The special presentations, the installations, the tours in the ateliers, the shop windows, the events dedicated by the fashion brands to the Milano Design Week 2021, just a few days before the beginning of the fashion shows

Text by: Domenico Costantini

With the passing of time, the relationship between Design and Fashion becomes more and more intrinsic; two disciplines that belong to the world of design have been able to merge in an authentic and spontaneous way demonstrating great capacity for innovation, moving away from each other’s “comfort zone” have managed to move beyond the themes of belonging by creating a consolidated common language. Two strategic sectors and ‘beating hearts’ economy in Lombardy. Never could there have been a more propitious place to meet and converse, as the Salone del Mobile, renamed Supersalone, returns to Milan. From the central streets of the Brera Design District and the Quadrilateral, to the areas of Tortona, Isola, Porta Venezia and Lambrate.

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Hermès  

The Maison returns to the spaces of La Pelota, in Via Palermo 10, to present the new home collections 2021/2022. Installations resembling mud houses in the Rajasthan desert decorated with extraordinary graphic perspectives. Objects conceived as encounters with matter. At a time when everything seems to have become abstract and distant, the new home collections explore the language of materiality, bringing us back to reality and restoring a sense of touch.  Pieces to feel that play with raw, natural materials and combine inimitable savoir-faire. Manuel Rocha has created with Antonio Fernandez Ros and Rogelio Sosa the soundtrack that accompanies the presentation of the Hermès collections that you can listen to here.

Hermès Milano Design Week

Dior

The French fashion house Dior invited seventeen artists to reinterpret one of its iconic emblems: the medallion chair. A symbol of the Louis XVI style that Christian Dior has chosen since the foundation of his Maison, to seat his guests during his fashion shows. Among the names involved in the project – on display until September 10 at Palazzo Citterio in Milan – Sam Baron, Nacho Carbonell, Pierre Charpin, Dimorestudio, Khaled El Mays, Martino Gamper, Pierre Yovanovitch, and many others, all contemporary artists who have exhibited in prestigious museums, including the MoMA in New York, the MAD in Paris or, again, the V&A in London, who have, each with their own vision and artistic and cultural sensitivity, reinterpreted a classic Dior.

DIOR AT THE SALONE DEL MOBILE MA YANSONG

Louis Vuitton 

The brand did not participate in the 2021 edition, but took the opportunity to launch pre-orders for the latest design pieces from its ever-expanding Objets Nomades collection.
Marcel Wanders has returned to collaborate with the luxury brand for the Petal Chair, which boasts nine petal-shaped cushions upholstered in ivory leather that echo the design of the brand’s monogram, while Fernando and Humberto Campana have developed a limited edition artistic shield available in 30 pieces globally.

Called Aguacate and mimicking the internal structure of the avocado, the shield is composed of nine circular panels, each featuring leather stripes in bold, saturated tones. The design duo also presented the Merengue ottoman, reminiscent of a meringue pastry and available in four colour variations.

Louis Vuitton’s “Objets Nomades” Aguacate shield designed by Fernando and Humberto Campana

Rick Owens Over the years, Rick Owens has developed a range of signature materials, shapes and visual archetypes and influenced an entire generation of sculptural artists and designers. His Brutalist furniture varies in finishes and textures; it can be black, gold or nitrate, but all combine a stark modernist look with a contemporary minimalist edge. The exhibition at Galerie Philia, in Milan’s Cb32 space on Via Cesare Balboè focuses on the design works of Rick Owens aesthetically challenged by contemporary Italian sculptural design artists. This event weaves a dialogue between a curated selection of emerging Italian designers and the artworks of Rick Owens.

RICK OWENS – DIALOG WITH EMERGING ITALIAN DESIGNERS

Off-White™ c/o Ginori 1735

The US brand presents a new home limited collaboration with the prestigious porcelain brand during the Supersalone, this is the first drop of a long partnership planned for 2022. The traditional form of Ginori 1735’s Antico Doccia collection meets the avant-garde aesthetic of Off-White™ for a complete set of dinner plates, serving plates, a teapot and a set of black and white tea plates.

Off-White™ c/o Ginori 1735

 Aspesi

Aspesi presents The Library of Ever, a project by Gianluigi Ricuperati, with Hans Ulrich Obrist and set design by Patricia Urquiola and Monica Taverniti. An installation in the store at Via San Pietro all’Orto 24, where one can not only admire a special editorial architecture displayed in the window with Hans Ulrich Obrist’s books, but also interact with some of the volumes, sitting in a transparent reading room (created by Glas Italia) to read or leaf through them.

ASPESI FUORISALONE

Gucci

On the occasion of Milan Design Week 2021, Alessandro Michele, Gucci’s creative director, has created the Gucci Cartoleria at Via Manzoni 19, both as a traditional store and as a fairy-tale hideaway: each corner conceals a spell to be discovered that transforms it into a place to be explored and investigated. Those who enter will come across flying notebooks, chess sets that play themselves, bewitched items, endless bookcases, micro-apartments for mice furnished by Gucci.

Gucci Cartoleria

At the least but not the last presented on the occasion of the design week, the project, promoted by the Municipality of Milan and Milanosport, is realized is in collaboration with Desigual and Toiletpaper an intense and surreal mural work signed by Maurizio Cattelan and the photographer Pierpaolo Ferrari entitled: Be Water. A photograph created for the magazine becomes a giant mural – 246 square meters of painted surface, with a base of about 30 m and a maximum height of over 10 m – that dominates the vast interior space of the Piscina Cozzi swimming pool in Viale Tunisia, and recalling the underwater world mixes with the solemn architectural element, highlighting the original function of illuminating the space by combining functionality and ornamentation.

Maurizio Cattelan Piscina Cozzi swimming pool in Viale Tunisia in collaboration with Desigual and Toiletpaper