EXCERPTS FROM INTERVIEW WITH PIE SUTITHON
Creative Director, Photographer, Co-Founder of RUBBERTME JOURNAL & Head Creative at HOMEWORK CAFE
Pie Sutithon’s world has always revolved around taste—first in the literal sense, then in the visual one. Raised in Bangkok, she spent her early years at the all girls Mater Dei School before moving to Melbourne, where an elective decision between food technology and design marked a subtle but pivotal turn. “I’ve always loved cooking,” she says, “but I wanted to keep it as a hobby.” Design became the thing she ultimately decided to pursure. But even now, her love of food seeps into everything she touches.
Pie’s creativity had long been shaped by proximity: parents who own the infamous Homework Cafe that sits at the intersection of Sukhumbit 31, a brother who works in fashion, an uncle in advertising, internships at Greyhound while still in high school. “I always knew I didn’t want to do something mainstream. I liked the unconventional.” That subtle resistance to mass culture would become a hallmark of her later work, most notably in Rubbertime Journal, a collaborative publication co-founded with her friend and classmate Deborah Wangsaputri.
“I didn’t know if I actually wanted to make the clothes, I moreso enjoyed the process after. I enjoyed promoting it and making images out of it and speaking for the designer.,” she says. “Some of my friends were brilliant designers, but they didn’t know how to communicate it, I realised that’s where I could come in.”
Thai heritage was never a significant factor in Pie’s early work until she started working with Deborah on Rubbertime Journal. Pie and Deborah first worked together on the LVMH project in second year. Since then, the long conversations began circulating about doing a collaborative final project stemming from their common experience of being South-East Asian, Pie being from Thailand and Deborah from Indonesia.
The name Rubbertime originates from an Indonesian expression, used to describe the soft elasticity of time in the region where arriving half an hour late to brunch is not only acceptable, but expected. “It has a negative connotation,” Pie explains, “we wanted to use it to bring attention to taking things slowly. So this came from our background in a way.”
That became the ethos of the journal, a quiet and artful resistance to urgency, and a cultural celebration of slowing down.
Rather than rely on traditional aesthetics, the pair were more interested in passing on their Thai and Indonesian experiences through their eyes.
“We didn’t want to do something that was Thai just for the sake of being Thai. It’s more about how we interpret the humour in our culture, the experience and the things we have in common.”
SEE FULL STORY IN ARTIFACT ISSUE N°1