Somebody up there loves us

In front a cup of coffee.

Home-made: where did your creative career start, and how much has it been influenced by your roots?
I was born on an island, somewhere between here and elsewhere, between solid ground and the infinite horizons that stretch beyond the seas.

When you grow up on an island, you learn to discover the world around you, palm tree by palm tree. You start with your surroundings: your room, your city, the whole island and then you find there’s the sea. Then what?
Alghero is an island within an island, and this is what makes it an open, hospitable place, interested in others.
From the West, it is the first port, a place of exchange and outside influences. Phoenicians, Romans and Spaniards have all left their traces and they can all be seen today. Layer upon layer, a real wealth of overlapping cultures.
All knowledge and growth comes from confrontation and inner torment. A kind of dignified suffering that distinguishes the Sardinians.
In all of this, my roots have played a fundamental part in my creative career.

From Alghero to Paris: from the island to the world. How has your approach and way of looking at the world changed? How does all this affect your work?
When I travel, read, or encounter different cultures or people, I learn and accumulate ideas that build up inside me and come back to me when I create, perhaps unconsciously.
I am attracted by everything that is far away, and I like relating it back to my culture and my roots. For example, I love kimonos. A square and two rectangles – overlapping layers, just like Sardinian costumes. My approach is instinctive, it has no predetermined reasoning or concept.
Instinct merges with the experience of what I am and what I have learned, and the design is gradually structured as the work progresses.
Kenzo, for example, was born in Alghero. Everything is made at home, like seadas (a traditional Sardinian dessert flavoured with honey) and tagliatelle.
I have recreated a real universe that led to the LABORATORIO project, a prêt-à-porter that combines the industrial aspect with local craftsmanship. I gathered together a group of embroiderers who helped me with it, a project that embodies manual ability, attention and knowledge. Work is intended to be a symbol, an acknowledgement.
Manual ability, spirit and instinct come together and are reconciled.
I am fascinated by everything that can tell me a story, whatever has been used, touched, that shows an imprint, that has its own experience of life. For example, we took the waistcoats from an orchestra and built up a collection from that idea.
I like looking at things and imagining the stories of their owners. It is as if the objects lived a second life that carries with it the memory of what they have already experienced.
Memories pass through creative transformation. It is a spiritual experience that passes through the creative imagination. An object has a story that I don’t know, but I invent one from scratch.

Culturally speaking, who are your spiritual mentors, your icons?
Rather than spiritual mentors, I have people who have shaped me and words that have left their mark on me. For example, a primary school teacher, but also Hermann Hesse and the Spoon River Anthology. Words I grew up with and identified with.
As far as this last collection is concerned, I rediscovered the value of memory, respect for memories and the memory of places.
Looking for the spirit and nature of a place is something that has always fascinated me, like refurbishing a 1960s dance club in Alghero for a cultural event, or our Milan showroom in which we brought a Milanese courtyard back to life with the memories and artefacts of the local community. Places are like things, they have a life built on layers of past events – things that really happened and things that remain in the memory.

How does your newly published book “Dieci anni dopo” fit into this path of growth?
The book is a collection of ten years of memories, atmospheres and sensations. I feel deeply connected to my origins in my work. I was born in a tailor’s workshop and even now I make home-made things. The book is like a story we have told, like strips of cloth put together. It is a story set around my home, a story in which friends and people who have helped to build this career with me wanted to participate.
These ten years are described in brief instants, moments. The clothes are a complement to this story, they are part of it. I wanted the faces of the whole world in these pictures, not top models.
Seeing as somebody up there loves us, when we put the book together, the wind, the sun, the stormy sea… everything was just as I had imagined it. A series of positive coincidences that helped me to convey my world, which has nothing to do with self-congratulation, but with my instinct.