is a must in any setting, so those are the interiors I create as well.
Tell us about your new lounge, Bijoux.
DH: Bijoux is a project that’s close to the heart. My partner Kyky [Conille] and I [first created] a Bijoux 15 years back (which I also designed). While being a very beautiful and successful project, Bijoux was one of our first forays into the restaurant scene. The timing was wrong as we opened two weeks into the financial crisis of 2008. It closed later that year.
What inspired the design for the new iteration of Bijoux?
DH: When we found this new space, we both said it needed to be Bijoux 2.0. The original Bijoux was all black-on-black décor with leather couches and hints of Bordeaux in the space. Both clubs were designed to feel like a speakeasy with a hidden door, tucked away from the street.
Bijoux 2.0 is chocolate brown with hints of red—including the door. Chocolate brown velvet couches, antique chairs, and stained glass lamps complement warm, dark wood paneling. Both the former and the new Bijoux spaces were designed to feel elevated, exclusive, and sexy, but 2.0 is an update on the look of the former.
What’s next?
DH: The goal is to develop Bijoux into a global brand. Small, sexy, luxurious, and super-exclusive speakeasy.
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