‘Sorry, I’m a what?’ — ‘Euroluce,’ someone repeated: Salone del Mobile’s annual lighting showcase, it transpired. It just about encapsulates the confusion of stumbling around this interminable – but ultimately stimulating – Furnitureopolis; it took 20 minutes alone to find the press lounge. Once inside, confusion gave way to bemusement as a panelist explained how the flowers of the past are the same as the flowers of the present – forsooth. Curiouser still, it was in an answer to what the design world’s response to the global economic uncertainty – which formed the brooding backdrop to this year’s showcase – should be. Outside in the city, happily, playfulness presided: Jaipur Rugs had their Richard Hutten polka-dot speckled carpets, like Twister for designspotters; Jean-Charles de Castlebajac, infamously the creator of Lady Gaga’s Kermit the Frog couture, decorated a pavilion at Pierre Frey top to toe in charming illustrations, the prelude to a forthcoming fabric collection; and Pierre Marie, together with Yves Salomon, unveiled the Sheep Reconstituted — two toy mutton upholstered in an intricate kaleidoscope of intarsia shearling.
So lightness (not, excusing the pun, wooliness) was to be the focus. It’s just as well Rubelli presented a truly glimmering collection of double sided, gold and silver threaded, jacquards in collaboration with Peter Marino – ‘we’re all depressed,’ I eavesdropped inside their showroom. And, just like Joan Didion who slapped down Andy Warhol’s ‘why can’t it just be magic all the time?’ with a curt ‘what’, Alessi presented a collection of ten funerary urns by the same number of contemporary designers at the suitably sober Biblioteca Ostinata. Phillipe Starck, who concocted the camp chrome-bone-amphora propped on a fluorescent yellow cushion embroidered with ‘RIP’ was witnessed performing a particularly effervescent piece to camera. Not everyone was so enthused: the Italian press, a PR confided, were more sceptical of the idea of the Designer Remainder-Container – ‘Catholics’ we nodded, knowingly. The ability for design, to probe, inspire, and excite, thankfully, persists. Back at the Eurocluce pavilion, France’s oldest lighting brand St Louis, were presenting one of their newest pieces, a twisting, tentacled wedding-cake construction of glass. The techniques were old and exquisite – their application, unexpected and innovative: optimism enshrined in crystal, and indeed, light at this year’s Salone del Mobile.
Hungry for more stories from Salone? You are in luck. Our crack team of decoration investigators have microfibred their microscopes; loupes poised over all the most important details of design’s headline event. Do you agree with their musings from Milano? Read more about Milan Design Week from style director Gianluca Longo and digital editor Alice Inggs.
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