This week marks the start of the Salone del Mobile — Milan’s annual international furniture fair. Widely considered the most influential in the industry, the Salone is where design talents present their latest collections to global buyers and press.
Among the Salone’s most heavily watched participants is Kartell, the Milan-based furniture-maker whose 300-plus stores offer supremely functional-yet-stylish pieces crafted with a mix of wit and technology — and often from plastic!
Originally founded in 1949 as an automobile accessories firm, Kartell began to produce furniture in 1963. Since that time — and in participation with designers like Philippe Starck, Antonio Citterio and even Moschino — Kartell has become synonymous with Italian industrial excellence.
As Kartell celebrates its 65th anniversary and introduces its first table-top collection in over 40 years, we chat with chairman and owner Claudio Luti for his take on Milan and the Salone.
Beyond our Kartell flagship store on Via Turati, I love to shop all of the boutiques in the city’s famous fashion quarter — the Quadrilatero della Moda along Via Spiga, Via Manzoni, Via Montenapoleone, Corso Venezia. Among my favorite shops are Pisa Watches on the Via Verri, which stocks one of the city’s best collections of timepieces.
During the Salone, I always send visitors to the Park Hyatt Hotel, which is very well located close to Milan’s famous Duomo and the great shopping in the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele. There are many great hotels in the city — Bulgari, Four Seasons, Armani — but The Park Hyatt is the one I prefer most.
Italian design has maintained its “edge” because it’s like a “system” — a network where companies, designers and suppliers all work together on innovation. All of these players work together to take risks and combine their top energy and ideas in order to create something totally new, aesthetically pleasing and wholly functional. Kartel’s new Uncle Jack sofa by Philippe Starck is a great example of this.
Someone just beginning to collect Kartell has many options when it comes to key pieces because so many are true design icons. But, if they’re looking to being with a historical iconic piece still in production, I would suggest Componibili by Anna Castelli Ferrieri (1969), which is still a best-seller after 45 years. Or, for something more recent, opt for the La Marie Chair, which was the world’s first transparent chair, or the Compasso d’Oro Mobil (by Antonio Citterio 1994) or Bubble Club, the first sofa made from rotation molding (by Philippe Starck, 2000).
Gianni Versace and his approach to creativity influenced me far more than any design school or movement . . . because he was very product-oriented.
When I joined Kartell in 1988 — after 10 years as CEO at Gianni Versace — my mind was totally free and open to design. But I knew that for a company like Kartell, I needed to start from the product strategy — to remain industrial, but offer an aesthetic added value to product, quality and glamour. It was this beginning that also led me to invite designers like Philippe Starck, and later Antonio Citterio and Ron Arad, to design iconic industrial pieces.
The biggest difference between fashion and design is that design — especially industrial design — has to do with durable goods, while fashion is definitely more ephemeral. With design you don’t have to follow trends or styles, but make products with a long life. To produce a transparent chair you have to invest a considerable amount of money in the molding; so the final product has to sell thousands of pieces and has to last!
Plastic can be a timeless material, but only if it is quality plastic. So the materials used and the industrial process has to be top quality.