The Luxury Channel explores why Milan is considered a mecca of creativity and design, in celebration of the 50th Salone Internazionale del Mobile in 2011
EVENTS
Milan: Salone Internazionale del Mobile 2011
This is the featured image caption
Credit: This is the featured image credit
Over the last decade, collaborations between luxury brands and contemporary artists have gone beyond mere artistic partnerships towards a new kind of luxury branding.
PARIS – Art and fashion have always developed side by side, for fashion, like art, often gives visual expression to the cultural zeitgeist. During the 1920s, Salvador Dalí created dresses for Coco Chanel and Elsa Schiapparelli. In the 1930s, Ferragamo’s shoes commissioned designs for advertisements from Futurist painter Lucio Venna, while Gianni Versace commissioned works from artists such as Alighiero Boetti and Roy Lichtenstein for the launch of his collections. Yves Saint Laurent’s vast art collection, recently auctioned at Christie’s in Paris, testified to his great love of art and revealed the influence of a variety of artists on his own designs.
In the 1980s, relationships between luxury brands and artists were advanced when Alain Dominique Perrin created the Fondation Cartier. In the Fondation Cartier pour l’Art Contemporain, a book marking the foundation’s 20th anniversary, Perrin says he makes “a connection between all the different sorts of arts, and luxury goods are a kind of art. Luxury goods are handicrafts of art, applied art.”
The Fondation Cartier pour l’Art Contemparain building in Paris
The Luxury Channel explores why Milan is considered a mecca of creativity and design, in celebration of the 50th Salone Internazionale del Mobile in 2011
Milan has long been regarded as one of the international capitals of industrial and modern design, as well as one of the world’s most influential cities in fashion. The host of FieraMilano, Salone del Mobile and Milan Fashion Week, and the home of Teatro alla Scala and the iconic Milan Cathedral, the Milan’s steeped history in design makes it one of the most important hubs of creativity in the world.
Despite its common label as a furniture fair, Salone Internazionale del Mobile has become much more: most importantly, it has become a key event in the luxury calendar where furniture manufacturers and luxury brands look to showcase their creativity and innovation, and where the world’s most influential designers, journalists and professionals converge to discuss and analyse the latest technologies, materials and trends.
Arik Lévy Tourbillon for Baccarat’s Highlights Collection
The event has therefore become a strategic priority for design-driven brands like champagne house, Veuve Clicquot. Not only has the brand commissioned Humberto & Fernando Campanas to create a contemporary gloriette, a reinterpretation of a 19th-century folly and gazebo, but they have also developed a smartphone application to assist visitors navigating the fair, the Yellow Map city guide to everything cool in Milan and a host of exhibitions and events to represent the commitment of Veuve Clicquot to design creation.
Baccarat takes the occasion similarly seriously, using this years fair to launch the Highlights collection, in collaboration with designers Michele De Lucchi, Yann Kersalé, Arik Levy, Alain Moatti & Henri Rivière and Philippe Starck to name just a few. The brand commissioned these designers to reinterpret its classic chandeliers, to complete free-ranging design variations, incorporating materials as diverse as crystal, denim, washi paper, ceramic, carbon fibre and LED lighting.
Creative Strategist, Digital
Sophie Doran is currently Senior Creative Strategist, Digital at Karla Otto. Prior to this role, she was the Paris-based editor-in-chief of Luxury Society. Prior to joining Luxury Society, Sophie completed her MBA in Melbourne, Australia, with a focus on luxury brand dynamics and leadership, whilst simultaneously working in management roles for several luxury retailers.
