The School of Graphic Design at the London College of Communication is a part of the University of the Arts, London, Europe’s largest university for art, design, fashion, communication and the performing arts. It is a collegiate university comprising the six London Art Colleges; Camberwell College of Arts, Central Saint Martins College of Art and...
When we were children we’d love to stroke mother’s otter fur coat (or perhaps it was beaver or lapin, who can say for sure at this point in time?), moving my hand back and forth in fondling reverie: a light-coloured stripe, a darkcoloured one. How soothing it was to trace figures with one’s hands over that beloved body.
Memories are what p...
Your professional activity appears to be an excellent example of an ongoing exchange and equilibrium between the great experience you’ve acquired over time and a capacity to adapt to modern-day requirements. How have you managed to achieve such a fine balance, that may be summed up in the term Innovage?
It’s important to understand the element...
In front of a cup of coffee
illy’s seventy-fifth anniversary celebrations have been an occasion for me to take a deeper look at this corporate enterprise. What I see is a fine example of Innovage. Thinking back to the nineties, I remember when a cup of espresso coffee was still fairly much a lack-lustre commodity. At the bar one would simply o...
Before being a label, Pucci is first and foremost the name of a family, and what a family! We’re talking about history – almost a thousand years of it – and about a cutting-edge business enterprise based in the family’s historical mansion. Emilio Pucci’s inspired and visionary drawings are simply spellbinding, as acknowledged worldwide. N...
“Millésimé”: from superb wines to superb dishes. If identity is built up by accumulating and preserving the past, then there are chefs who preciously pour it out drop-wise across their menus. But when does identity turn into the deadweight of tradition?
Chefs are keen at the idea of vintage decanted from the bottle to the dish. Keeping dis...
I’m a believer in the “I” words. Ideas, Intuition, Invention, Inspiration, innovation… and now… Innovage. Add vintage to innovation and you’ll be time traveling, speeding back to the future. This implosion of past, present and future is what the Aboriginal people of Australia called “the Everywhen.” It was, and is, timeless time. Th...
“…that feeling we all have sometimes that everything we say or do is not our own, that we as people are only quotations from our environment, that we are carried along by the merciless stream of history and reality... the complications arise when one tries to give that feeling an identity. I do not think it can be done within a conventional nov...
There are travel guides for almost any corner of the planet. None of these can tell us though what the world will be like tomorrow, or at least not until next year. That’s when Rough Guide to the Future by the British science writer Jon Turney will be available in bookstores.
What drove you to write such a book?
There’s not much fiction aro...
Innovage may be one of the latest buzzwords, but the concept it refers to, and which I deem to be very important, has a far longer legacy. Take for instance the worldwide success of “Made in Italy” brands, or rather of the Italian houses behind these much coveted brands. Their not-so-secret secret lies in their ability to combine and blend the ...
The meaning of colour evolves in parallel with culture.