“I am Heike Buelau, the HB in Industrial Designs, and ever since I can remember, personal style has been an essential aspect of my life. It has pretty much been the only consistent form of art in my life. Whether a classically trained singer performing Opera, a fine artist in print photography, exploring the field of video or finally again performing live improv with my photographic work, my individual expression through a somewhat self defined style has always remained the daily creative warm up for me. It has proven to be similar with every place I have lived, from the shabby first Upper West Side back room to beautiful indus- trial Brooklyn Lofts, each one had to be made a part of me however short the stay, some items, some touches of my design obsessions have to define who is the dweller of those four walls.
So HB Industrial Designs is a perfectly natural evolution of my art work. The desire to share my taste for abstraction and androgyny for both body and home with the world has gotten the better of me and here they are, my first collections of a hopefully endless string of products to make all of you Boys, Princesses, Rockers, Ladies, Kings and Queens, Punks and Gents feel beautiful all around…”.
Today, her textiles as well as Leather Collections are an expression of what Heike Buelau perceives her own being to represent: the constant flow of contrast between an edgy exterior and, as she describes it, an astonishingly soft core. All her Materials are luxurious samples of Italy’s unique standards of quality: a beautifully supple touch, laced with the always somewhat raw quality of Heike’s photograpy/designs, carrying all the way into the fully handmade metal accessories in her leather collection, exclusively made by hand for HB Industrial Designs by her friend and collaborator of years, Leisah Swenson of Brooklyn, New York.
