Kho’s own experience of parenthood also helped to shape the design. “As a father, there were many practical features I was keen to incorporate, such as the convertible seat, carrycot pod and buggy basket that doubles as a changing bag,” he says. For me, design is all about making life simpler and more stylish and hopefully that’s what my pushchair designs do.”
Before Mima, Kho went wherever work took him. Initially, this was to Milan, in northern Italy, where he was offered six months’ work experience at an English design consultancy while studying industrial design at the prestigious Delft University of Technology back in Holland. “The boss asked whether I’d like to stay on, and I did, with a view to returning to
my studies a few years later,” Davy says. “But once I got a taste for working on real projects, I realised I could learn so much more being out in the big, wide world than I ever could at university, so I didn’t go back. It’s a decision I’ve never regretted.” So a six-month sojourn ended up being
six years, with Kho becoming fluent in both Italian and Spanish, thanks to a romance with a fashion student from Madrid, Yolanda, who he later married.
Kho’s time in Milan also brought
him considerable accolades, not least of which was for his redesign of the public payphone, turning an orange monstrosity into an ergonomic, slick design, far more in tune with the stylish Italian aesthetic.
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