Melda Auditia’s structural, hand-crafted graduate collection seeks to examine the notion of femininity
Growing up in Indonesia, Melda Auditia was surrounded by craft. From pottery and textiles to jewellery and ceramics – plus the rich, natural fibres used to build them – needless to say that this exposure would steer the work of Melda, affecting both the composition and themes addressed in her own creations.
The designer, who’s now living in Tokyo, learnt to appreciate the process of handcrafting from a young age. “That’s what made me fall in love with fashion in the first place,” she tells me. The skill of making a quality garment or object from hand takes mastery, time and patience, which is a welcomed contradiction to the constant hum-drum of city life in Tokyo. “Life in Tokyo is incredibly fast-paced, so it’s super easy to forget that there are so many beautiful little details in my surroundings. But one thing I’ve learnt to do is to carve out the time to slow down and take in the little details, because when I let myself absorb everything, that’s when I get inspired.”
While pursuing a degree in fashion design at Bunka Fashion Collage in Japan, Melda began to employ the use of textiles and fabrics as a way of exuding her love of handcrafted processes. But, equally, it was also perceived as a way of discussing cultural and social issues that were greatly affecting the world. And this is exactly how Bloom was borne; a collection comprising large-scale flower dresses that seek to examine the subject of femininity.
Shrouded in soft pastel tones and textual wefts hanging from the shoulder, the artfully delicate compositions found in Bloom are paired with structural elements, like the panels that hang from arm to hip, cinched in corsets, sashes and, most characteristically, the structural – almost sculptural – addition of flowers and petals. Construed from subtle silhouettes and an “explosion” of colours, Melda’s use of materiality is just as important as the meaning attached to it. From sturdy high pressure laminate (HPL) to soft organdy, she toys with different processes and marries them into her own unique vision: using hand-painting, silkscreen, hand-cut petals to form the blooming flowers to achieve her goals.
Not just a beautiful foray into nature and form, the collection also turns a sharp eye onto the concept of femininity and how this is perceived throughout daily life. “Growing up, I realised that society has all these gender boxes and its own definition of what it means to be a woman or a man,” she says. “Since we were little, we have grown accustomed to suppressing our feminine sides: ‘stop crying like a little girl’. That is what they would say to us women when we show the slightest emotion, or to men when they express themselves outside the box of gender we are all put in. But we often forget that, regardless of our gender, we all have a feminine side inside us.”
The symbol of the flower, then, has great importance in Bloom as well as in the wider context of gender and identity. By merging the natural form with a floral petal, for instance, the collection sings as a reminder that “no matter what gender we identify with, or how we look, there is that feminine side that lies within ourselves and there is no right or wrong way to express it,” says Melda. The flower is widely interpreted as a feminine form, varying between cultures, place and time. “Throughout our lives, flowers have always been the symbol of femininity. Even as a kid, it was one of the first few things we came across that’s immediately associated with femininity – no matter the colour and form.” Rich in context and history, it makes for the ideal symbol to spread her messaging within this collection.
“But,” she continues, “this collection is also about the journey of discovering out feminine sides, embracing them and letting them bloom. I want every piece to embody that journey as well, and the process of growth is very much similar to how flowers come to bloom.”
So who can we envision wearing these pieces, which are artistic and bold to the typical fashion barer? “There are some pieces that you can definitely wear on a day out, but there are also some pieces where I just went all out and let my creative freedom flow,” she says. “But they’re all very personal pieces, not just to me, but it can also be for whoever is wearing them. There is no one single person that I’ve made these pieces for. I feel like everyone has their own story, so I want these pieces to give whoever wears them the freedom to tell their personal story and experience it too.”
Alyn Griffiths discovers the moulds, machines and methods of Italy’s most innovative furniture brand
B&B Italia’s introduction of cold-foamed polyurethane revolutionised the manufacturing processes of upholstered furniture. Here the mould of the ottoman Up6, part of the Up5_6 furniture suite designed by Gaetano Pesce, stands in front of the foaming department.
What does it take to be a leader in your industry? Business experts will tell you that the key is to be either the first or the best, but the measure of true success is whether you can be both. This has always been the approach of Italian firm B&B Italia, which last year celebrated 50 years as one of the country’s foremost furniture producers. Renowned for having pioneered many features and technologies that are now commonplace in contemporary furniture, the company’s quest for innovation has continued into the 21st century.
To understand the lengths B&B Italia goes to in its pursuit of fresh ideas and technological excellence, it is helpful to visit the firm’s headquarters in Brianza, around 25 kilometres north of Milan. The area has a long history of furniture production, with several influential global brands based there, having evolved from traditional family-run ateliers during Italy’s manufacturing boom following the Second World War. The legacy of craftsmanship, and a supply chain that provides top quality materials to the region’s furniture makers, remain intact, but Brianza’s current residents also utilise the latest industrialised production methods to meet demand from clients around the world.
The foaming department, featuring the mould for the Amoenus sofa designed by Antonio Citterio. The application of this technology to furniture was inspired by a visit to a factory that produced rubber ducks.
Situated close to the A9 highway that links Milan with Como, B&B Italia’s factory building and headquarters offer the first hints that this is a company with progressive design at its core. The factory, by architects Afra and Tobia Scarpa, was completed in 1968, while the headquarters – designed by Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers in 1971 and finished in 1973 – showcase the high-tech aesthetic the pair would later revisit for the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris. The architecture of the campus serves as an important signifier of B&B Italia’s values, but it is inside the factory that the firm’s innovative credentials become truly apparent.
The facility’s 20,300-square-metre floor area is divided into zones dedicated to the various stages of the manufacturing process. Skeletal metal frames resembling wireframe drawings of the company’s iconic sofas and chairs stand in clusters along one side of the building. Welded by trusted Italian suppliers, the frames are delivered to the factory and placed into moulds, which are injected with a polyurethane foam that expands to take on the form of the product. Once the foam has cooled, the pieces are moved to the upholstery area to be covered in the customer’s choice of premium leather or fabric.
Foamed products recently extracted from the moulds. Each product is cleaned of any excess foam before it is ready to be upholstered.
It’s an approach to furniture production that was groundbreaking when it was first developed in the 1960s by B&B Italia’s founder, Piero Ambrogio Busnelli. Having already established a successful business with his brother Franco in 1953, Piero dreamed of industrialising what at the time was still a predominantly artisanal process. During a research trip to London, Busnelli visited a trade fair where one exhibitor was showing rubber ducks produced using moulded polyurethane – a process he believed could be applied to furniture manufacturing. In 1966, he left Fratelli Busnelli and set up his own company to pursue this new direction, teaming up with industry leader Cesare Cassina to form C&B. The company would go on to collaborate with leading designers including Marco Zanuso, Vico Magistretti, Mario Bellini and the Scarpas, to develop products that would revolutionise the furniture industry.
The B&B Italia laboratory, where upholstered products are tested during the development phase. Here, the Febo chair, designed by Antonio Citterio, is tested for strength and durability, the equipment recreating in a short time the strains and stresses of several years of use.
C&B grew rapidly, eventually reaching a point where it was operating on the same level as the core Cassina brand. In 1973, Busnelli bought out Cassina’s shares and renamed the company B&B Italia. As the firm continued to expand, responsibilities were passed on to the next generation, with Busnelli’s sons Giorgio, Giancarlo and Emanuele taking on leadership positions. Over breakfast at the Park Hotel, a short distance from the headquarters, the current CEO, Giorgio, explains how his father put in place systems to ensure the company would continue to innovate and remain one step ahead of the competition.
“One of the first things my father did when he teamed up with Cassina was create a centre of research and development,” he recalls, “because he started working with architects and designers and needed to develop prototypes away from the factory setting.” This facility, which moved into the third and final building to be completed on the campus, by Antonio Citterio and Patricia Viel in 2002, remains the place where new products, materials and technologies are explored, tested and refined.
Upholstered products being tested during the development stage.
Today, many leading designers visit the Piero Ambrogio Busnelli Research and Development Centre to develop new products, hoping to emulate the success of the company’s most famous icons. These include the Coronado armchair and sofa by Afra and Tobia Scarpa – the first piece of upholstered furniture designed entirely for industrial mass production. It features four pieces (a seat, back, and two armrests) that can be assembled with just two screws, making it ideal for shipping internationally. In 1969, the Up series by Gaetano Pesce demonstrated the truly disruptive potential of polyurethane technology, offering an anthropomorphic form without any internal framework, which was delivered vacuum packed. Mario Bellini’s 1972 Le Bambole was the first sofa to be manufactured purely as a padded cushion without an internal frame, while Paolo Piva’s Alanda sofa bed from 1980 emphasised the importance of the R&D centre to the company, with its patented mechanisms for adjusting the headrests, armrests and bedside table.
Several other bestsellers followed in subsequent years, with one of the most significant breakthroughs occurring in 1995 with the launch of Antonio Citterio’s Harry sofa system, followed by the Charles sofa in 1997. By raising the sofa off the ground on cast-metal feet placed delicately at the corners, the designer created a new furniture archetype that has been endlessly copied due to its timeless simplicity. By that point, Citterio was already established as one of the brand’s key designers, and he has been responsible for developing and coordinating the collections of B&B’s luxury sister brand Maxalto since 1993.
An entirely computerised leather-cutting machine, boasting a scanner that can be configured according to the shade of hide, enabling it to detect minute flaws in the material.
By offering designers the opportunity to work with nascent technologies and supporting them in their endeavours to explore entirely new directions for familiar furniture archetypes, B&B Italia has consistently been able to attract top talent, from Patricia Urquiola and Naoto Fukasawa, to Zaha Hadid and Vincent Van Duysen. The collaborations between these designers and a team of 25 experts at the R&D centre are crucial to the company’s continued creative and economic progress. Every product undergoes a thorough process of detailed design and refinement, based on prototypes built by specialists in woodwork, metalwork and foam technology. “When we receive a design idea, we don’t waste our time trying to understand its real potential on paper, we start the prototyping process straight away,” says Giorgio’s son, Massimiliano, who also works at the R&D centre.
Giorgio and the head of the R&D centre, Rolando Gorla, regularly travel to major global cities where they spend time in the latest hotels, museums and galleries to identify new architectural ideas or cultural directions that might inform future projects. Gorla, who has been at the company for over 40 years, explains that the quest for innovation has become more challenging in recent years. “We’re not in the ’60s when everything needed to be done – now almost everything exists,” he says. “It is becoming more difficult to invent something new, so more often designers look to the past for something that might be worth updating.” In this context, the focus of the R&D centre has switched towards sustainability and the evolution of existing technologies to improve performance and efficiency. B&B Italia is at the forefront of identifying ways to allow materials to be separated and reused or recycled, as well as trying to develop a more environmentally friendly alternative to polyurethane. It is also working on ways to make its furniture more lightweight, so it uses less material and is easier to ship.
The B&B Italia headquarters, created by Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers in 1973, shortly before their design for the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris brought them worldwide fame.
Inside the factory, the injection-moulding manufacturing process is consistently challenged by ambitious and complex products such as Zaha Hadid’s Moon System sofa, and the SAKé sofa by Piero Lissoni, which requires 19 separate moulds. Alongside this technology, which has remained largely unchanged in 50 years, the company continues to add new machinery that helps to improve the efficiency of production. It recently invested 750,000 in an automated laser cutting machine and accompanying software that optimises the process of cutting high-quality leather hides into precise sections, ready for upholstering.
“It is a hugely complicated piece of equipment and the sort of investment that not many companies would make,” claims Busnelli, adding that it will take a few years before the machine’s efficiencies provide any return. This, however, is the spirit in which the firm has always operated, since the early days when its founder paid for a pneumatic press capable of producing 1,500 tonnes of force, instead of the 500 tonnes necessary to produce the items currently in the collection. “This was another thing inherent in Dad’s strong character,” Busnelli adds. “He actually completely changed the way to produce; we now had a company with industrial processes.”
In today’s hyper-competitive global market, innovation and risk-taking in business is as important as it is in design and manufacturing. In 2015, Busnelli made the decision to sell a majority stake in the company to a subsidiary operated by Andrea Bonomi’s Italian investment company, Investindustrial, which part-owns and supports a range of premium brands, including Aston Martin and lighting firm Flos. With a healthy turnover of over 180 million, Busnelli could have been satisfied to remain one of Europe’s largest furniture brands, but he recognises that continuing international expansion requires more risk and investment than a small family-run company could cope with. “For many years people were saying small is good – it’s nice; it’s craftsmanship. But in the end if you want to play globally you need to compromise a lot to be represented in the market,” he insists.
Giorgio Busnelli, B&B Italia CEO and son of founder Piero Ambrogio Busnelli, began working for the company in 1973. Here, Busnelli sits on a unique edition of the Up5_6 chair piece, constructed out of wood.
With backing from Investindustrial, B&B Italia purchased a majority stake in high-end kitchen producer Arclinea in 2016, with the aim of accelerating its international expansion. “I like the idea that it is possible to create a conglomerate like Louis Vuitton has done in fashion,” adds Busnelli. “So the idea is to create a group of the best companies of high-end design in the world.” This ambitious plan will see the Busnelli family adding to its portfolio of brands in the coming years, enabling it to expand into new markets and apply its knowledge of materials, processes and technologies to a broader range of products.
With around 500 staff working for the company across design, production, contract projects, sales, marketing and distribution, B&B Italia is now firmly established in the international furniture market and will continue to extend its influence through key strategic partnerships and investments. As Busnelli finishes breakfast and prepares to dash off to a meeting with the management of Arclinea, he offers a final insight into the mindset that has formed the basis of the company’s success. “One of the most important things my father taught me is to be curious,” he says, “because curiosity is really fundamental for everything you want to do in your life.”
In a series of six short films, Canali explores the craft and construction of some of its key designs
‘Where do stories come from?’ asks Italian writer and director Ivan Cottroneo. ‘Everything starts with a blank page – metaphorical or physical – or a blank screen in a cinema before a movie begins. This is a very significant image and despite everything that is said about writer’s block or director’s block, this image is inspirational to me. I get the urge to fill that blank screen, I want to fill that blank page.’
In a recent collaboration with Canali, Cottroneo – who co-wrote the script for Luca Guadagnino’s I Am Love – came together with Luca Bigazzi, director of photography for Paolo Sorrentino’s The Great Beauty, and Oscar-winning composer Dario Marianelli to create an exclusive short film. The result – Rewind – pays homage to the attention to detail involved in the making of a Canali blazer, from pattern-making to the final stitches.
Now, this narrative continues with Stories of Craftsmanship, which explores the craft and construction of some of the other garments the brand is best known for. Six short films released over the several weeks each focus on an item from the Canali catalogue: The Shirt; The Tie; The Shoe; The Belt; The Sweater; The Trouser. The latest episode, released today, focuses on the construction of a Canali sweater. Watch it here.
