ART AND SOUL: There are lots of canvases for creative expression: French accessories and designer Géraldine Guyot and her artist friend Ben Arpéa each used linen in a summer collaboration for her brand Destree.

Guyot faithfully reproduced the checkered motifs, potted flowers and sun-baked colours from Arpéa’s paintings, applying them to column dresses with circular cutouts ringing the waist, and her signature puff-sleeved jackets and band-collared shirts.

“Destree and my work go thoroughly together,” Arpéa remarked at a cocktail party Thursday night on the Galerie Camille Pouyfaucon, where the artist hung several recent large linen canvases, and Guyot displayed her 10-item collection, dropping next week on Destree’s e-store and in its Paris boutique.

It’s plain that the artist and the French entrepreneur, who has parlayed her passion for contemporary and contemporary art into unique hats, handbags, jewelry and apparel, share an affection for geometric shapes, daring color and designs with a sunny, homespun character.

“We thought that for a summer collection his patterns would look amazing,” Guyot enthused.

For the event, Arpéa fashioned quirky clothing racks vaguely harking back to Memphis design, but wonkier and rough-hewn, washed over with an oil paint and sand mixture.

Guyot also enlisted a 3rd daring creative, Spanish caterer Gabriela Palatchi, higher referred to as Gabfoods, to decorate a buffet table that appeared to bring Arpea’s aesthetic to life in cakes and other sweet treats.

Arpéa worked in hospitality and have become a full-time artist throughout the coronavirus pandemic. He’s now represented by 4 galleries, with Pouyfaucon describing his work as questioning “the century-old motifs and canons of classical landscape and still life, reinterpreted through a up to date artistic language.”

Meanwhile, Guyot is looking for real estate to open Destree’s next freestanding store, either Stateside or in Asia.

One 12 months ago the Paris-based accessories firm she cofounded with Laetitia Lumbroso welcomed a bunch of high-profile investors, all female, including such bold-faced names as Beyoncé, Rihanna, Reese Witherspoon, Gisele Bündchen and Gabriela Hearst, together with enterprise capital firm Sequoia Capital China, on the behest of Angelica Cheung.

Handbags — including hero styles just like the Albert — rank as Destree’s biggest product category, and a few have been done up in Arpéa’s colours as a part of the summer capsule.