rebellious
With the first series for Moooi ten years ago, we elevated the femininity issue and embraced an opposite – almost rebellious – image. The name of the Lolita lamp was a first case in point. And the by-line we picked, ‘Who’s afraid of pink?’ enhanced the irony. I like to work with iconic colours, forms or stereotypes even and reshape them. With Lolita I tried to pull that colour out of the ghetto. Before the launch there was a lot of discussion within our team and Moooi about the question ‘Do we dare or not?’ That’s almost unbelievable now, but it felt like a taboo at the time. In the meantime pink has become fashionable and hip to use, but in those days everybody in the arena of serious design thought of it as a no-go area. Then again, it’s how PR works and Marcel Wanders is a keen player, not only in that field. Because of his observations, his way of thinking, he changed the perception of design. Moooi became a very important platform for new talent and young designers like myself. It was a steppingstone. I cannot change the perspective (of how people and press look at my work), but I am a product designer first and foremost, driven by the process and problem solving. This year, like at every Salone, I presented a new selection of limited editions at Rosanna Orlandi, for Sé and Scarlet Splendour at the fiera (Salone del Mobile fair). These past years you see more pluriformity coming up in Milan, in terms of designers coming from all over the world. And now there is this very openminded company Scarlet Splendour from India that’s producing and presenting design on the Western market. That’s new as far as I’m concerned. Of course the majority of my clients are based in Northern Italy and the Veneto area, which is still a powerhouse of production in Europe.
