How does the career of a shoe master begin?
As all things that are important, I also began designing shoes by chance. When I was young I wanted to become a set designer. I was literally in love with Visconti’s films and, especially, with the costumes. In 1971, through some friends from New York, I managed to submit my sketches to Diana Vreeland, the then news editor of American Vogue. She didn’t have a positive opinion of the costumes, but she was fascinated by the shoes. So she suggested me focus on the accessorize.
I followed her advice and here I am.
Anyway, the cinema is always in my heart.
My last collaboration was with Sofia Coppola, for hers Marie Antoinette.

But the “Manolo”, as they are called by the fashion victims, were born only a year later…
Yes. Bacj in London, in 1972, I met Ossie Clark with whom I created my first collection. I remember my dreadful first official issue. I made a shoe using 118 cm of silk and the outcome was awful. The models staggered on the heels, and I was convinced that that would be my first and last collection. Instead, the public and the press were very enthusiastic defining it a “very sexy pace”. I worked for some time with Clark and the shoe we designed together with cherry patterns is, up to know, still my best seller.

You experimented a lot with materials…
I am convinced that anything can be turned into a shoe. Year ago I used titanium, it was very pretty but it made the shoe impossible to wear, it was too heavy. I also had lots of fun while creating an ivory shoe. It retrieved the shape of a Greek column and it closed with chiffon…it was amazing but we sold only four pairs. I also remember a PVC stiletto encrusted with golden stones, created on purpose for the coronation of a beauty pageant winner.

Do shoes need to make a woman look sexy or to make her walk in comfort?
Obviously comfort comes first. Thanks to the skilful Italian craftsmen that make my shoes I managed to produce sexy shoes, with very high heels and comfortable at the same time.

How do you create “Manolo”?
My collections have always been hand-made, because I can’t use computers. Then I send my sketches to the model-makers and they turn them into shoes. I have an average of 300 samples per season, of which only 100 are put on sale. In order to satisfy the taste of all our clients throughout the world we keep the models and change the colours.

What is it that you really don’t like?
Definitely wedges, I find women with platforms not pretty. And I don’t like men shoes. I find them boring. I myself wear the booties that remind of the XVIII and XIV centuries shoes: they are priceless.

To conclude, a compulsory question: will Carrie be able to buy again a pair of Manolo after they have been stolen in a cult episode of the TV show Sex and the City?
I am sorry, but I don’t know it…I don’t watch that kind of TV shows.

Alessandra Iannello

Italian version

With these new collections your creativity doesn’t have any age limit.
We thought to accompany women in every stage of their life. So, besides the novelty of the baby collection, we created a set of car products, ranging from stickers to ornament the bodywork, to the cat-shaped seat cover, to the trash bin. Another novelty is the cushions collection which contain, inside, a silhouette blanket or a remote cover to chill out on the sofa at night. In order to be even more glamorous, we created also a collection of finger watches made of sparkling crystals.

By now Camomilla does not simply follow the guidelines of the Japanese head office, but comes up with her own items.
Camomilla for Hello Kitty has become preponderant in the generation of our turnover. One needs thinking that the firm 2009 turnover, closed on 30th June, was of 37 millions euro (it was 30 millions last year) 60% of which gathered thanks to the Hello Kitty world. The success of Camomilla for Hello Kitty is due to the coherence of the project that gives to everything which represents the Italian lifestyle the mawkish imprint of the pink cat. Camomilla for Hello Kitty is the Italian side of Hello Kitty. We create with the same brand wine, sofas, and armchairs as well as glasses and many more households and accessorizes. For instance, from Brianza come armchairs and chaise longue, from Como silk foulards and scarfs, and from the wine cellars Torti Tenimenti Castelrotto of the Oltrepò Pavese sparkling wine, strictly rosè and other wines made of their best grapes.

The made in Italy by Camomilla for Hello Kitty is also the protagonist in the Sanrio stores all over the world.
It’s true, inside the Sanrio Luxe in New York we have a corner dedicated to Camomilla for Hello Kitty, where one can find all our products, from furniture to clothing and accessorizes. This corner is the format that we will duplicate in all the Sanrio Luxe store of the world already at work and in those whose opening is close. Other stores where to find Camomilla for Hello Kitty, besides the nearly 3,000 multibrand all over the world, are the two stores in Milan, the one in Times Square in New York, the one in Verone and Rome, to which will be added those in Paris, Barcelona and Madrid.

Alessandra Iannello

Italian version

Us Weekly however unveiled the film plot kept hidden until today.
So, besides a wonderful New York, unfailing fantastic clothes, comforting chats among friends and hot secrets unveiled we will find again Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte and Samantha dealing with their life of eternal family “initials”.

Miranda will reconsider the virtues of living a chilled family life to the detriment of the job, Samantha will take back the ex-boy friend Smith Jerrod, Charlotte will find out a mixed blessing of motherhood, while Carrie and Mr Big…obviously they have problems.

Financial slump, gay weddings, the eternal dilemma between a pair of Manolo Blahnik and the very chic Christian Louboutin and much more.
“The shoe has always tried to be a loyal mirror of the real new York”, theorizes Bradley Jacobs, senior editor of Us weekly, “as far as the plot is concerned it is genial to see our heroes falling from rags to riches”

Will our heroes manage to overcome this too? If not the wedding, at least a couple of shoes…exclusively designer ones.

Italian version

Osvaldo Patrizzi, expert watchmaker acknowledged all over the world, advocate of the project since the very beginning, will organize the auction with the support of his Maison Patrizzi & Co.

Will take part in Only Watch 2009: Audemars Piguet, Bell & Ross, Blancpain, Bovet Fleurier, Breguet, Cabestan, Cartier, Chaumet, Chanel, Confrérie Horlogere, Corum, De Bethune, Delacour, Franc Vila, Franck Muller, Frédérique Constant, Gerald Charles, Girard-Perregaux, Hermès, Hublot, Jaquet Droz, Les Ateliers de Monaco, Louis Vuitton, MB&F, Montblanc, Omega, Patek Philippe, Piaget, Tag Heuer, Tourneau Timepieces, Ulysse Nardin, Vacheron Constantin, Van Cleef & Arpels, Zenith.

Italian version

The artist became famous at the beginning of the ‘80s when, together with his contemporary “colleagues” Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring, used the streets of New York as canvas for his own art: characteristics are his famous works of art such as the series “Shadowman” and “Crime Scene”.

Hambleton, the last surviving member of the East Village Art Movement, witnessed the consequences produced by fame and drugs on his friends and decided to spend the last 20 years conducting a solitary life in the Lower East Side, Manhattan. The artist continued though to create pieces of art and his works are now hosted among the permanent collections of the MoMA, of the Brooklyn Museum and of the Houston Museum of Fine Art.

The exhibition of Richard Hambleton is open to the public at the Woodward Gallery from 16 September to 2 October, from Tuesday to Friday, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Italian version

Chef of the Year is Dan Barber, pioneer of the “farm-to-table” who won to the veteran Tom Colicchio from New York, Jose Andres from Washington and Paul Kahan from Chicago.

With his two restaurants, Stone Barns, located in a farm north of New York and Blue Hill, in the heart of New York, Barber made his early fortune thanks to the dishes made of season products coming from local farmers.

The bistreau Jean Georges, three stars in the Michelin guide and feather in the cap of the Chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten, won, instead, in the category of restaurants, while Momofuku Ko, with two Michelin stars, won the award for the best new restaurant.

Among the emerging chefs triumphed the Nate Appleman, of the A16 of San Francisco while Gina DePlama, of the Babbo of New York, won in the category of pastry chef, single woman to win a nomination except for Jennifer McLagan who with her “Fat:An Appreciation of a Misunderstood Ingredient, with Recipes” won the award for the best cooking book.

The James Beard Award were born in 1990 and built up their authority thanks to a jury, made of workers in the catering industry, assigning awards both for culinary professions and for media dealing with the culinary world.

Italian version

Let’s begin from his first steps in the world of design…
In the 1980s I was a rally driver with a huge passion for engines and my family has always been part of the world of cars: my uncle, in the 1950s, was a famous driver, Felice Bonetto; his son was until few years ago the deputy director of the magazine Quattroruote and at the beginning of my father’s career in the design sector there was the bodywork, with Vignale and Boneschi. When I decided to enter the job market, I was more interested in marketing and management so my father sent me for a year to work at the advertising agency of one of his friends. In 1984 I made my debut in my father’s office, with a managerial role.

And your father?
To work with my father was not too easy: he was an adorable and very humane person, but inflexible on the work place and since I was his son, within an office with many employees, was not a privilege, I was indeed always the “at the bottom of the heap”, I was the person who was not allowed to make a mistake. When my father became suddenly sick, in 1990, within few months set up a silent handover. He died in March 1991 and then I, son of such an influential person, had to deal with what the general opinion was at the time:” Bonetto’s son is never going to be able to carry on Rodolfo Bonetto’s business”.

I bet you won…
Absolutely yes. During the first, tiresome year I substituted all the co-workers who were used to work in a different way, since my father and I had two opposite views. He was a person dedicated to centralization, therefore “designer Rodolfo Bonetto with partners”, while I meant to create a Style Centre, with a group image. During this very rapid handover I tried to keep the clients, like Fiat Auto, since my father had a very close relationship with the Agnelli family; I was entrusted with a very small project: they wanted to carry on the collaboration with me but, as they admitted themselves, they feared I wouldn’t make it.

How did it go?
I not only managed to do that, but they gave me more and more projects and I became one of the official style partners of the Fiat group for many years. I decided to focus on the auto sector both for my personal passion and also because we have this image of experts on the car interiors’ design, which only few used to and still have. From Fiat I passed through Audi, Volkswagen, Subaru, MclAren, widening the range of clients, the structure and the organization. In 2005 I decided to open an office in Beijing, given the optimum that the market presented, and more recently an office in New York. Today we talk about Bonetto Design, a brand of the Design Center society that, in turn, has the brand Bonetto Design and the brand Rodolfo Bonetto.

Why China?
Four years ago I began to become interested in the Chinese market that has its own huge internal catchment area. I dared and six months later a huge I received a job order from a producer of luxury buses, for whom we designed interiors and exteriors and that was the beginning. Today China represents almost 50% of our turnover.

A strategic project only with China the one on luxury?
Since two years ago we have also been dedicated to an area of personal design for a very high target, demanding the uniqueness of the product, from the personalization of private jets, through yachts and Ferrari. But we also deal with smaller objects like bags, and with entire work environment.  We create “to go around with something very precious that only I own”. The idea originated in China. I got to know a thirty-eight year old Chinese man, almost bored because, during a cocktail, an evening, he didn’t know how to spend his money. I started talking about uniqueness. To mock him, I said that the amount of vehicles of his car park – 15 Ferrari, Bentley, Porsche, Rolls Royce – put him in an even position with his rich friends. The first ideas came up and, one month later, he called me again to invite me to Shanghai to talk about a project for a totally personalized car, interiors and exteriors, which turned out to be pretty funny: at the presentation of the vehicle, this man organized a show with some friends.

What is the “cult” desig n object that you wish to design?
There are many, from the Brionvega radio made by Zanuso to the bean bag chair by Zanotta, that I was happy to see again at the International Furnishing Exhibition and that is an extraordinary object. A cult object today is much more difficult to create and most of our products on the market are a new version of historical products of the 1960s-1970s, some of which created by my father. Today there is less time to think through, the production is very wide, as we saw at the International Furnishing Exhibition and at Euroluce: everything has already been created and it’s hard to come up today with a new object, all the more if cult, as it used to happen back then.

Talking about style, pencil or computer? And between  Industrial design and car sector, what is the field that better represents the made in Italy?
In my opinion nothing has changed, I still use the pencil and the modern technology is only a tool to facilitate the job and reduce the time for the project; they provide with an extent of representation which is highly greater than 30 years ago, but the truth is that the idea always comes from the head. Instruments do not substitute the mind: the brain transfers the first idea to a pencil and from there it goes to a blank paper. As for the made in Italy, in the car secotr, especially over the last decade, we achieved great results and the Italian style is always very welcomed by companies asking for a very refined product. From Giugiaro, that for 50 years has been creating wonderful cars, to a very close friend and apprentice of my father, Walter De Silva, today manager of the design of all the brands of the Volkswagen group. Italian, he has an Italian culture of industrial design and he gives his own interpretation of style on German cars. A great result given that Audi, since De Silva is working with them, had conquered formidable shares of the market and that one is an Italian style, very demanded in China.

If you were not a designer you would be…
A great chef, a peculiar one…
Strange? I would like to have a “little stand” on a beautiful beach, with only few seats, very elegant, where to cook selected dished, very tasty and very Italian of course. I cook very well, it is my hobby, and I am thinking about owning a restaurant kitchen, because I enjoy inviting people and cooking for them. Once a year I organize a “Pasta Festival” for my friends – 5,6,7,8,10 different first courses – that is very appreciated.

Paola Perfetti

Italian version

Manual skills and creativity are typical of the Brazilians and the Campana brothers often look for contact with the young people of the favelas, with whom they actively co-operate. Thus the playful South American spirit of the Campana brothers explodes in creations famous for their strong evocative component, taking their cue from everyday-use objects, waste, industrial materials, which they transform, offering them new aesthetic dignity.
Irony, inventiveness and innovation in a poetic, metropolitan, cheerful and colourful design. Design creations that stress a strong sense of culture and traditions: the work of the Campana brothers is a fascinating journey in the spirit of Brazil. Everyday trivial materials are transformed in unexpected combinations to create objects of high aesthetic and financial value. They build chairs with furry toys, use timber destined to the construction of favelas to create a design chair, they twist ropes, polyurethane cylinders and steel cables through which they give ‘design’ a new meaning: to frame an emotion in the physicality of furniture components, using creativity as an Ariadne’s thread between function and meaning. Because, as Fernando says: “Recycled materials or simple cardboard, paper and wood allow you to experiment in a dimension that spans from art to design, from technical skill to free creativity. For Brazilian designers like us, irony plays a major role, especially during creativity. It is just another form of emotionalism”.
Artists, thinkers, vanguard followers, they create and project using their very own line of “non fashion”, which is characterized by a good deal of ingeniousness, significant technical expertise and by a vibrant and energetic approach to design.
Even though their design has a taste of handmade, manual and rough, the work of the Campana brothers is the result of a very careful research, a well balanced mix of technology and science that has excited and inspired some of the most important Italian companies of interior design, who have secured the name of the two artists. They have joined the group of young creative talents that, starting from the ‘80s and the ‘90s, have been writing a new chapter in the history of design.
Deconstruction and reworking: this transformation process has infused new energy to contemporary design, offering a vibrant alternative to the rationalism of ideals that dominate today’s modernity. Humberto and Fernando are able to use the energy of their tradition to define new aesthetics, based on experimentation, creating a new and surprising viewpoint. As was the case for Vermelha, the wrap-around chair that made them famous: to build the chair they used five hundred meters of a special rope with an acrylic core and covered in cotton. The cord is hand-woven through careful overlapping, leaving sufficient surplus to form a kind of random weave which creates an unusual padding.
The TransPlastic series embraces many of the concepts explored by the two designers. It tells a fictional story: in a world made of plastic and synthetic materials, a fertile ground is laid for ‘transgenic’ creations; the material clashes with the more mature approach of contrasts: nature and plastic, cold and warm, textured and smooth surfaces.
Natural fibres cover the plastic as in an immunological response: nature grows from the plastic and vice versa. Multiple-seating chairs, lamps, clouds and islands: elements created by taking advantage of the elasticity of natural fibre. The starting points are plastic chairs, water containers and rudimentary wood stools, with the addition of elements to alter the original form and to add value and comfort to the original base material.
Humberto and Fernando work does not stop at interior design, their creativity spreads to ballet as well. Exploring new confluence points between technique and emotion, Frédéric Flamand – director of Biennale Danza – measured himself against the world of design and involved the Campana brothers in his latest theatre production: Metamorphoses. The set and costumes clearly bear the Campana signature: light skirts and ramiform structures that wrap around the bodies of the dancers, all obviously built with recycled materials.
Humberto and Fernando Campana, were born in Sao Paulo and graduated respectively in architecture and law, they have held conferences and workshops in the whole world, including at the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Vitra Design Museum, Berlin; Ecal, Lausanne; Parsons School of Design, New York. At the Museu Brasileiro da Escultura (MuBE) of Sao Paolo they lectured a course for two years and have started a group called Notechdesign. Their creations have been showcased in the most prestigious International museums and galleries, among which: MOMA, New York; Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Palazzo Reale, Milan; Vitra Design Museum, Berlin. Some of their design pieces are part of the permanent collections of Moma in New York and of the Vitra Design Museum in Berlin.

A destination in the name of nature and culture could be Saint Paul de Vence, medieval village set in the midst of Provence, cherished by artists and literates such as Prèvert and Chagall. Not far from the town lies the luxury villa St. Paul, one of the super-luxury locations offered by the British Luxury operator Sanctuary Retreats. From the lush park to the swimming-pool, this villa shows a terrace running along the entire length of the property and from which one can enjoy the view of the Côte d’Azur.
Pampered by the services offered by the tour operator, from the sommelier to the yacht charters, it is possible to go on excursions with a private tourist guide.

For a holiday dedicated to relax, we reach the opposite shore of the Mediterranean. In Marrakesh you can find El Miria Palais, a 5-star all Italian resort which doesn’t give up the traditional Moresque-Andalusian style. However very new, the building owns unique historical pieces, among which ancient ceilings, main doors, fountains and an original 400-year old arch of the Merenidi dynasty. A cozy place, with only 10 but spacious rooms, situated in the area of Le Pamleraie, the so called “Palm grove of Marrakesh” not far from La Medina. Here, you can enjoy the outdoor swimming-pool, a sunny jewel during the day but heart of the movida at night; and an exclusive Spa, the only one where you can try the real Moroccan hammam. We talk about the Oriental hammam, where the body is scrubbed with sesame seeds and the Royal Hammam, to be pampered in a traditional way while sipping the typical mint Moroccan tee. Besides a walk along historical and cultural sites, from 10th to 12th April you can also attend the third edition of Jardin’ Art, the international Festival of gardening, where landscape artists and designers will exhibit their creations. It will also be possible to visit the private parks of the city and surroundings, such as the beautiful Menara Gardens, Agdal Gardens, and the French Institute of Culture’s Gardens.

For those who at Easter will take a long and fun trip, Homelidays.it recommends a week in the Dominican Republic, where tourists can enjoy the heavenly resort of Las Terrenas. Here, a 11-person villa will offer the comfort of a huge private swimming-pool surrounded by palms and the opportunity to treat ourselves with wonderful horse-rides or with diving.

A completely different style for the glamorous and cosmopolitan week in New York, at the Le Parker Meridien (Luxury category), located in 56th avenue. For an unforgettable dinner, go to the Masa, one of the most exclusive Manhattan sushi restaurant named after its greatest chef, Masa Takayama. One warning: in order to find a place you should book the first week of the following month, unless you want to spend the evening at the chef counter.

Italian version