Bulgari, Tiffany, Cartier in Fuori Salone 2018 Milano Design week

My dear lovers of jewelry, I just came back from sunny Milan where I’ve been walking nonstop for the past three days during the 56th edition of “Fuorisalone” and the design fashion week, together with Giulio, my baby of one month.

This event is considered one of the most fashioniable in the industry, with more than 2000 exhibitors. Inside the Brera design district there are 209 events, 310 companies and designers, 92 permanent showrooms and over 300.000 visitors from over 165 countries.

I mainly dedicated my time visiting the exhibitions of the big jewelry brands as well as the installations of Bulgari, Tiffany, Cartier, Tissot and leBebé, of which I’ll tell you about in this article.

For the first time, Bulgari―which is an icon in the world of jewelry―created an installation of more than 1,000 square meters in the shape of a labyrinth inside the gorgeous district of Brera, generating a surreal setting with a hypnotic architecture that invokes a sense of infinity, specifically created for the iconic Bzero rings.

The sensation that I felt while I was walking through the labyrinth was that everything―such as the light or the color of the scenography―felt claustrophobic. Even the sound produced by huge circles made out of long metal tubes led to instability. The only rule to be followed in this distorted universe was to let go and let yourself be carried away completely by the path.

The idea of this installation is that visitors must abandon their usual perception of reality to be able to destroy their mental schemes, rejecting the rules to reinvent them, opening the mind and grasping the wonder, knowing that all rules can be reinvented.

The installation is inspired by the three fundamental aspects of the creations of Bulgari: materials, modularity and colors; interpreted by three icons of the world of design and architecture: Iván Navarro and Courtney Smith, MVRDV, and Storagemilan.

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After this immersion into the conceptual design, I went to enjoy the installation of Tiffany, who chose this occasion to present the new home and accessoires collection in the enchanting store that was recently inaugurated in Piazza Duomo.

Without contradicting the irony and coherence of its creatives, the maison presented simple objects of everyday use, revisiting them with craftsmanship and transforming them into small luxury objects, absolutely recognizable in the style and the typical brand of the house.

The idea behind this collection is that you can find beauty in everything, even in every object of daily use such as a protractor, a ruler, a straw, a yo-yo, ping pong rackets or a wonderful paper cup (an object that I’ll eventually buy), transforming them into extraordinary products handmade in silver by their craftsmen.

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Afterwards I went to visit Cartier who chose to present the legendary “Thrill” in an incredible installation created by the study of Gio’ Forma (who has already been responsible for the “Tree of Life” in the Expo Milano in 2015). The work is a transparent tunnel of about 60 meters that connects the two twin buildings of the former toll booths of the Arch of Peace.

In this structure, we can see different installations that we could define as sensorial with LED’s, music, and visual projections. The 60 meters of the corridor represent the distance that Alberto Santos-Dumont flew with his biplane 14-bis in 1906, which become the first of three world records of a “machine heavier then the air” that is able to fly, transforming aviation from a simple dream into reality.

In the center is a huge crystal cube which exhibits a model of the 14-bis biplane, reinterpreted with modern materials. The project celebrates this great creator and the watch dedicated to him―called Cartier Santos―created by Louis Cartier in 1904 in response to the requests of his friend Alberto Santos-Dumont who had expressed the difficulty of being able to read the time from a pocket watch during a flight.

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From this need, Cartier created for his friend the first modern wristwatch, called “Santos”: the result of an experimental research conducted by two visionary men, united by the same spirit of modernity. The Santos is a model that the maison, since its creation, has never removed from its collection and which is a classic now with more than a hundred years. Just this year it has been presented in a new version, accompanied by an easily interchangeable bracelet.

A less flashy installation is the one of Tissot, which celebrated the thirtieth anniversary of the Tissot “Sottsass” watch at its monobrand boutique in Corso Vittorio Emanuele. For the occasion, a box set was created with three ultra-modern and classic watches, both minimal and linear, at an absolutely extraordinary price.

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Finally I went with my Giulio to a small installation of leBebé in the beautiful Piazza Simpliciano in Brera. Here, the idea was to free the child that is inside each of us and for me also the one I had with me…

Dear friends, I always invite you with affection to continue reading my articles, and if you want to also comment on them…

I embrace you, until next time!