A bit of Lady Gaga, a bit of Borromini, a bit of individualism. Peter Arnell combines images and transversal worlds, inventing (and reshaping) brands. Starting with himself.

For some time now, he’s been traveling continually back and forth to Rome, where he likes to hang out at seventeenth century squares and fountains. He is studying them; in their shapes he finds keys to accessing the new and the contemporary.

Peter Arnell, advertising creator, photographer and product designer for more than 30 years, invents and reshapes the world’s brands. His is an integrated vision nourished by culture and by Italy, the stage of his debut, where he often returns. His next campaign, still top secret, will be very sensual: women making love. He explains how, starting with the shoes I am wearing: “An everyday sadomasochism, very Lady Gaga,” a sculptural wedge as risky as the pop star. “She is only 23 years old, but she tells the world ‘I do what I want, I experience.’ How she dresses, how she thinks, what she does. A lot of things are based on her philosophy.” Lady Gaga, Baroque art, authentic individualism.

For Arnell, today, this is how communications work. But the Baroque? “It is the same thing. Back to individual, handmade, personal creativity with no rules. Big corporations are in crisis, so no more formality but more of a liquid approach. What you feel in the air is a big influence of water, of its movement, new all the time. Borromini also changes when observed from different angles. Curved lines, nature and movement: My world is an ‘oblique fashion’ where everyone can express themselves.”

The eclectic New Yorker with an architecture degree from Columbia and a design degree from Princeton goes further, he connects worlds far away from each other. Lady Gaga and the Baroque, for example. Just as he did with Aldo Rossi and Italo Calvino: At 23 years old, Arnell contacted the major architect and convinced Rossi to let him edit one of his monographs, comparing his buildings to the texts of the major writer. This was the starting point of his communications career. “To combine images and concepts drives my thinking. You just need to find a place to discover, and Italy has an infinite heritage. Looking at pieces from all over the world and from all ages, reducing them to a unique shape, what remains is their aesthetic synthesis which is the essence of the product.”

This is true for the Con Edison company logo, printed on trucks and on New York manhole covers, and for Arnell’s work for Bank of America, Reebok, Electrolux and Pfizer. “The reality is that I just listen to who I have in front of me, I try to understand what they need.” Or as he did for Donna Karan, at the beginning a company with a startup budget but the will to become the emblem of the New York woman. More than just designing stores and thinking about strategy, Arnell literally makes a campaign. He grabs a camera and photographs skyscrapers instead of clothes and models; his black-and-white blowups combined with the initials “DKNY” immediately made Donna Karan into a brand. Then the Samsung microwave, which he shot tucked under a model’s arm as if it were a trendy bag. Following that, projects for Valentino, Banana Republic, Tommy Hilfiger and Ray-Ban, then Aquarius in Singapore and the Atlantic Yards Arena in Brooklyn with his friend Frank Gehry. Then Gwyneth Paltrow’s website, GOOP, and finally, the electric car for Chrysler named Peapod that starts up using an iPhone and Apple support, an idea put aside at the moment because of the agreement between the American car company and Fiat. “I raise a mirror: if company, product and consumer reflect, the idea works.” His mirror exports European culture to the United States and filters the essence of the Japanese 360°, like the view from the 36th floor of his office at 7 World Trade Center, already recognized as one of the most beautiful in the world.

A manifesto of his own being – Anglo-Russian from his mother combined with the Spain of his Sephardic Jewish grandfather – more than his own thinking: “You need to know everything about the production process; the most efficient form is a unique vision. To Michelangelo, discovering and knowing how to transport marble was just as important, now people jam on their specific. I say: Are you talented? If so, use your talent. Use it with bravery, as if you are directing an orchestra.”

He directs images, a train conductor handling thousands of exchanges and directing the right train onto the right track. Telling fairy tales, he speaks about the wonderful plastic train models he owns at home, about his photographic library, his collections of manga toys and antique art toys, about his correspondence with Federico Fellini, a dozen letters that started when he was 17 years old, and about the archive of part of his life.

To give an idea, for the past 14 years Peter has kept the everyday objects in a room in weekly blocks. During the last ten years he has modified this aspect, dividing it in half: he lost 70 kilos of weight. Transforming as a communications act his diet (key word: diet success story Arnell) and creating a business out of it with the G.O.A.T. line of snacks featuring Muhammad Ali’s testimonial. More pragmatic or a dandy? “I only have two mirrors in my house,” he specifies, while the eye falls on his cufflinks, Hermes ’60s style. “Actually, between ’67 and ’69 concentrates everything I like.” What would he like to do instead, projecting himself ahead as if he were 80 years old? “I would like to teach, probably in Asia, and curate a museum, probably in Europe.” In the meantime, devoured by the anxiety of knowing, he only sleeps two hours per night. And during the remaining 22? “I stop to look, I really care about it. I could already tell you thousands of things about this room I observed while we were talking.”