Fashion Brands Celebrate Milan Design Week with Creative Projects

Red Valentino further developed its collaboration with architect and interior designer India Mahdavi with a limited-edition t-shirt in pale pink featuring a sketched blossoming flower in contrasting colors, called “T-Bloom.” Available from April 16 at the brand’s Milan store as well as online, the item reinterprets the retail concept Mahdavi created for the brand in 2016. “A white t-shirt is like a blank canvas – it’s easy to wear, everyday and everywhere – I wanted to be a bridge between fashion and design,” Mahdavi explained.

Fashion Brands Celebrate Milan Design Week with Creative Projects

Brunello Cucinelli presented its newest lifestyle collection at its flagship in Via Montenapoleone. The range focused on creating a bright and comfortable environment through natural, earthy-toned textiles, sparkling touches on snow-white cloths and combinations of steel and wood in furniture. The addition of feathers on accessories, such as pillows, nightgowns and slippers, enriched the essential and cozy collection.

Fashion Brands Celebrate Milan Design Week with Creative Projects

Milanese luxury boutique Milaura hosted the global launch of the first Home collection, developed by Jupe by Jackie founder and creative director Jackie Villevoye. Manufactured in India’s Uttar Pradesh, the collection includes precious blankets and cushions crafted from high-end fabrics, such as linen, cotton, velvet and silk, which are embellished with exquisite graphic and floral embroideries.

Fashion Brands Celebrate Milan Design Week with Creative Projects

René Caovilla organized an exhibition collecting 24 black and white images shot by Gianni Berengo Gardin, one of Italy’s most prominent photographers and reporters. The pictures offer suggestive glimpses of Venice and Milan, two important cities for the Caovilla label.

Fashion Brands Celebrate Milan Design Week with Creative Projects

Pomellato had its share of Salone del Mobile’s activity partnering with Italian designer Lorenza Bozzoli. For the occasion, the jewelry house showcased Bozzoli’s home accessories in its two flagships in central Milan. Among the key pieces, the Couture Mirrors were created exclusively for Pomellato and came in square, round and rectangular shapes, embellished with decorative, long wavy fringes. The same detailing adorned also the Couture Pouf styles made of velvet seats.

Fashion Brands Celebrate Milan Design Week with Creative Projects

Max Mara and eyewear licensee Safilo unveiled a limited-edition collection of sunglasses, dubbed “Lavaprism,” created in partnership with New York-based artist Kerstin Brätsch and art collective United Brothers. Starting from several trips to different volcano sites including the Hawaii and Stromboli, Italy, the artists developed the pair of flat top mask sunglasses, which also introduces a new finishing technique. The eyewear style debuted with an event on April 19 flanked by a video and a performance. The collection is limited to 1,000 pieces, sold at the brand’s flagships worldwide, as well as online.

Fashion Brands Celebrate Milan Design Week with Creative Projects

Paul&Shark teamed up with artist Annarita Serra to present the “Save the sea” project. Throughout the Design Week, the windows at the brand’s Milan store in tony Via Montenapoleone hosted the live performance of the artist creating a dedicated artwork using plastic waste and wood – the latter arranged in the shape of the brand’s shark – collected along the beaches of Sardinia. In keeping with the aim of raising awareness on the pollution of the sea, Paul & Shark also created a special hooded nylon windbreaker made of recycled plastic bottles, which will be available at the brand’s flagships worldwide.

Fashion Brands Celebrate Milan Design Week with Creative Projects

Jimmy Choo partnered with the Galleria Rossana Orlandi design gallery to showcase two installations in its store in central Milan. These included Alexander Lotersztain’s ”QTZ” collection of limited edition seating elements inspired by the geometric forms of Quartz and Damiano Spelta’s “Sharelock” piece, a large mirror sculpture shaped as a magnifying glass and installed in the store’s window display.

Fashion Brands Celebrate Milan Design Week with Creative Projects

During Milan Design Week, Santoni hosted the exclusive preview presentation of a new carpet created by Spanish designer Patricia Urquiola in its Montenapoleone store. Featured in the exterior window display, the “Slinkie” rug stood out for its chromatic effects. “I thought about displaying this in Santoni’s store window as this rug is much aligned with some color research I saw at the store,” said Urquiola. To match the piece, the Italian footwear company revisited its signature monk strap shoe style in new color combinations.

Fashion Brands Celebrate Milan Design Week with Creative Projects

Brioni has teamed with craftsman Hisao Hanafusa on two different objects paying homage to the traditional Japanese joinery technique: a linden wood and rice paper lamp was accented with traditional ideograms “which come from a 150-year-old book that narrates a soap-opera story,” said Hanafusa. The artist also created a walnut wood valet stand. At the brand’s Milan shop, the items were displayed along with other creations from Hanafusa’s own collection. Additionally, on April 22, which is Earth Day, the proceedings from the sale of all Brioni’s products at the Milan shop will be donated to the World Land Trust, a charity, which protects the most threatened habitats.

Fashion Brands Celebrate Milan Design Week with Creative Projects

Italian footwear company Fratelli Rossetti hosted a cocktail to celebrate its “Stripes under your feet” project, in collaboration with carpet specialist CC-Tapis. For the occasion, the brand’s Via Montenapoleone store windows showed a range of striped rugs combining black, pink, mauve and white tones. Two limited edition footwear styles in matching colors were also created, retailing exclusively at the brand’s Milanese stores and e-commerce. “We wanted to do something in common, so the idea coming from them [CC-Tapis] was to create a rug that reminded of a sock and then we created the [moccasin] with the same colors,” said the label’s managing director Luca Rossetti, who runs the company along with his brothers Diego and Dario.

Fashion Brands Celebrate Milan Design Week with Creative Projects

Lapo Elkann’s Garage Italia and international art gallery Gagosian teamed to bring the art of New Orleans-born Blair Thurman to Italy for the first time. The retrospective exhibition named “Blair Thurman – Nell’Acqua Azzurra [In the Azure Water]” displays the painter’s artworks at Garage Italia’s headquarters housed in the historic former Agip station located in Milan’s Piazzale Accursio. The show will run through May 17.

Fashion Brands Celebrate Milan Design Week with Creative Projects

Named “PUNKxJOB,” this year’s Swatch Art Special limited-edition watch was unveiled during Milan Design Week and has been developed in collaboration with the Studio Job collective of Dutch and Belgian designers founded by Job Smeets and Nynke Tynagel in 2010. Available in 2,018 pieces only, the black unisex style is embellished with punk-inspired white graphics, including skulls, bones, zippers and flashes, along with a shark dominating the clock face. In addition, for the first time gold metal studs enhance the rubber watchband.

“I said I only wanted to do a Swatch if it could be a naughty Swatch, with studs,” said Smeets, adding he aimed “to target a more underground audience, [to do] more a kind of punk-cool Swatch instead of a happy one.” Coming in a matching packaging featuring the serial number of each piece, the watch is available in Milan’s Swatch stores and the brand’s e-commerce retailing at 105 euros.

Fashion Brands Celebrate Milan Design Week with Creative Projects

Dondup presented the “Music Icons” art performance at the brand’s store on Via Spiga, which artist Marco Mazzoni took over during the week, with the exhibition of six different portraits of music icons including John Lennon, David Bowie and Amy Winehouse, among others. “The installation dedicated to the music world – which has been always at the center of Dondup’s universe – reflects the energy and emotion of our collections,” said Matteo Marzotto, president of Dondup.

Fashion Brands Celebrate Milan Design Week with Creative Projects

Les Copains unveiled a collective exhibition of contemporary artists’ works, named Freestyle,  at the brand’s Atelier space and running through April 30. “We want to link art and fashion with the younger generations in mind. We are at the beginning of a digital revolution [for the brand] and I believe that even young customers cannot disregard the arts, art is life,” said Angelo Mariani, the brand’s chief executive officer.

Fashion Brands Celebrate Milan Design Week with Creative Projects

Rainbow District Milano, the organization gathering retailers from the Porta Venezia district in Milan, joined the Salone del Mobile design week with a series of events in the neighborhood. Among them, “Elio Fiorucci, creativity and genius,” is a small exhibition on the designer’s life and works across the 70s and early 80s. Featuring a glittery dust on the floor and silver foil wallpapers recalling Studio 54, the exhibition combines pictures focusing on Fiorucci’s New York days, along with a showcase of memorabilia and inspirational object which were lent by Flora Fiorucci, the sister of the designer, who died in 2015.