ELLE DECOR May 2021

LAST MAY, WHEN THIS MAGAZINE produced its first Italy issue, the world was reckoning with the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. A year later, we return to Italy in an edition that heralds both the country’s resilience and its central influence on the global furniture and design markets. And while we are all missing spring’s annual Milan Design Week, this issue also offered the chance to celebrate capital-D design in a country full of inspiration. Our cover story, by Alexandra Lange, describes an incredible Roman loft crafted top to tail by the architects Junko Kirimoto and Massimo Alvisi. The owners are an art-world couple who snagged an apartment with perhaps the world’s best view: directly onto the Colosseum. Kirimoto and Alvisi, partners in life and work, bring a love of material…

IF YOU ASKED ME TO NAME MY FAVORITE movie, the answer would be La Dolce Vita, Federico Fellini’s sprawling 1960 spectacle of modern Roman decadence. If you asked me why, I’d say that, more than any other film I can think of, this is the one I wish I could live in. Which, I admit, is a bit perverse. The people in this movie are glamorous and good-looking—Marcello Mastroianni in his slim suits and sunglasses; Anouk Aimée in her black cocktail dress; Anita Ekberg with a kitten on her head—but also notoriously alienated and miserable. Don’t get me wrong—it’s not that I want to be like these people (as if I could). When I say I want to live in the movie, I mean it literally: I’m coveting the real estate. That…

BY THIS POINT, BAR BASSO, THE MILAN DESIGN world’s ground zero of gossip, is practically synonymous with the city’s annual Design Week—as much a state of mind as it is a meeting point. It’s where everyone in the industry congregates after a long day of novelty eye candy. And it’s no coincidence: Second-generation owner Maurizio Stocchetto has cultivated the scene with an attentive ear, playing host to the likes of the late designer James Irvine in the 1980s and the rising star duo Formafantasma today. “When we’re able to open again, we’ll be very busy,” says Stocchetto, who’s had to keep the bar shuttered this year under lockdown restrictions. (Milan was devastated early on in the COVID-19 pandemic. In February 2020, Giuseppe Sala, the city’s mayor, allowed bars like Basso…

In Salone del Mobile’s firmament, Marva Griffin is an entire constellation unto herself. As the founder of SaloneSatellite, a fair in Milan that coincides with Salone proper and showcases the work of up-and-coming designers, she has given a platform to more than 12,000 creative young people since 1998. Protean French designer Patrick Jouin and renowned architect Oki Sato are counted among the muckety-mucks whose careers were kick-started by Griffin. “I treat them all as if they were my kids,” she says. Last year’s edition was canceled on account of the global pandemic, but from September 5 through 10, Satellite returns with a theme Griffin describes as “design for our future selves.” Here, a preview of some choice pieces from this year’s stars of tomorrow.…

Chew on This! In 1976, when Herman Miller released the Modular Sofa Group, designed by Ray Wilkes, its internal marketing materials described the components as “attractive, comfortable seating solutions for lounge environments.” Talk about an understatement. With this offering, which was soon colloquially referred to as the “Chiclet sofa” for its resemblance to the popular chewing gum, Wilkes created iconic modern seating that melded cutting-edge technology with killer good looks: The cold-cured polyurethane injection foam cushions—a new process at the time—ensured a seamless, rounded appearance that didn’t pucker or dent but was still lounge-friendly. After discontinuing the Chiclet in 1986, Herman Miller is now reissuing Wilkes’s design, in part as a response to the seating’s popularity on the vintage market. The latest version comes in a rainbow suite of Flamiber bouclé…

AS A MOROCCAN CITIZEN who was born and raised in Fez, went to university in France, and has lived and worked in the United States and Europe, Ismail Tazi has always appreciated cross-national exchange. He also has a long-standing passion for the craft industry, a legacy he inherited from his great-grandparents, who worked with silk and embroidery. So when Tazi decided to leave his job in investment banking in 2019 to start a design brand, it was inevitable that these two facets would find a distinct harmony. The result is Trame, which Tazi debuted in Paris in January 2020, with his business partner and cousin, Adnane Tazi. Trame is French for “weft,” and it is a fitting name for a brand that seeks to bridge the various histories of the Mediterranean…