The great Milanese tradition meets the oldest fine leather luxury goods Maison in the world: this is the concept designed by Italian architectural Studio Vudafieri-Saverino Partners for the first Delvaux flagship store in Italy, an iconic boutique in the heart of the Fashion Quarter in Milan.
Vudafieri-Saverino Partners, which since 2012 has been taking care of the Delvaux boutiques’ design worldwide, uses the language of interior decoration to tell the brand history with a narrative capacity which interprets the context, the characteristics and culture of each city.
In particular, the location of the new Milanese boutique is the recently restored Palazzo Reina: the concept is characterised by an unheard-of mingling between elements of twentieth century Milanese design and references to Belgian creativity.
The boutique extends over 200 square meters and is subdivided in a series of salons of both different dimensions and aesthetic atmospheres: ample spaces alternate with other more intimate ones, where noble materials and neutral colours recall the delicate luxury and refinery of the Delvaux creations.
Right from the entrance the visitor can breathe a mix of history and the contemporary, starting out from the first room, where marble panels are placed on the walls which cite and celebrate the typical entrances of twentieth century Milanese palaces: ceilings and walls have been decorated by the artist Filippo Falaguasta, who in homage to the culture of great Milanese masters like Gio Ponti and Piero Portaluppi, has created a lozenge-shaped drawing, besides the original patines murales, as if to re-evocate an ancient, and later removed affresco.
The tribute to Milanese tradition is moreover found in the historic pieces signed by the greatest Milanese designers of the 20th century, such as Luigi Caccia Dominioni, Ignazio Gardella, and Angelo Lelli; lighting, furniture and chairs dialogue formally with the utmost brio and bold oxymorons alongside the “aged” carpets by Jan Kath, laid out across the floors in seminato, with the patines murales by the artist Filippo Falaguasta.
Hinging between Italian aesthetics and the Flemish world, in the second room stand out the undulating shapes of the iconic Delvaux boutique wardrobe: normally always in white plaster, here it appears in Macassar ebony with the covering hand-painted on-site by the scholars of the Van der Kelen school in Bruxelles.
The great walled bookcase characterizes the third room: five metres tall, it is inspired by an iconic 1960s building, designed by Luigi Caccia Dominioni in Piazza Carbonari in Milan; within it are displayed Delvaux accessories, along with a precious collection of twentieth century ceramic vases of ancient Gant production while, on the opposite wall, stand out the colors of a large mosaic of the ’70s, a unique piece by the artist Charles Gianferrari.
In the Vudafieri-Saverino Partners project the furnishing accessories never carry out a purely decorative function, but they have always been conceived as “living” elements, functional to displaying the product or telling the brand’s history: all elements which contribute to making the Milan Delvaux boutique a unique place, in which fashion and design are all as one.
The architects Tiziano Vudafieri e Claudio Saverino explain:
“In this new boutique we wanted to celebrate the brand’s values and heritage, through elements having a strong link with Milan’s artistic-cultural context. For this, our starting point has been names such as Caccia Dominioni, Gardella and Portaluppi, who have made Milanese architectural history and who have always been references for our work.”
