About the Studio

Leeloo + Zohan is a West Village studio where photography meets silk and paper. It is named for two cats who run the place with the confidence of small celebrities. Every scarf and print starts from an original image or a rediscovered postcard or a museum archive. Archival botanicals. Library of Congress engravings. Vintage New York postcards from the 1900s through the 1940s. A scarf carries a story. A print carries a place.

Paul Morris grew up in New Jersey farm country⁠—cows, not runways. His great-⁠grandfather photographed for G. W. Pach in that same state from 1898; his grandfather shot the 1942 Chesterfield portraits U. S. Camera called America’s most effective service advertising; Paul learned on his father’s 1959 Nikon F. He shoots a 2015 Sony A7R II now. Fourth generation, same instinct. Then senior designer at George. The magazine John F. Kennedy Jr. founded⁠—promotion designer at The New Yorker, design director at Rolling Stone, The Advocate, and Departures; freelance art director for Vogue, Allure, and InStyle; later creative director of Maui Nō Ka ʻOi Magazine. Parsons School of Design, BFA, 1997. The scarves began as a side conversation and became the main thing. More about Paul.

Every piece begins as an original photograph or a found image. Often a 1910 postcard from a New York corner. Sometimes an archival botanical unseen for a century. It is layered and composed and scaled to 100% silk habotai in three square formats: 26, 36 and 50 inches. Rolled baby hem. Made to order in editions of 100. The argument is the same as for a good book or a small gallery. You live with it. A scarf worn on the A train in February is not the same object as a scarf folded in a drawer. It goes places. It collects a life.