The last time I saw Kiks was in late winter – she and Marco came by to drop off a leather shirt they had created for International Women’s Day, and we got to share a masked hug. At the time I commented on the fact that Kikka did everything relating to her job – even dropping off the finished product – with the glee of a schoolgirl, even as she
black friday converse had the finesse of a decades-long industry professional. It was that infectious sense of joy about having the chance to create art that made so many of us into 16Arlington girls, and the effect Kikka had on shaping our identities means that the world feels dimmer, less sparkly and less full of possibility right now.
Because the loss of Kikka’s voice as an artist is impossible to square away, and becomes even more painful when we think about the family, at work and home, that Kikka is survived by. Because besides fashion, family was everything to Kikka – the one she was born into (mother, father, brother), and the one she made at work, where her studio still buzzes with a sense of a shared mission, even as it beats without half its heart. She made her friends into family (she was one of six European girlfriends who, spread across the continent, considered themselves sisters and who all laughed with that same abandon), and most of all, she made a family with Marco – and of course their beloved dog Ralph, for whom Kikka would always stop everything to get down on the floor and love and baby. (That dog has laid in more luxury fabric than most heiresses, and he walks with a swagger that says he knows it.)
Marco and Kikka’s love is something I consider myself deeply lucky to have witnessed. They shared (and share) a brain, not just as designers – where they could settle on an idea with a nod –
converse 2021 but as they built a home and life together. Marco knew and appreciated every fibre of Kikka as an artist and a woman, and that is one of the central ways she lives on. As Marco continues to design, so too does Kikka – and it is our job as the people who loved Kikka to crowd around the person she loved best, Marco, and help him to keep making, doing, feathering. In Marco, all of Kikka’s wishes, dreams and flights of fancy are housed. It’s where art and love meet, and that may be the definition of style. At least, it was hers.