In Residence with
Patrick Zaczkiewicz
We speak with the founder and creative director of COAT. Magazine.
Patrick, you've built Coat Magazine and a styling career from Sydney, moving between studios, sets, and the pages of magazines you've long admired. When you look back at the version of yourself who started out, and the life you've built since, what surprises you most about the journey?
It’s crazy to reminisce at where I started honestly, I’ve loved magazines from a young age, I was always surrounded by clothes and accessories in my mother’s wardrobe, I would style my mum in outfits before we left the house to go to the shops, something she always let me do and would wear the look exactly as I styled, I guess she saw my talent before I even knew what styling was.
So, to go from buying magazines in high school to now shooting editorials across those pages, is somewhat surreal, when I first started out, I interned at a magazine for about a year and a half and was surrounded by great storytellers and stylists, who to this day helped inspire what COAT. is, being a narrative-based magazine.
Your work has a distinct quality of stillness meeting energy - the patience of considered editorial, paired with the warmth and momentum you bring to a set. Where does that instinct come from, and has it shifted over time?
I think ‘considered editorial’ is definitely a great way to put it, I really love building a creative and then bringing a team together that I absolutely trust with everything, to pull it all together. It really is instinctual, I base every decision I make off instinct.
I think I’ve always had it to be honest, when I’m on set at the monitor, the images come through one by one and my body always has a visceral reaction when an amazing image comes up on screen, it’s quite funny actually, people always know if I love or hate something, if I’m silent, then that means something isn’t working for me but if you hear me moan, grunt, exhale with some kind of noise, you know I’m loving it, that sounds dirty but it’s my body reacting with excitement that we’re getting exactly what we want out of the images!
Your eye as a stylist - for texture, for the way a piece falls or holds the body - feels deeply attuned. Does that same sensibility carry through into the way you think about the spaces you live in?
I really love playing with colour and texture as a stylist and that definitely carries through to my living spaces, everything is really considered and styled, in our space we have a lot of colour clash, I think there is such an art to this and I personally feel like we’ve done a great job of it.
My partner always laughs when I say something is a particular colour and he looks at me in shock, I may see it as red and everyone else sees it as brown or pink or orange, he jokes that I may be colour blind but personally I think I have a heightened sense of colour and I can pick up on the slight hues rather than what everyone else initially sees, I think that’s why our space and furniture choices can be unexpected, it’s like when I style clothing, the unexpected excites me.
I of course love print with all my heart, so down the line, a printed version of COAT. is what I’m aiming for. I think the nice thing about having it digitally is that there is no schedule or deadline technically, which is where the slower pace comes into play, I try to keep a steady rhythm in producing stories but I never want to feel rushed, which translates to my own life also.
On a day off, I love to sit at the dining table, coffee in hand, flicking through the countless amounts of new magazines I have acquired, it’s truly the practice that inspires me to create. Work and set life is very fast paced, which I love, I love being busy but when I'm home, I like to slow down.
The home you share with your partner is also one of your creative spaces. What does it look like, and what does it give you that a studio can't?
I love that I can have my office in my home. I think every part of my home and life inspires me in my work. I build editorials, especially from experiences or feelings. I have magazines / books / art that impact me greatly so it’s great to be able to work from a space that inspires me.
I’m a Libra, so I enjoy being surrounded by beautiful things. I love the house to be filled with flowers/branches, candles, ceramics, imagery and of course my fiancé is very nice to look at.
A home reveals itself in the things people choose to keep. What are the objects in yours that carry the most meaning - the ones you'd never part with?
Oh this is easy, my magazines and books, I can never part with these, I have been collecting these since I was 16/17! The amount of stacks that I have at my parent’s home is probably triple what I have with me in my space. It grows and grows and will continue to!
It’s very special for me to pick up an older issue of a magazine that I have admired to now being able to contribute to the same magazine all these years later, very surreal to have my name printed within the pages.
You’re shaping COAT. as you go. What do you hope readers feel when they sit with an issue, and what do you want to carry forward into whatever the next chapter looks like?
COAT. is ever changing, I never really know what I'll do next, ideas form on the daily, all I know is that I want it to be bigger and better than the last story I produced!
I think as always I want my readers to feel an emotion to the imagery I create, it’s all about visual storytelling, characters, not just shooting one look after the other with no context or through line, I want to be excited and I hope that’s what the readers get from a COAT. story, it’s always going to be different from the last and that’s what I want to carry forward with me moving forward, make every move and moment exciting, different and new. Fashion imagery is meant to make you feel something, let’s bring back more of it!