Vogue Italia announces the third edition of Life in Vogue: the event devoted to design. This year it takes the form of an entirely digital experience
The Life in Vogue project was launched in 2018 as an opportunity for discussion and exchanges between design and fashion. By inviting artists, designers and companies in the sector to think together about the meaning of the workspace, the initiative has sparked interesting ways of working together and elicited some highly original ideas through installations in the editorial spaces, immediately becoming one of the annual event’s unmissable happenings.
The third edition, titled “Love Letters to Milan”, seeks to continue this outstanding path of dialogue and celebrate the love of Milan – along with the city’s characteristic vitality and creativity – in an exceptional way. The public will be able to visit the rooms of a specially created digital building that reproduces the features of Condé Nast’s headquarters at Piazza Cadorna 5 in Milan. The digital version of the event will allow visitors to overcome the limits of space and time imposed in previous editions by the Salone calendar, to experience exclusive contents and live events in a new and completely digital way on a virtual platform.
“Life in Vogue 2021 is our tribute to Milan and its Salone. While waiting to reopen its doors to the international creative community as soon as possible, Milan cannot and must not lose its centrality. This project – which exploits the potential to reach an even broader public, given its digital and not physical nature – is our contribution to keeping the spotlight on the sector, precisely in the days when the Salone would have enlivened the city. We’re confident that it will soon be possible to combine physical and digital platforms, making use of what we have learnt in these difficult months of forced distancing,” Emanuele Farneti, Vogue Italia’s editor-in-chief.\
Life in Vogue will therefore be an experience suspended between reality and fiction, where the interpretation of the role of the workplace becomes the starting point for a broader and more complex assessment of contemporaneity, its new platforms, restraints and getaways: into dreams, history and nature, into an enchanted garden where we find a refuge to renew our ideas. This has given rise to the space that Vogue Italia imagined within the project, an invented and surreal dimension: the Inspirational Garden.
The focus of the project will be the works of six international designers selected for the occasion: Vincent Darré, Luke Edward Hall, Anna Karlin, Marion Mailaender, Nendo and Studiopepe. Unlike the designers in previous editions, in this case they have not been restrained by the limits imposed by the physical spaces available. As a result, they have been able to give free rein to their imagination and bring ideal and highly imaginative worlds to Vogue Italia’s offices. Each in their own way, they have thus written a love letter to Milan, the city of design that expects to relive the energy that animates it every April and which also renews the wonder of its atmosphere for 2021.
“Each Salone, and the Fuorisalone, has its own special alchemy that makes it unique. Every year is a balanced recipe of fixed ‘incountourables’ (unmissable) presences, young talents, great masters and new discoveries. This year’s selection therefore seeks to reproduce this alchemy made up of different people, nuances and styles, from surreal to minimalist, from brutalist to pop,” says Federica Sala, curator of the project.
During the week, the Life in Vogue platform will be animated with moments of sharing, conversations and guided tours open to the whole community. The schedule will open on Monday 12 April at 6pm with a Live Opening Event. Emanuele Farneti (editor-in-chief of Vogue Italia), Federica Sala (curator of Life in Vogue) and the designers Vincent Darré, Luke Edward Hall, Anna Karlin, Nendo, Marion Mailaender, and Arianna Lelli Mami and Chiara Di Pinto (the two founders of Studiopepe) will be presenting the digital project. They will offer the public an opportunity to discover more fascinating details and insights into the projects implemented through a Q&A session.
From Tuesday 13 to Thursday 15 April, it will be possible to view exclusive contents curated by each designer. There will be two daily appointments, one at midday and one at 5pm. With “A Visit to Jean Cocteau’s House by Vincent Darré”, “Round at Mine Again Soon with Anna Karlin”, “A Garden Promenade with Luke Edward Hall”, “A Conversation with Oki Sato”, “Duality in Creativity with Studiopepe” and “Walking by the Sea with Marion Mailaender”, the artists will guide visitors to discover their passions, sources of inspiration and places of the heart.
From Friday 16 to Sunday 18 April, users will have the chance to take part in guided tours of the virtual spaces in the company of outstanding guests: the critic Francesco Bonami, Felix Burrichter, director of Pin Up, the author Costantino della Gherardesca, the designer Patricia Urquiola and the artist Francesco Vezzoli. The detailed programme of events can be found on lifeinvogue.vogue.it, where it will also be possible to follow the appointments.
The event, organised on the occasion of Milano Design City and with the backing of the Municipality of Milan, has also been made possible thanks to the support of the following partners:
Since 1972 synonymous with invention, innovation and made in Italy, Alcantara is present in this third edition of Life in Vogue, displaying the unique virtues of its material: lightness, resistance, sensuousness and extreme versatility. In the meeting room, designed by Studiopepe, an original pattern by Alcantara is featured on the loveseat; in The Inspirational Garden the seat designed by Nendo is made of layers of Alcantara carefully cut and superimposed to create the illusory 3D effect of wood.
Belmond, leader in the luxury tourism sector with reception facilities in spectacular places around the world, brings the wonderful bay of Portofino to the seventh floor of the building, presenting the new Splendido Mare Hotel, reopened to the public following its restoration designed by the French studio Festen Architecture, and its DaV Mare restaurant overlooking the Piazzetta, headed by Roberto Villa with Enrico and Roberto Cerea and Paolo Rota, chef at Da Vittorio in Bergamo. 50s glamour, design, tradition and nature in an experience to live with all the senses.
Little, fanciful creatures fly light and cheerful in The Inspirational Garden. They are some of the subjects of Arcadia, the new tableware collection from Ginori 1735, devised in collaboration with the fashion designer Orazio Stasi, which will be officially launched on april 12th. An artistic project that, through the fusion of beauty, creativity and craftsmanship, embodies the essence of Ginori, one of the world’s leading brands in the luxury and lifestyle sector since 1735; the expression of Italian excellence in pure porcelain and the highest quality design.
The designer Nika Zupanc signs the Deep line for Natuzzi Italia, Italian lifestyle brand in the furniture sector. The Wave sofa, the protagonist seat of the collection, becomes a magical and inviting presence in The Inspirational Garden of Vogue Italia, thanks to the soft volumes, the light structure suspended from the ground, the generous seat cushions and the backrest that gracefully wraps and embraces. A space where to find calm and shelter, to enjoy alone or to share, or to simply let the imagination fly to far away places.
Poliform takes part in the project with the Gentleman Reserved high-backed armchair, from the Gentleman collection designed by Marcel Wanders. A family of seating characterised by comfort, auteur design and variety; values that the Italian furniture company, founded in Brianza and today present worldwide, has always pursued, combining them with innovation, continuous interpretation of contemporary living trends and the search for formal quality and materials.
Immersed in the fairy-tale flora of The Inspirational Garden we also find the Maison Veuve Clicquot and its Champagne Rosé. With its intense aroma characterised by initial scents of fresh red berries that turn towards biscuit notes, it invites visitors to discover its identity with a special contribution: the Veuve Clicquot Rosé Together playlist, cool and refined, with a retro but contemporary spirit, perfectly suited to the atmosphere in Vogue Italia’s digital palazzo.
For this edition of Life in Vogue, Xiaomi technology, from the world’s third-biggest smartphone brand and the largest Internet of Things platform with 324.8 million smart devices connected, animates the fashion editorial room reinvented by Marion Mailaender. Its devices, such as the Mi TV Q1 75”, the Mi Smart Speaker, the Mi Smart Clock, the smartphone Mi 11 Lite or the Mi Air Purifier 3H, must-have accessories for entertainment, sharing and well-being, harmoniously match the mirrors and marbles of a contemporary ambiance designed to host an imaginary party.