Vincent Darré & Elie Top

The multi-talented French designer VINCENT DARRÉ and his boyfriend ELIE TOP photographed at home by MAX FARAGO with a selection of the arresting and unusual objects he created for his exclusive Paris boutique.   “Childhood images flash like Polaroids in a labryinth, images in an analphabetic alphabet — an imaginary anarchy inventing a vocabulary — political parents vie with a fascination for cathedrals, pagan crypts, the artifice of death, the shame of mystical superstition — hypnotized by reliquaries, skeletons covered in gold and precious stones, mummies in vitrines, ex-votos, needlework, pendants, metaphysics, symbolism, sacristies, cemeteries, vestiges of memories — surrealistic allegories fueling an obsession — visits to abandoned houses, disaffected planets of dust, visions obscured by time and displacement — baroque forms, a genius in a cubistic lab, deco cinemas, X-rays, black-and-white, Technicolor — a patchwork of visions building a religion, my religion, my fantasies of the mockery of death, a…