Giulio Cappellini, still in love with design after 25 years, gets passionate about the difference one millimeter makes in a chair. He praises the poetry of a lamp. He verges on emotional meltdown describing the slight variation in light between Sydney and Melbourne, and confesses to a hankering for a lacquer finish that will capture the color of the Marrakech sky at 6 p.m. The legendary figurehead and namesake of Italy’s avant-garde furniture maker bubbles over in a fountain of words as he discusses an industry that he argues speaks for itself.
Cappellini is a charismatic talker, and he has taken his conversation on the road since his company was sold, in the spring of 2004, to Poltrona Frau. When Frau, Italian specialists in high-end leather furniture, snatched up his famed house, the design world held its breath. Cappellini had taken an 11-man business started by his father and made it the standard-bearer of avant-garde design. Rumors now flew of radical changes to the 120-strong company, and threats to the whole Italian furniture industry. That wondrously anachronistic world—a perplexity in an age of economic uber-efficiency and cheap Asian labor—seemed to have finally succumbed to trends too powerful for its Milanese mettle.
But two years into the tie-up, Cappellini—both the man and the company—shows no signs of stopping. The Frau Group has even ramped up its commercial presence in the past 18 months, with the opening of Cappellini boutiques in Rome, Singapore, Antwerp, and New York, and new ones expected this year in Tokyo and Sydney. Cappellini is now creative director of the brand and removed from day-to-day business duties. He remains focused on scouting and nourishing design talent, as he has done for decades, producing such stars as Jasper Morrison, Tom Dixon, and Marcel Wanders. Now 52 and in full swing, the man has enough projects backlogged to last a few lifetimes. After reincarnation, he says, he’ll stick to all-image books, where—really, this time—no words are needed to get the picture.
When I want something, I really want it. That’s the story. In the beginning, it was with Jasper Morrison and Marc Newson and Tom Dixon and all the others, but it’s definitely also right now. The DNA of the company is the story of encounters and friendships. The first object of Marc’s that I saw was a very, very small glass, and I saw it in a really small picture in an Australian magazine. At that time, there was no email, no fax. So I called him in Australia and told him I would send him a ticket to come to Milan. He came and stayed for a week as a guest in my home, we started to speak, and we started to work together. Now there are the Bouroullec brothers and others, like François Azambourg.
We have a big responsibility because we have to create products, but we also have to make people dream. And really, you can do this only if you have a strong relationship with the designers and you strongly believe in what you are doing.
Two days ago, I was with Jasper for an eight-hour meeting. For me, Morrison is maybe the most important designer in the company. For hours we discussed small details, tiny changes to a chair he’s been working on for two years. We were exhausted, but in the end that’s what makes the difference between a big designer like Jasper and just someone with some products. He does only a few things, but they are always beautiful, fantastic things, very subtle. You have to suffer to make great products!
Morrison likes to say that he’s doing normal products, what we can call “new simple products.” But he is one of the most sophisticated people and most snobbish people, meaning: It’s not the concept or the looks that count. The main process for Jasper is getting there.
When I first met the Bouroullec brothers, they were totally unknown. Now they are stars of international design. The media, it’s true, is creating a phenomenon around them, but they are not only a media creation. The incredible thing with them is that they are very young and already so professional. When they started, Erwan was only 20 years old. To work with Jasper is difficult, to work with the Bouroullecs is twice as difficult because they are always fighting with one another! Ronan is a more artistic spirit; Erwan is a more technical spirit.
The end consumer today is more clever, more multicultural; he speaks more than one design language and is more open. It’s becoming a social and cultural phenomenon—with all the exhibits and Design Week in Milan, which attracts lots of young families. I think that it should not just be a niche market; people shouldn’t be afraid of design. Design can be a Cappellini or a Poltrona Frau or a Cassina product or an IKEA product. Why not?
In the past a design house was like a museum. Now the challenge for the design house is to be warm, a beautiful place where you can relax. The same should be true for hotels. But I have to say, I’m very happy when I see our products entering the permanent collection of museums! And it’s not true that icons are only good for museums. Cappellini sells the icons. An S chair by Dixon can be an icon, like the Tate chair by Morrison. The most important thing is to try to build an extraordinary, long-selling product, a very honest product.
We’re seeing what they now call the new domestic nomadism. In the kitchen you work on your computer, maybe you invite your friends in. The bathroom now is the “wellness room.” If you have a small balcony, it’s like a huge garden because you put all the green out there that you can. The living room is a sort of agora, the center of the house, with very deep sofas where you can stay with your families just to watch television or invite your friends in a less formal way. The bedroom is where you can sleep or work. The kitchen is becoming very noble. The role of the dining room is declining. Nobody wants to use it—just for a Christmas dinner. Sometimes the most successful products are those you can use in different rooms.
To invent a new shape is really very difficult. All the most beautiful shapes were done in the ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s. With technology we can give a new image to the products.
On the one hand, we can work with elements of industrial production; on the other hand we can give a new feeling to the product. The thing is to use technology from other businesses. For example, for Morrison’s new chair we are working with the technology of sneakers—the concept that you can fix rubber with leather or other materials.
I like to use discreet technology—that which you don’t see. You only see, at the end, a beautiful product, a poetic object. We’re in new cooperation with Sharp to work on integration, and are looking at the “miniaturization of technology.” The concept of technology becoming smaller and smaller really helps design.
Fashion and design can be very close because both produce products for the end consumer, but I really think the attitude is absolutely different. In fashion I buy things I don’t need. When I buy six chairs, or a new cabinet, a new table, it’s because I really need it, no? Sometimes we try to push this idea that these things, this cabinet, is so beautiful you can’t do without it. But I think that really the attitude is very different.
When you have a very good design product, it’s good today, it’s good for the next ten years. The interesting thing is that we sell more products today that Jasper designed for Cappellini 15 years ago than we did 15 years ago. That’s why it’s very important for me to work not on best-sellers, but on long-sellers.
It’s very good to work on avant-garde, in innovation. But it’s good not to be too fashionable. That’s what’s different in the Charme group [from LVMH]. We like to speak about quality; we don’t like to speak about “Iuxe.” With a serial production you really cannot speak about luxe, because luxe is a unique piece. Cartier was a luxury brand when it was doing jewels for the kings and queens. Today you can find Cartier in the duty-free shops worldwide. Is it still luxe?
For me Cappellini is exactly the same as in the past. I always say, I don’t work with designers; I like to design with my designers. We talk about color, about minute details, like maybe one millimeter in this thickness here. This, I like a lot. And so for Cappellini, absolutely, nothing changed.
But I also find I like working in a team, and for the group the most important thing is to work in a strategic way. As a group we don’t want to be the supermarket of design. More and more, we have to push the different languages of design. Cappellini has to be more and more Cappellini; Cassina has to be more and more Cassina; and so forth. The biggest mistake we can make is if someone sees a product and says, “But is this table Cappellini or Cassina?” Cappellini has to do what they call the contemporary classics. Cassina has to do the modern classics. Poltrona Frau has to do the bourgeois classics. And Alias has to do the technical classics. These are the four different strategies for the main brands.
I think that more and more we have an inclination in the market to push the brand. Now we’re asked to do Cappellini restaurants, the Cappellini hotel. But I think we have to be very, very careful about stretching the logo. I can do something only if I’m 500-percent convinced. We always have to think that it has to be a model of innovation. If we lose the spirit of the company, we kill the company.
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