Last year I wrote a thing here about what I decided to call “Explorecore.” Sorry for adding another “core” to the world, but it felt like the only way to explain something I was starting to see picking up steam. It was mostly about older stuff I was interested in that I saw other folks gravitating towards. Think late-1980s Armani, O.G. Mel and Patricia Ziegler Banana Republic, the real J. Peterman, etc. But I started seeing some newer takes on it that really stood out, like Todd Snyder’s Spring 2023 “Nomad” collection.
But nobody embodies this feeling more than Mikael Kennedy and his King Kennedy Rugs operation. I’d gotten obsessed with his Instagram a while back and then saw my pal Isaac sporting one of his jackets and asked if he could connect us. Mikal, who was a professional photographer before he went full-time selling rugs, has an eye for beautiful things. The rugs that he sources from all over the world, but also the handmade bags, footwear and coats that are all made in limited numbers and stand out anywhere they’re worn.
I asked Mikael a few questions about his story, inspirations, and, most importantly, his Mercedes.
So the whole story is you started collecting rugs when you were working as a photographer and that eventually led to what you're doing, but what I think is sort of just mentioned and not elaborated on is you sold them out of a Mercedes. Can I know more about that car?
Ah yes, the Mercedes. I bought that thing on eBay back in 2007. I was obsessed with finding an old Merc and found myself spending my downtime on set scouring the internet for a “taxi from the Middle East” this is all pre-rug everything for me. I always loved the style of old cars but wanted one that could do some miles so I knew I had to find a diesel. I flew on a one-way ticket to Charlotte, NC with 5k in cash in my pocket and drove that baby straight back to NYC. There was no working electrical on the interior, no AC, I had the windows down for 15 hours, riding behind semis going up hills cause she struggled at first. I arrived in NYC in the middle of the night reeking of diesel with a big smile on my face. I rebuilt her slowly with a guy out in Sheepshead Bay, Frank, an old Mercedes mechanic who used to take me out to lunch and actually teared up when I left for the west coast. He said she kind of felt like his baby as well after everything we’d been through….. every mechanic I meet is a chance for the father figure I never had. So that was the beginning, I drove her all over New England, up to the northern reaches of Maine, out to Nashville and back a few times (my wife is a folk signer), she’s been totaled by an F150 in Carroll Gardens— we had to saw the back quarter panel off and order a new one from Germany, my fuel line burst on i95 once and I had to use some tape and rope to hold her together, one time on the BQE one of my shocks punched through the hood, I left my wedding in this car, drove my daughter around L.A. when she was first born, the Merc is almost my exact age I like to think she came off the assembly line the year I was born (1979), she’s a 1980 300sd. So when I started dealing rugs I had a tiny studio in Greenpoint and I’d drive them to people in the Merc, wait outside of their place and roll the rug out across the hood when they arrived. I used to joke it was performance art, I was just pretending to be a rug dealer.
I've seen rugs from all over the world and was curious how you define a Persian rug.
So the term “Persian Rug” is a bit of a funny one but it’s generally a placeholder I use for the uneducated to shorten the conversation cause most people don’t know at all what I’m talking about, that just makes it easier, a way to convey a general idea to get the conversation moving. The majority of the rugs I collect and deal with are actually not from Iran—although I do have some. My favorite pieces are Caucasian rugs that carry a more geometric design rather than floral which is very common in Persian rugs, but really it’s all just about the visual aesthetic that draws me to each piece, in the end, I don’t really care where it’s from. It’s like all things there’s a bird’s eye view and then more detail, I start at 10k feet and slowly work my way down.
What is it particularly about rugs that really caught your attention?
It was all visual in the beginning, I can’t explain it, it just clicked, if you talk to any old rug head they’ll say you just got bit by the rug bug. I used to hang an old Persian prayer rug in my photo studio next to an aerial photograph I took of a forest in Michigan, when people would ask I would explain that it’s all the same visual language to me, color texture and pattern. I’m generally supposed to wear glasses but I don’t, I prefer the world to be a little out of focus, a little dreamy. The rugs often look like the landscapes they come from to me, a Navajo rug looks like Mesa’s desert landscapes and Persian rugs like the night sky. I spend a lot of time thinking about human experience and these rugs are such pure distillations of that, they are markers of lives lived. The first rug I bought was a prayer rug from the 1800s with hand and knee marks worn into it…… that legacy of a life lived…..all the intention woven into the piece and then put into the use of it.
What was the moment you realized you'd make this your career?
Sometimes life just makes the decision for you. In Feb 2020 I was in Morocco shooting an ad campaign for a luxury handbag company (and searching for rugs in my downtime). I started to notice some weird shit was going down worldwide thanks to Twitter and I decided I should get back to L.A. and my family, I flew through France as they were starting to freak out and landed in L.A. I think seven days before the lockdowns began. After a few months of working in my garden and hanging out with my kid—time I know everyone didn’t get, but time I treasured dearly—I was sitting on my porch stoned with my friend Alia who deals Moroccan rugs and I just blurted out “We should open a store.” I wasn’t sure the photo would ever really come back or to be honest if I even wanted it to, I had started as an art photographer and found my way into commercial work which I do not recommend anyone do, don’t ever turn your art or passion into your career, keep it for yourself. But anyway, Alia and I found a small storefront to split and decided to see what we could do with it, we’d both been dealing rugs on the side for over a decade each. The business just exploded, everyone was stuck home, wanting ways to liven up their spaces, and bringing new art into people’s homes was perfect. And from there everything just started to snowball, I’d made bags over the years, and some one-of-one rug coats, Nordstroms reached out and said they wanted to carry them and asked me to make them a coat for their “New Concepts Shop” then Mr. Porter came the following year and asked the same. It was great, I’d always had a million ideas of what I wanted to do with the rugs but no real reason to really try, these stores gave me the outlet to start showing some of my wilder ideas (No one yet seems willing to carry the “Plate Carriers” I make out of antique rugs though) Next I hired a Birkenstock customizer to make me some Birkenstocks and idea I’d been kicking around for a while. That really blew things up, the first photo I posted online went viral and at first Birkenstock said they loved me and wanted to work together and then the next week I got a C&D and they threatened me with a huge lawsuit so that was fun. There’s never a plan, man, just a thread of ideas that I follow till a new one pops up and I see where that goes, sometimes they aren’t possible with the rugs and sometimes they work out.
You have the bags that are dope, and some of the various collabs you've done have yielded some really interesting stuff as well. How do you decide who you're going to work with?
In the early days, it was based on literally just the people I met in my fashion photo world, I came up in NYC in 2005 with the whole #menswear world, I was shooting most of those brands, so I’d just ask if they wanted to try something with the rugs, it was always an experiment to see what was even possible. These rugs are so strong, having lasted over 100 years most of them, the weaving and the wool is so tight that sometimes it’s not possible to sew through. Now I’m much more selective about collaboration mostly because L.A. is a factory town and I can make most anything I want here, so a lot of the time there’s not a huge point in my collaborating with a brand unless they can bring something else to the table. I’ve got a wish list in my head right now of some pieces I want to make that I just don’t have the capabilities to produce or to produce in scale. I really really want to do a Goretex coat right now and I’m slowly working my way towards that goal.
How do you source most of your rugs? I'm guessing flea markets, maybe estate sales. Have you traveled overseas searching for them?
When I first started posting these rugs on Instagram there weren’t many people selling threadbare’s or even rugs on there, and as my audience grew, more and more rug dealers started inviting me into their shops to dig. The rug world is an old world, I mean literal old people, dealers complain about it to me all the time, and collectors are dying off, so the dealers I spoke with were very excited to have someone breathing new life into the business, that extends to the products I’m making now as well. Mostly now it’s just all through 3rd and 4th generation rug dealers, I used to spend a lot of time on the road with my wife or traveling for photo and that was truly my favorite way to hunt though, roll into a strange town, find the one rug dealer and see if I could talk my way into their back room to look at the stuff they generally didn’t think they could sell. Buying from legacy dealers is also a great way to know exactly what I’m getting, and they always have incredible stories or little secrets about rugs they want to share with me. I haven’t traveled a ton internationally collecting for a few reasons, one simply is we are banned from importing true Persian rugs into the USA because of the embargo, so I technically can only work with what is available in the USA. I’ve made a lot of rug friends over the years though who I’d love to visit someday, but for the most part, I can find what I need in the States.
I was telling somebody about what you do and I mentioned it makes me think of a Paul Bowles story. That connection made me wonder if there are any artistic influences that color your imagination as you're doing your work. I think it's so often so easy to see everything as "business," but I always feel like if somebody does something like, say, starts selling Persian rugs, there has to be some influence there.
From a very early age my only goal in life was travel, just get me out of where I came from, I started hitching around at an early age, my older brother hopped freight trains, I spent months at a time living out of my car taking photos. I grew up on Bowles, and Kerouac and all that, Burroughs in Tangiers, it’s all in there. That desire for travel and adventure, I want to see everywhere and everything, I started with the USA, driving across 7-8 times before I was 23. I grew up pretty solidly on the lower end of the middle-class spectrum so international wasn't really in the cards for me early on, the first time I left the country was on a one-way ticket to Serbia when I was 24, I lived there for the summer, ended up homeless most of the time but it was wild, I couldn’t even have placed it on a map before I went, I was living in Boston at the time, hated Boston and decided to chase a girl, not my worst idea. The rugs in many ways are a means to an end I suppose, I rarely even think of this as a business and more as a very weird project I’ve found myself working on. I’m not sure how to fully explain this but the answer to your question is yes. Also, The Man Who Would be King was one of my favorite movies growing up….maybe there’s something there.
If somebody asks you what your job is, what do you tell them?
Rug Dealer, always, keeps it clean and simple and generally I’m the only rug dealer they ever met. Sometimes though it gets tricky cause people often think I’ve said DRUG dealer which is where my branding comes from. I almost got escorted off a photoshoot once cause the art director thought I was telling everyone I was a drug dealer on the side…..woulda been the worst drug dealer ever if that had been my move….loose lips sink ships.
I love this!