How Tokidoki creator Simone Legno made Karl Lagerfeld ride a dragon

Tokidoki creator and founder Simone Legno talks about his childhood, his art, working with Karl Lagerfeld and his second favorite thing to do in Japan — karaoke.

Ever heard of The Yellow Monkey? You might have heard of their song Tactics, which was used in Samurai X. No? Italian artist Simone Legno has — in fact, he can sing the band’s songs and read straight out of the teleprompter at a Japanese karaoke bar. He tells me he’s done it many times. “I always do karaoke in Japan, always,” he laughs, almost like he’s embarrassed of the fact. “I can read hiragana and katakana. Of course, if it’s a Japanese hip-hop song I can’t do it,” he jokes.

His number one favorite thing to do in Japan? “Eat! I also like the countryside of Japan, but I really like the big metropolis in general — a city like Tokyo, it’s full of design, full of inputs. There is the contrast of minimalist and classy and then the super crazy and eccentric visuals —that they co-exist is a bit like my artwork,” he shares.

The Rome-born artist and creator of Tokidoki has been to Japan 32 times all in all, the first few times for fun, and now as the force behind his growing brand, which he co-founded with Pooneh Mohajer and Ivan Arnold.

“So will you sing it for us, Simone?” Pooneh asks, going back to karaoke. And Simone just laughs. “Absolutely not, I cannot do it sober. And I’ll ruin my career!”

Now that’s something that won’t be that easy to do. After all, it’s a career that he’s been nurturing since he was an elementary school kid, drawing with his brother and for his classmates. “I always thought I’d be doing something creative,” he says. “When I was in kindergarten, all the teachers were putting my drawings on the walls. In elementary my teachers wanted me to decorate the classroom, and there was one time they asked me to draw the whole class as characters. I was six or seven. In high school, when we were studying the Roman Empire, the teacher asked me to draw the different armors and stuff. I was the artist in the class. I was always sitting in the back sketching with all my books just around me.”

If not an artist, Simone wanted to work for an airline or in the airport. “My father worked in one and so we were always traveling, so I’ve always loved going to airports,” he says. To which Pooneh reacts, “Now it doesn’t stop, you’re at the airport all the time!” So dreams do come true, I tell him. “Yes, everywhere in the world we have business relationships so you always have to show your face. It’s an extremely hard life, but the reward is so special. Traveling gives me not just inspiration, but I also get to see so much appreciation and enthusiasm from fans.” And his fans — surprise — are mostly women who can get quite extreme, as in going through the torture of getting-a-tattoo kind of extreme. “They have my art permanently on their bodies and they see it every day when they wake up… (Laughs) It’s the highest form of flattery.”

I ask him if he’s anything like the characters he creates. “Well, your art is the mirror of your soul,” he tells me. He started drawing Sandy the Cactus Girl — his favorite character — while vacationing and having nothing else to do. He saw a bunch of cacti, and drew them as children wearing cactus suits “to protect them from the big, scary world.” Putting two and two together, in a way, Sandy could’ve been him way back in 2003, when Ivan Arnold stumbled upon Tokidoki.it while searching for new artists and designers to work with. “I was scared — I had to share with someone I didn’t know everything that I was doing,” says Simone of the time Ivan and Pooneh first got in touch with him. However, he was no stranger to the scene — before that, he was already widely popular in the design scene. “It was a small community then. It’s like Comic-Con 20 years ago, everyone knew everyone. There was a lot of enthusiasm in the community,” Simone says. He flew out from Italy to LA in June of 2003 and then moved there to build Tokidoki the brand in October.

Now Tokidoki is almost 10 years old, with fans all over the world, including fashion icons like Karl Lagerfeld, who was recently immortalized, Tokidoki-style (along with his cat Choupette), and countless collaborations in the works. “Obviously, I’m most proud of the Karl Lagerfeld collaboration, because it’s taking something that’s very high fashion and bringing it into the crazy world of animation — and even having him riding a dragon! At first I thought they wouldn’t like it, but they did! It was a really interesting social and design experiment. But I also really cherish LeSportsac because that is the biggest ever that we’ve done. As a canvas it’s 360 degrees, you can put so many elements. And also the sneakers, Onitsuka Tiger. I love sneakers. Sometimes it can be just very limited edition and I still get excited, like what I did for Bicycle playing cards. Every time it’s something new, I get excited,” he says.

Another new thing that Tokidoki is working on is slot machines. The brand was recently tapped by IGT for its casinos in Macau and Singapore. They’re also doing a full fashion line of shoes with London Soul, an iconic fashion like that started in London — another high-price-point item for Tokidoki. And for its anniversary, the brand will again be working with past collaborators. As far as dream projects go, though, Simone still has a couple he’s yet to realize. “Being a Roman guy, I like Fendi. I also would like to do something for an airline! But Pooneh and I always say that one day we will have our own amusement park here in Asia. It’s our goal. We’d make it more modern, for the whole family, but parents will have their own space. We can totally envision it — Tokidoki rides!” he shares.

“Timing is everything,” says Pooneh. “You have all these windows of opportunity and you have to make a move, otherwise the window starts to close. But the thing that’s great about what we’re doing is that there are no dull moments. There’s no room to get bored. Even though it’s exhausting, it’s exciting.” Simone jokes, “Sometimes it’s inhumane how much we work! But the more you do, the more opportunities you get. You start with small, small successes and you get more validated. Our life hasn’t been easy. There are times when I feel like packing my bags and moving back to Italy, but I don’t because we’re doing something new here, something different.”

Despite all the craziness, all the flying around the world, meeting clients and fans, Simone keeps young and childlike through his art. “It’s what I do during the weekends. It’s what I do on airplanes. It’s what I do at dinnertime. So yeah, those are the times I can hand draw. Computer design, I do that while I’m doing business on the phone,” he says. Pooneh adds, “He’s got great energy. He’s definitely adorable — his wife and kid would agree. I’ll be sitting in my office and I’ll hear him singing all the way from down the hall. It’s hysterical.”

“So will you sing for us now?” I ask again. “You’re recording!” he says. So I hit “Stop.”

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In the Philippines, Tokidoki is exclusively distributed by Click Licensing, Inc. For information, visit Tokidoki.it or like Tokidoki on Facebook. Visit the Tokidoki pop-up shop at SM North EDSA The Block Atrium until June 15.