My personal style signifier is wearing the same thing every day. I have one outfit from Monday to Saturday (except for underwear, of course). A jacket, trousers, sweaters, shirts and a hat. And it all has to match. Then the next week, it’s another look. And on Sundays I wear pyjamas with my green Bottega Veneta bathrobe. When it comes to editorials and photoshoots, however, I prefer to be in disguise – such as for a shoot for Fantastic Man, when I was dressed in sunglasses and a checked cape by Loewe, and as a Parisian man with a moustache and beret.
His Jil Sander x Oliver Peoples sunglasses © Torvioll Jashari
Pfeiffer’s desk – ‘I like the striped pencil; stripes are a recurring motif in my work’ © Torvioll Jashari
The last thing I bought and loved was rather boring. Some sunglasses? Underwear? A book? When I’m at home I don’t really go shopping, only for food. I love to shop when I’m in big cities. That’s more exciting for me. Now everything is more difficult for me because of issues with my back, which started two years ago. In March I turned 80. They say it’s a turning point. Is it? I don’t know.
The place that means a lot to me is the mountains in Switzerland: the Bernese Alps and the Engadin Valley. I used to go with a friend and we would walk for seven or 10 hours a day. I loved hiking. Even when I was [living] in London and had a studio in Whitechapel, I immediately bought a hiking book and went to Seven Sisters on the coast. My days of that are done, but I still go to places that are beautiful to look at, just not to walk. I’m kind of a peasant boy. I grew up in a little hidden village in the north of Switzerland. We had nothing, no TV. You were really in nature, and you had to build your own little world. It’s good to grow up like that as a child.
