Caramel Palace is… irreverent, intuitive, a subculture, a cult, a movement. Anyone who enters the Caramel Palace-sphere is automatically initiated and invited to be these things too. Although this art and design studio is hard to define, arguably mysterious, jubilantly intangible and irrevocably evolving, it is also concrete in its playful articulation and creative expression. This collective comprises of you (yes you, the reader), as much as the individuals behind the name: illustrator and graphic designer Tiffany Schouw, interdisciplinary artist Alexander Pankiv-Greene and business strategy director and marketing operator Jojo Keiper. These creatives have redefined what it means to hone a visual language, paired with unmatched merch quality in a South African context, through their blended palette, sharp observation, hard grind and indisputable style.

When asked about the Caramel Palace origin story, Alex, Tiffany and Jojo shared, “when we were in university, we lived in a digs called the ‘Caramel Palace’. We spent a lot of time together and thought we should start something named after the sanctuary we lived in. It became a vehicle for all the things we want to put out in the world eventually. Just coming up with the name out of nowhere is an ode to how Alex’s mind works. Not to mention we were all skinheads at the time, which was very culty.”

A subculture, being a variant of a broader socio-cultural group which develops a niche language and identity of its own, is exactly what Caramel Palace is; we ask how they express this unique language – is it artwork, music, clothing, objects, creative concepts? 

“It’s constantly evolving. It’s a creative concept at its core and manifests in a lot of ways. Clothing may be one articulation, ceramics another, or branding with artists like Stiff Pap. It’s quite intentional. The palate is punk-ish. When we’re looking at something that could be a collaborative opportunity we think ‘what would my 16-year-old-punk-little-shit self do with this?’ We did a collaboration with Shelflife where we made a porcelain sneaker – then we smashed it against the wall and said ‘it’s finished!’.

Imagery courtesy of Caramel Palace

That kind of rebellious magic is something we find so refreshing. The nature of Caramel Palace is not disrespectful, quite the opposite, they are simultaneously creating with consciousness yet not taking themselves or the work too seriously. By doing exactly what they want, they’ve garnered respect from those that follow the brand. It’s the extreme attention to detail, like hand painting each artwork in the collaboration with Jade Paton, that makes the contrast to commercialised ‘copy-paste’ designs so stark. It’s this specificity that makes one’s head turn when it can often feel like we’re drowning in content oversaturation. 

We ask them to elaborate on their ability to be attune with subcultures and they shared:

“In this internet age where trends fluctuate quickly because everyone’s in the same algorithm, we’re actually trying to figure out what a subculture is and how to tune into it. Whether that’s going to the library, finding older references in strange places, then taking those subcultures and creating something new – that still feels familiar – reminding you of memory, place, feeling.”

Visually, Caramel Palace is layered with intertextual references: nostalgia, archive, repetition of motifs, illustrations, woven together with nuance. Similar to a piece of music with instrumental layers working in harmony, crescendoing to the climax. One of the ways to interpret Caramel Palace is recognising the late 90s, early 2000s references – suddenly, almost automatically, something like ‘The Prodigy’ starts playing in your head. 

We ask the team what role music plays for them creatively?

As a musician himself, Alex shares, “Music is really the key to this. It’s been a while since we’ve lived in a digs together, we’re doing things in our own capacity, but there’s a world created just listening to music – which suits a kind of carefree lifestyle. You can listen to a song and create a world in your own mind. You can look at a Caramel Palace logo Tee and sure, it’s just a white t-shirt with a logo on it but how do you actually build a world around that? How do we make the iPhone of T-shirts? It takes time to get the material and shape of the T-shirt right before you even think of what’s going on it. That’s a side that people don’t see of Caramel Palace but that’s the key.

Sometimes you’ll hear a piece of music and it’ll make you laugh, not because it’s funny but because you’re enjoying it so much. There’s something that makes you giggle, not because it’s humorous. We want to evoke a similar feeling with Caramel Palace, in that you laugh because you recognise it in a new context.”

Caramel Palace collaboration with Jade Paton at OnePark

Their latest collection, photographed by Johno Mellish, offers a visually pleasurable euphoric nostalgia of our youth years. We ask Caramel Palace to tell us a bit about this launch (which is now available on their newly revamped Caramel Palace website) after their two-year clothing hiatus:   

“Our current collection, Mall Goth, is an ode to everyone’s teenage Blue Route Mall or Cavendish era. We shot the whole thing at Canal Walk on pay day for extra Mall Goth vibes. We also wanted to use unusual looking models, people who you wouldn’t ordinarily see or who aren’t models by profession. We’re creating a space for people who are interested in slightly strange things. And then we ended up becoming good friends with the people we shot with.”

They’ve developed such a distinct Caramel Palace style and brand personality. We ask where their style comes from, both as individuals and as a collective? To which each of them respond:

“Everything we learnt from fashion we learnt from music first and that’s how we all connected initially. Alex is an incredible musician. We’d chill and make music all day which is how we connected creatively. That then leads into artworks, design, concepts – we flex that creative muscle in different ways. 

I’m obsessed with ideas. I used to DJ a lot but I’m interested in the arts and the intersection of arts and brand building. A lot of what we do at Caramel Palace is world-building. It’s a thought-experiment: asking ourselves, does doing the opposite of what’s expected create a better and more desired effect? How punk-ish and weird can we make it, how far can we push it? Besides that I do a lot of the production and nitty-gritty stuff.” – Jojo

“Spending a lot of time together in the garden in the sun sharing ideas, bringing our individual expertise and meshing them together in a crazy, weird, beautiful “I don’t know what this is but it’s nice and it feels good’ way. I’m an illustrator and designer. I work for an agency actually, and no one really knows that. No one knows I’m part of Caramel Palace either and I kind of enjoy it being that way.” – Tiffany

In response to Alex’s comment that Tiffany is a true world-builder, she shares, “I am. It’s kind of strange, I used to work for this terrible company when I first started out and spent a lot of time in my own head, imagining another reality. That’s how I found my illustration style and figured out what I needed to be doing in the world: creating outside of that job. Even though it was a hard time in my life, it needed to happen. Then I became really passionate about building worlds. We’re all kind of weird and strange and to build that world and invite other strange people into that – even casting models and becoming friends with them, they become part of Caramel Palace and always will be.” 

Caramel Palace exclusive playlist

There’s often an element of escapism in world-building, disassociating from your current context to picture an alternative way of life, even if it’s just visually on paper. In a way it’s an act of rebellion, but also a survival tactic as a creative – you have to imagine the world you want to live in and do your best to create that with the resources you have. On that thought, we’re prompted to ask whether there’s something missing in South Africa’s cultural or creative landscape that Caramel Palace wants to fill? 

Alex responds to this question with more questions: “How do you do something seriously high quality without such a sense of seriousness? How do you create something fun and silly, that your 16-year-old self can be proud of but that can still compete with high quality garments?” 

Jojo adds, “For us it was about capturing early 2000 hip-hop parties and rave culture, all combined to create something quite punk but quite goofy. It’s self-aware and it’s ironic. I don’t think something necessarily exists in the post-modern sense of that: self-reflective, funny, weird. Lots of clothing brands are extremely beautiful, like Wanda Lephoto. But creating something ironic and weird while simultaneously trying to output on a similar echelon of quality can be a difficult balance. But again, we want to push a concept. It’s not just clothing. I’m interested in taking really weird categories that Caramel Palace shouldn’t enter, enter them and reinvent them.” 

Tiffany chimes in, “Like ‘Caramel Palace Panel Beaters’”.

There is something to be said about the intangibility of nostalgia, a memory – arguably the best part of this feeling is that you don’t have to live through it again, you’re just reminded of a past life that rears its head into reality for a fleeting moment. The pop-up experience at Ghost was an iconic example of Caramel Palace’s personal fetish to do a lot of work on one project, only for it to exist in the world for 24 hours. It’s a nod to fleeting moments in time but also speaks to the adrenaline of impermanence. On their obsession with impermanence, Jojo shares, “We’ve all seen each other at our lowest, getting the final project done. I think it’s a trend of ours, wanting to go above and beyond and then there’s a spiritual cleanse right after. Same with the Jade Paton pop-up. It didn’t last for long and then it’s gone.”

When asked how these experiential pop-ups come about, what collaborative elements make them happen, they collectively reply:

“Chaos. Having ideas at a million miles and hour, then we get there and have 1000 more ideas. At this point it’s super late and we’re running out of time but we’re painting by hand on the walls at midnight. We’re always on ladders for some reason. ‘Let’s paint the ceiling as well!’ Tiffany’s on a ladder and is like “OMG do you remember when you’re 13 and you’d get those text messages in a weird shape and they’re telling you to send the message on to 100 other people otherwise you’ll get cursed– we’ve got to keep that in mind and make some anti-curse mechanisms.’” 

Now that they’ve launched their new website and latest capsule, it feels like they could do anything, which is why we ask what they want to be doing? Perhaps they’ve just done it? [At this point, Alex, who’s sitting outside a church in the Netherlands gets shouted at for being there, ironically the background of his video call displays a virtual yellow church. Again, very Caramel Palace.]

To end off, we pivot and ask, if Caramel Palace had a theme song, what would it be? 

Alex: “Confusion Pump Panel Reconstruction Mix by New Order, the Blade opening song theme tune”. 

Jojo: “What we are listening to at the moment is Lapdance by NERD because that’s what’s playing in my mind 90% of the time”. 

In an almost too-perfect conclusion, leaving us wanting more while paying respect to music, they suggested they’d make us a playlist (the way they have in the past with OtherRadio Mixes on MixCloud). And that’s exactly what they did. 

Listen to Caramel Palace’s curated playlist here.

Visit the Caramel Palace website and shop their new collection here.

Follow Caramel Palace here. 

Written by: Grace Crooks

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