How designer Arne Aksel is fighting 'Scandinavian depression' through technicolour curtains

“So I said, ‘How could a colour that reminds you of porn be a bad thing in a bedroom’?” Arne Aksel is telling me a story about one of his most memorable clients via video call. The interior designer was in Germany working with a young couple who had bought an old transformer station. “I came to their bedroom. I said, ‘I'm sure we want red curtains in here’. And the woman said ‘No’. And then the man said ‘Yes’. And then she said ‘Isn't that too pornographic?’”

With the support of the man, Aksel got his way – he is convinced all men deep down have a love for red – and red curtains were installed. “I showed the guy the room a couple of weeks later and he was so happy that he was lifting me around the bedroom.”

This interior - induced happiness is not unique in Aksel’s work. In fact, it’s a large part of why he does it. His eponymous business, established in 2017, creates custom-made curtains. But these drapes, which dot the homes of tastemakers and creatives worldwide, are by no means just pieces of fabric. As one of Aksel’s clients , Sarah Fitzgerald, tells me, they’re “more like a piece of art.”

“I want to fight the Scandinavian depression,” says Aksel. “I really like minimalism, but I don't understand why it has to be grey and beige. I think that you can make colourful minimalism. That's what I'm fighting for.” His tools for this fight are seven styles of curtains that range from light and breezy to decadent and heavy, available in 50 shades. The styles and colours are made to work together, allowing for thousands of combinations. But the best weapon in his arsenal is the emotional experience these drapes instill.

While the Coronavirus pandemic hit Aksel’s business in the sense that larger companies stopped placing orders, it also saw an uptick in individuals reevaluating and reinvesting in their homes. This further fuelled Arkel’s mission for fewer greys and more deep blues, poppy pinks and glittering golds . “OK , so let's say we survived Corona and then I paint my whole house grey. No, absolutely not,” he says. “There are two things we can learn from Corona: one, it’s to live in the moment and be right here right now, and two, it is to make joy a part of our interior.”

A session with Aksel feels like a date with a therapist. He tries to find out who you really are in order to contribute to a home that will truly spark delight. His consultation consists of chatting in an attempt to “ almost accidentally” get clients to open up. He says that people with money are often the hardest to crack as their homes often look like stunning “furniture stores,” adding that he “can't feel them.” “I talk,” he explains. “Because I'm nosy but also because I've got to ask them what they're doing, what their job is to try to understand what they think.” He looks for signals and clues in the conversation to figure out what the customer really wants. “It’s often by accident they tell me something and then I latch on to that and say, ‘So, that's what you get’.”

This approach, paired with Aksel’s love of colour, can lead many down a more adventurous path than they intended. Occasionally, it takes a little arm-twisting. “I could tell them what they want to hear, but then I think we lose the whole point of the conversation,” he says. “I'm not always right, but people have a right to hear what I say.”

Aksel grew up on a small farm in Denmark and says he always had a desire to leave, even from an early age. “I had this idea that I should live in Tokyo. I wanted to live in the biggest city in the world.” He moved to Copenhagen in his teens to get an education in design. When he finished he was ready for his “journey to start,” so he sold everything he had and got a tourist visa for New York. There, he found a job on a movie set and, like in all good heroes’ journeys , found a husband . David and Aksel would go on to become one of the first same-sex couples to be legally married in Denmark. “It was the first day it was possible, October 1, 1989,” he says. “It was us and 10 other couples being married.”

Next came a string of businesses and odd jobs. He launched a now-defunct swimwear label, something he doesn’t recommend doing in a region that is covered in snow for a good portion of the year. He also created a business called Cover that sold slip covers for couches. At one point, he “got bored” and went for a holiday to Damascus, the Syrian capital. This turned out to be quite the life-changing journey.

“Something happened when I came to Damascus,” he says. “I'm not a religious person, butt here was something about the way people own their own time. If they meet someone they know, they stop and talk for as long as it takes to finish talking. That means that everyone is late in Damascus.” Before he knew it , he’d bought a house and was living there, continuing to run his slipcover business. He stayed for four years, until the war started.

Then, in 2017, he was approached by a young architect and designer, Jacob Schnack Jørgensen, about starting a curtain business. Jørgensen's pitch was, “Arne, you just do what you do, go out and tell people what you think.” Aksel loved the idea of creating something so customer-focused, especially in a land scape that favours online shopping. He explains that when you shop online, no one says to you, “Oh that won’t go,” or, “That isn’t right for you.” It’s this personalisation that he believes has been a large part of the brand’s success.

It’s also the movement and light the textiles create that hook in Aksel’s adoring fans . Sarah Fitzgerald, who, with her husband Christian Klinge, had their house fitted completely with Arne Arkel’s pieces puts it best: “I love when you have long curtains hanging from the ceiling and the fresh air from the window comes in and the curtains are just moving around,” she says. “It gives me the feeling of what this house is about. It's about movement. It's about furniture. It's about fabrics moving the right way.” Aksel agrees and the conversation shifts to his ability to make textiles dance.

“I like that when you put curtains up you’re all of a sudden in a room you don't recognise. Your mind opens up and I always see fairytales and dreams. People often comment about the light hitting the curtains making the room look like a tent. And how wonderful for your brain to start imagining and thinking you live in a tent. Who knows? Maybe next thing Lawrence of Arabia pops to mind. It’s about playfulness and bringing that out in adults.”

So what does a connoisseur of colour’s own home look like? I ask the question and he turns the laptop around and starts walking me through his apartment. It is a true explosion of hues. In one room there is a giant fresco painting on the ceiling of a religious scene he saw in a museum. He had it put through Photoshop, made it purple and t ur ned it into wallpaper. He doubted his instincts for just a moment. “I was like ‘Who do I think I am? Is it a castle I'm making here? I live in a basement’,” he says. “But then I put it up and it was marvellous.”