MILAN
Designer Karim Rashid stands out in Milan, partly because he is 6 feet 4 and wearing a pale pink suit and pink titanium sunglasses. But also because he is one of a handful of American-based designers who create products for Italian furniture companies to show at the annual International Furniture Fair that ended here last week.
Although he may look out of place in the land of black-clad Prada and Gucci hipsters, Rashid is totally in tune with the scene. He knows Italy, having studied industrial design with Ettore Sottsass and begun his design career here. He's been a regular at the fair for years. And he understands that here at the epicenter of cutting-edge design, Italian furniture makers still have a distinctly old-fashioned way of doing business.
"There is this thing about Italian furniture manufacturers," said Rashid as he folded his lanky frame on a leather sofa in the showroom of Natuzzi, Italy's largest furniture manufacturer. "They are very personal, and there is lots of human contact. You have to spend a lot of time with them, and if you are not local they can forget about you." Rashid, 44, who has designed 1,000 products for major players such as Sony, Target and Umbra, is creating a line for Natuzzi, to be introduced next year.
Even as American manufacturers and retailers increasingly turn to China to produce sofas, lamps and entertainment centers priced to sell in big numbers, most Italian firms continue to manufacture in small, family-run factories, preferring quality over quantity, innovation over imitation.
Jet-setting designers such as Philippe Starck, Marcel Wanders, Jasper Morrison and Hella Jongerius appreciate working with Italian firms because of that culture's deep passion for the design of everything from bustiers to race cars. Not to mention, says Rashid, that "Italians are masters at media and public relations and discerning imagery and branding."
Nasir Kassamali is president of Luminaire, a chain of four design shops based in Miami. "When it comes to fine detailing," he says, "the Chinese can't do what the Italians do yet. It will be a long time, in my opinion, before high-end, high-quality merchandise can be produced in China. The Italians, for example, are the only ones who can produce very fine stitching on leather."
Respect for the "made in Italy" label stretches to new technological tricks as well, including the Vortexx fiberglass chandelier designed for the Milan fair for Sawaya & Moroni by Iraqi-born British designer Zaha Hadid, or the aerodynamic grace of Cassina's Aspen sofa by French designer Jean-Marie Massaud.
"What Italians do is make modern, and make it well," says Donna Warner, editor-in-chief of Metropolitan Home magazine, who attended the Milan show. "Italians are willing to experiment with new materials and work with them until they get it right. And they are willing to work with young designers, which you don't see so much now in this country." But, says Warner, the Italian label and the current strength of the Euro mean consumers will have to pay more for the imported cache.
The annual Salone Internazionale del Mobile at the Milan fairgrounds drew manufacturers from as far away as Ecuador and Latvia. But more than 80 percent of the 1,630 exhibitors here this year were Italian, as were the majority of firms exhibiting in showrooms all over the city.
Many of these Italian companies have established a global reach: B&B Italia, one of the world's best-known purveyors of refined minimalist Italian furnishings; Missoni, whose sophisticated prints make the leap from the fashion runway to the fashionable home; Venini, whose Murano-made glass pieces appear in cool lofts and in New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art; and Poltrona Frau, whose leather upholstery is found in Ferraris and Mercedes, as well as well-dressed living rooms.
Take Cappellini, one of the most influential modern design companies in Italy, where a roster of design talents usually scores a major design coup here and subsequent coverage in design magazines all over the world.
