La Dolce Vita

Keith Haring’s drawing

The club’s logo is a drawing by Keith Haring. The rapper Carlos Leal, who played his first gigs there with Sens Unik, described the commission in 2022: “Pierre Keller organises Keith Haring’s visit to Lausanne. That is where he created the logo of the legendary club in exchange for… twelve bottles of wine — Mouton Rothschild, mind you.”

Leal places the scene in 1985; the photograph showing the artist in the club’s foyer is dated 2 October 1987. The drawing is now on show at the Musée historique de Lausanne.

What the place stood for, he puts like this: “La Dolce, legendary, revolutionary and the opposite of well-meaning Swiss cosiness. Punks, rockers, b-boys, party-goers — Lausanne on the move, the Lôzanne family. I saw the best concerts there, I lived the wildest nights there.”