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Living with Dreams

Markus Lupfer talks to us about how art and a home is less means to an end and more about finding constant inspiration.

London-based fashion designer Markus Lupfer is best known for playful, graphic knitwear and has developed something of a cult following. His Sequins, slogans and lip motifs in particular. His work is characterised by being confident, witty and instantly recognisable.

Away from the runway and the madding crowd, his relationship with art is softer and guided more by atmosphere, imperfection and what he repeatedly returns to as a kind of dreaminess: work that doesn’t resolve itself immediately, but stays with you.

Many of the works Markus lives with are housed not in London, but in his home in rural Tuscany. Reached by long drives rather than short flights, it’s a place chosen as much for its remoteness as its beauty.

Life there moves at a different pace. There is time to look. Time to sit with things.

It’s here that Markus’s way of seeing makes the most sense.

Taking it all in

Markus tries to visit galleries whenever he can. Sometimes with intent, sometimes without any plan at all. He describes his favourite visits as a kind of drifting: going in without needing to “know everything”, letting the atmosphere do its work.

“Sometimes I just go and hang out,” he says. “You don’t need a purpose. You just let yourself float through.”

That instinct is amplified by Tuscany. Removed from the constant signals of the city, looking becomes less goal-oriented. You don’t need to extract meaning immediately. You can live with uncertainty a little longer. Art doesn’t have to resolve itself straight away.

“It really changes,” Markus reflects. “Sometimes it’s about understanding the artist. Sometimes it’s just about taking in the feeling.”

This is not passive looking, it’s attentive, but unforced. And it mirrors the way he lives with art at home.

The Softening of Harder Edges

Earlier in his career, Markus was drawn to harder, more graphic forms, lines, structure and a visual certainty, something he connotes with a more masculine aesthetic. Over time, that preference has shifted. Now he’s increasingly drawn to painterly work: images with expression, looseness and emotional depth.

“I used to like things that were very graphic,” he explains. “Now it’s much softer. More about character.”

Tuscany plays a role here. In rooms filled with natural light and generous proportions, highly graphic work can feel overly assertive. Softer, more atmospheric pieces feel at ease. They don’t compete with their surroundings; they settle into them.

Taste, Markus believes, isn’t fixed. It changes as life changes. “You just start looking at things differently in the bigger picture,” he says.

Perfectly Imperfect

One idea keeps resurfacing in Markus’s thinking: perfection is rarely interesting.

“What I love,” he says, “is when things don’t need to be exact.”

He’s drawn to objects that show how they were made: paintings where the process is visible, furniture shaped by hand, surfaces marked by use. Imperfection, for him, isn’t a flaw; it’s evidence of life.

“In a way, nothing is perfect,” he reflects. “And when something looks too perfect, it often loses its feeling.”

In Tuscany, this sensibility feels natural. The environment itself carries wear and age with ease. Nothing is trying to look new. Things are allowed to soften, fade and change. Against that backdrop, polished perfection feels out of place.

Imperfection isn’t a concept here — it’s a daily visual language.

How rooms come together

Markus doesn’t plan interiors rigidly. He begins with atmospherics: calm, warmth, clarity and builds from there. Foundations are kept deliberately clean. Character arrives, he says, via contrast.

“I don’t plan it too much,” he says. “But when I see a piece, I know where it should go.”

In his Tuscan home, white walls and simple cabinetry provide space to breathe. Into that quiet come singular, expressive elements: a hand-carved table, a painterly canvas, a rug made to measure. Each piece earns its place.

Drawing 4 by Ronan Bouroullec

“It’s not just one thing,” Markus says. “It’s the mix. New and old together. That’s what makes it interesting.”

Nothing shouts. The balance matters. Tuscany already brings texture and history; rooms don’t need to be overfilled to feel complete.

Golden Gate - Josef Albers

Letting art lead

Sometimes art is the final layer. Sometimes it’s the first decision.

In one room, a single large painting set the tone for everything that followed. Thoughts around scale, furniture, lighting, even how the space is used. In another, art appears where it’s not expected: a painting in the kitchen, chosen not to impress but to live alongside daily routines.

“I like putting things where they maybe don’t belong,” Markus admits. “That makes it interesting.” It makes me wonder whether something being perfectly wrong is in fact just another man’s “Just right”. Subversion in art as a practice is a story as old as time, it shouldn’t have come as much of a surprise that a “creative” would want to make play with the setting for picture when assembling a home.

In Tuscany, where kitchens are lived in rather than passed through, this feels intuitive. Art doesn’t need to be separated from life. It can sit quietly within it.

There is nevertheless a playful disruption in all of this. A gentle rejection of “doing the right thing” and following a protocol about where art “belongs”. It’s beautifully wrong in a way that feels entirely natural.

Toulon - Nathalie du Pasquier

Discovery without noise

Markus’s approach to discovering art is largely social and intuitive. Friends of friends. Conversations. Openings that lead somewhere unexpected.

“It really comes through people,” he says. “You meet someone, then you meet someone else.”

He’s particularly drawn to younger artists and earlier moments in artist’s careers. He finds this phase of their work fascinating as it still carries a sense of exploration. Distance helps too. In the sense that being away from the intensity of London’s fashion and art circuits, buying becomes less reactive.

“In Tuscany,” he says simply, “you have more space to feel what you like.”

Art that lives with you

For Markus, the true value of art isn’t how it performs for guests, but how it feels day to day. The pieces he lives with aren’t chosen to provoke conversation or signal taste. In a way that I sensed was operating subconsciously, they’re chosen because they do something quieter.

One painting he returns to often is by the German artist Baron Karimi. When he shows it to me during our conversation, he ponders - happily I might add - why exactly why he enjoys it so much.

“It’s very painterly,” he says. “There are graphic elements in there, but they’re really soft. Almost like they’re disappearing.”

What he responds to isn’t clarity, but depth. The sense that the image doesn’t give itself up all at once.

“It doesn’t need to be perfect,” Markus adds. “That’s what gives it character. It gives you more feeling. More authenticity.”

The painting hangs not as a statement, but as a companion. Something he lives alongside rather than looks at. Over time, it’s become part of the atmosphere of the room, something that subtly shapes how the space feels rather than how it’s read.

“It just makes me happy,” he says simply. “And I think that’s really important.”

This is where the idea of “dreaming” settles into place. Not so much in fantasy, but a kind of gentle mental drift: the freedom to look without needing answers, to feel without too much explanation. To enter that flow state and just be when pondering life’s moves. In that sense living with work by these artists is a life which doesn’t demand interpretation. Rather it fuels one’s imagination.

Art, Markus suggests, earns its place not by impressing, but by staying with you.