{"id":3021,"date":"2018-05-29T18:12:43","date_gmt":"2018-05-29T16:12:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.dapperdanmagazine.com\/?p=3021"},"modified":"2025-10-23T15:01:43","modified_gmt":"2025-10-23T13:01:43","slug":"maxime-buchi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dapperdanmagazine.com\/blog\/3021\/maxime-buchi\/","title":{"rendered":"Maxime B\u00fcchi"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"
Photography by Vassilis Karidis<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

To say Maxime B\u00fcchi has been busy is an understatement. Father of three, tattoo artist and founder of Sang Bleu Studio, publisher of the iconic now defunct Sang Bleu magazine and TTTISM magazine, he has also designed fonts for Swiss Typefaces, watches for Hublot and clothes for Sang Bleu Studio. We had a chat in his studio in Dalston to the soundtrack of a continuous buzzing of tattoo needles.<\/p>\n

VASSILIS KARIDIS : Coming to the interview I was thinking that, of all the stuff you have done\u2014from the typefaces, to tattooing, to designing magazines\u2014for me, the most intimidating is taking care of the baby twins.<\/p>\n

MAXIME B\u00dcCHI: It\u2019s the most intimidating for me as well. It\u2019s as crazy as you think it is. We had never\u2014neither me nor my wife\u2014experienced something as challenging but it\u2019s fine. In Switzerland, where I\u2019m from, military service is mandatory; I didn\u2019t do it but most people do. A friend of mine once told me that the one thing he learned from the military is that whenever you think that you\u2019ve gone as far as you could, you can still go at least once as far again. And you know I feel that with the kids. I\u2019m like, \u201cWow! I didn\u2019t know I could sleep so little!\u201d But I can still wake up every day and go to work and be functional and yes, here we are!<\/p>\n

VK: What happens when you\u2019re away for work?<\/p>\n

MB: Well, I\u2019ll be honest with you, it\u2019s a problem because I have had to travel on long trips. We don\u2019t have family around, we spend all our money on childcare, nannies and stuff, to the point where we\u2019re like, \u201cOkay, what do we do now?\u201d So, over the summer we\u2019re going to move to California where my wife is from. We need people to help us, we need help from our friends and family, because, right now, it\u2019s a vicious circle: the more I work, the more we need help and the more we spend on childcare the more money I need to make; It\u2019s really tricky and we need to figure it out. It was fine with one kid but now it\u2019s compromising our lifestyle\u2026<\/p>\n

VK: So, you\u2019re going open Sang Bleu LA?<\/p>\n

MB: Yes, we\u2019re going to keep London open but we\u2019re going to open something there as well.<\/p>\n

VK: You were raised in Switzerland and at some point, you moved to Paris?<\/p>\n

MB: I lived in Paris for about ten months.<\/p>\n

VK: Working as a designer?<\/p>\n

MB: Yes, as a graphic designer. Then I moved to London for a year, then back to Switzerland for two years, then back to London.<\/p>\n

VK: That\u2019s when you started Sang Bleu, the magazine. That was almost ten years ago?<\/p>\n

MB: Yes, ten years ago, maybe. I think I probably started working on it a bit more than that, but I think the first issue came out ten years ago.<\/p>\n

VK: You didn\u2019t tattoo back then?<\/p>\n

MB: No, no.<\/p>\n

VK: At what point did you decide to start tattooing?<\/p>\n

MB: I always liked tattoos. I always thought they were fascinating but I didn\u2019t picture myself as a tattooist\u2014I never even considered it. One day, in my early twenties, the guy who was tattooing me [Filip Leu], someone I had a lot of admiration for, offered to take me on as an apprentice, out of the blue, during a conversation. This switched something in my head and made me think, \u201cYes, of course\u201d. I told the tattooist, \u201cYou know, I\u2019m still studying\u201d; I would have probably dropped out of school if he\u2019d told me, \u201cNo, the offer is now\u201d but he didn\u2019t, he said, \u201cNo, finish your studies, get back to me when you\u2019re done.\u201d And that\u2019s what I did. I graduated, I took a couple of years doing my thing, I went to Zurich and then Paris and then London and one day I called him up and I was like, \u201cI\u2019m coming back to Switzerland if the offer still stands? What do you say?\u201d And he said, \u201cYes, come down and we\u2019ll do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

VK: After your apprenticeship, you returned to London to open Sang Bleu Studio?<\/p>\n

MB: After my apprenticeship, I came back to London where I was tattooing independently for three or four years before I opened the studio.<\/p>\n

VK: I remember there was a lot of travelling then, to tattoo conventions?<\/p>\n

MB: Yes, even though I was already in my early thirties, you need to pay your dues to the tattoo world if you want to open a shop. You can\u2019t just open a shop like that.<\/p>\n

VK: When did you stop publishing Sang Bleu?<\/p>\n

MB: The magazine stopped after issue six which was before the studio opened. After that I just didn\u2019t feel the need for it anymore, I didn\u2019t have the drive to do something that would not be financially profitable or at least self-sufficient; I had better stuff to do and I didn\u2019t have the energy or the drive to try and make it profitable. I was tattooing full time and loving it. But I think it was also a different time for the publishing industry in general; I could not see any interest in doing a print magazine; I didn\u2019t have any interest for that. I wanted to focus on digital media and it\u2019s only recently that I could see again what print media should be like.<\/p>\n

VK: Hence TTTISM?<\/p>\n

MB: Exactly.<\/p>\n

VK: I read somewhere that you\u2019re thinking of publishing a seventh issue of Sang Bleu?<\/p>\n

MB: You know I did for a while, but I don\u2019t think so. Sang Bleu has grown to be something else. Sang Bleu as a magazine was a manifesto, it was a vision of something that was happening ten years ago, that was both what I was experiencing as a person but also something that the world was going through. The progressive cross-weaving of cultural fields from fashion and fine arts and design, graphic design, the techniques, the culture, the individuals, all those things progressively being more and more fluid and more and more dynamically going from one to the other. But what happened then is I took each element that constituted Sang Bleu magazine and gave it its own life: from tattooing, to clothing, to design. I needed Sang Bleu ten or 12 years ago, to make sense of it all, but then it was done as a magazine. It was too experimental. I have no need now to bring it back to life, to make it a business. I prefer to leave the magazine as a mystical thing. Now I\u2019m at a new stage: I went from a 20-year-old who needed to understand what I wanted to do in life to being an almost 40-year-old who has a family and needs to take all those things I\u2019ve been doing for 13 years and make a living out of it. For me, TTTISM is an evolution of Sang Blue; Swiss Typefaces is another. Even Novembre Magazine, I\u2019m not involved in it anymore but\u2013<\/p>\n

VK: I was going to ask about Novembre\u2014so you aren\u2019t actively involved these days?<\/p>\n

MB: No, I completely handed it over a while ago, maybe six years ago, but for me even when I see what Novembre is today\u2014because it\u2019s still pretty true to its original definition\u2014I\u2019m, \u201cYes, that\u2019s it\u201c. It\u2019s very close to what\u2014in terms of vision, aesthetically and artistically\u2014I would have liked it to become if I were still involved.<\/p>\n

To me this is still an extension of what Sang Blue was and to be honest, when I see dozens, maybe hundreds of tattoo artists today, tattoo media, tattoo studios, even magazines that have been influenced by Sang Blue\u2014this is all Sang Blue, this is the evolution. I don\u2019t need to go back to this. I\u2019m much more interested to understand now how all those things can still exist and be both philosophically coherent and sincere and true to what I was trying to do but can also exist in real life\u2014not just be a little fantasy hobby thing. Because, at the end of the day, cool, but anyone can save up or borrow some money and go print a magazine; it doesn\u2019t mean that it\u2019s relevant, it just means that you found the money to print it. For me the first reality check was to see that what I put together in my little bedroom, people actually vibed with; but now the reality check\u2014also corresponding to the life stage that I\u2019m at\u2014is to make a living off it. I have a family to feed and I don\u2019t need to make more statements about who I am. I\u2019ve done it, I\u2019m happy, I\u2019m perfectly fulfilled with narcissistic validation. For me, now, all that counts is feeding my family, myself, all the people who work around me; I don\u2019t need recognition.<\/p>\n

VK: How do you time-manage? How do you juggle family, tattoos, magazines, travelling for work\u2026<\/p>\n

MB: There are two things. I\u2019m an expert at optimising things and my time, especially. At school, I could never learn things if I didn\u2019t understand how they worked in the bigger picture. So, for example, if I learnt something in maths, I needed to understand how it worked with the physics classes and then how that would be coherent with biology. Then I was, \u201cOkay, so how is this coherent with what I\u2019m learning in the philosophy class or psychology or history?\u201d I cannot retain\u2014I have no interest in getting\u2014information if it doesn\u2019t help me understand the world, if it doesn\u2019t improve my\u2014in German there\u2019s a term Weltanschauung\u2014the vision of the world. And you know that\u2019s something that made it difficult for me to study at times, because you go to school and it\u2019s all \u201cmaths, maths, maths\u201d and then there\u2019s no effort to make these things coherent and so a lot of things are never retained.<\/p>\n

But the things that are retained, they make so much sense to me and I can use them really well. And so, now that I\u2019m not at school anymore but I\u2019m in the real world, I only do something if it makes sense in a general bigger picture. I see all the things I do as just elements of one big thing. I never do anything that\u2019s a waste of time in that respect. When I\u2019m tattooing, I will immediately wonder how it relates to design, how it relates to the business, how it relates to the people around me, how it relates to my family. When I do one thing, it\u2019s always useful on every level\u2014it\u2019s very much like cooking. At the end of the day, I have fairly normal days, it\u2019s just that there\u2019s no losses almost; losses make me really, really anxious. Most people have a notion that there\u2019s work and there\u2019s not-work; I don\u2019t have this notion. If I go somewhere with my family and I\u2019m on \u201cholidays\u201d, I might be taking photos of my family in a beautiful place but then I might see something and you know what, it would be a great photo for the background on a website or this could be inspiration for a tattoo, this could be something for\u2026 I\u2019ll just take the photo, it\u2019s there, it exists, I\u2019ll use it later, you know what I mean?<\/p>\n

The other thing, something really pragmatic as well: I\u2019m quite organised. I\u2019m not rigidly organised but I\u2019m quite organised for the number of things I do. I\u2019m also a geek, so I love things\u2014I like to make things work, I love tools from physical tools to digital tools. I like the process of creating. I will always learn new things to be able to do things myself, so I\u2019m not relying on a lot of other people, which is good and bad because sometimes you need to get over the, \u201cNo, I\u2019ll do it myself\u201d and that\u2019s very hard as well.<\/p>\n

VK: Now that you\u2019re a father, are you drawn back to your origins? Would you consider moving back to Switzerland at some point?<\/p>\n

MB: I don\u2019t think that Central and Northern Europeans have this thing of returning to their roots so much, they\u2019re more: Go. It depends, it depends. It\u2019s a very good question because the real honest truth of it is that I think I would like my kids to grow up in Switzerland, because that\u2019s what\u2019s familiar; I cannot picture them growing up in America. I\u2019m sure it would be fine if we end up doing it, but the only thing I can picture easily and feel comfortable with, is imagining them growing up in Switzerland. It\u2019s quite a possibility as well that we might be in the US for a couple of years and then settle down completely in Switzerland. So, yes, the answer is yes, absolutely, especially now. When I was a kid, the West was a friendly place\u2013<\/p>\n

VK: It\u2019s not so anymore.<\/p>\n

MB: It\u2019s not anymore. For me, when you have children, safety\u2014both in a certain moment but also over time\u2014becomes\u2013<\/p>\n

VK: It becomes essential.<\/p>\n

MB: Yes. And the safest place I can think of is Switzerland, so if I have that option, anything else is irrelevant automatically<\/p>\n

\"Photography <\/a>
Photography by Vassilis Karidis <\/div> <\/div>
\"Photography <\/a>
Photography by Vassilis Karidis <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>
\"Photography <\/a>
Photography by Vassilis Karidis <\/div> <\/div>
\"Photography <\/a>
Photography by Vassilis Karidis <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>\n

Originally published in Dapper Dan magazine, issue 17, March 2018. Interview by Vassilis Karidis.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To say Maxime B\u00fcchi has been busy is an understatement. Father of three, tattoo artist and founder of Sang Bleu Studio, publisher of the iconic now defunct Sang Bleu magazine and TTTISM magazine, he has also designed fonts for Swiss Typefaces, watches for Hublot and clothes for Sang Bleu Studio. We had a chat in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[38,57],"class_list":["post-3021","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-issue-17","tag-interviews","tag-studio-visits"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8QZgE-MJ","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dapperdanmagazine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3021","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dapperdanmagazine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dapperdanmagazine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dapperdanmagazine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dapperdanmagazine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3021"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.dapperdanmagazine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3021\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3037,"href":"https:\/\/www.dapperdanmagazine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3021\/revisions\/3037"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dapperdanmagazine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dapperdanmagazine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dapperdanmagazine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}