Calm on Lake Como—Then a Rush of Design in Milan
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At Villa D’Este and the Salone del Mobile, good taste—of all varieties—was on magnificent display.
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A view of Lake Como from the Villa D’Este.
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You may be shocked to learn that Lake Como is not named after legendary American crooner Perry Como. It isn’t named after Andrew Cuomo either—but that doesn’t stop many Americans from confusing the two when visiting the Italian Lakes. I don’t know if it bothers the locals hearing “Lago di Kwomo,” but it sure bothers me.
Tourist numbers in the lakes have rocketed in the past decade. You could call it the Clooney effect (although George himself seems to have decamped to Provence of late, perhaps as a result of it). It’s a mercy that White Lotus has not descended on Como....yet. Even so, new international hotel chains are opening glitzy local satellites to cater to the influx of high-spending tourists in search of the authentic “Lake Cuomo” experience. Como itself throngs with backpacks and gelati from Easter until the fall.
Fortunately, there are places to go to escape the crowds. Recently I got to stay for a night, just up the lakeshore in Cernobbio, at the 16th century Villa D’Este, arguably Italy’s poshest, grandest hotel destination, which celebrated 150 years in business just a couple of years ago. It was not my first time. In fact, it was something of a homecoming. I’d been there before several times, right at the beginning of my career, and in very different circumstances.
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Thirty years and change ago, I was there, for Ideabiella, a twice a yearly expo featuring the crème-de-la-crème of Italy’s textile companies from nearby Biella, the epicenter of the Italian wool industry. Here, makers showed off new designs to the buyers from top fashion and tailoring brands—and me, a total noob on weaving. My job was to glean trends from racks of cloth samples from mills like Loro Piana, Cerruti, and Ermenegildo Zegna.
Interviewing people when you don’t know the first thing about their work is a struggle. Fortunately, several took pity on me and gave me a quick schooling in cloth. One had me close my eyes and plonked two squares of gray suiting fabric into my hands. “Can you feel the difference?” he asked. I could, I said. “Both are virgin wool,” he said, “but one is flannel the other is crêpe. It’s all in the fibers, the yarns, the weave. The difference is how it feels. It’s always about how it feels.”
The same gent also taught me what is called the “Biella handshake,” which involves taking advantage of a greeting to cop a feel of one’s opposite numbers jacket cuff. I kid you not. To Italians, especially in menswear, feeling cloth telegraphs as much about you as the shine on your shoes. To cap it all, the late Sergio Loro Piana, then the President of Ideabiella as well as the CEO of Loro Piana, kindly ignored my idiot questions and instead answered all the ones he felt sure I would have asked had I known remotely what I was talking about.
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Inside the beautifully appointed, 150-year-old Villa D’Este.
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As a bonus, I got to stay (alone) in a palatial room on the hotel’s piano nobile with swaggy gold curtains and one of the most beautiful views I’ve ever seen, and dine (alone) in an awe-inspiring restaurant. Over several seasons, the hotel provided me with a crash course in many things: textiles, Italy, how to dress, business etiquette, and old-school charm. Some of it even rubbed off on me.
Back in the modern world, the Villa D’Este Group has lately taken an unusually local approach to developing its portfolio, focusing almost entirely on Cernobbio, where it stands, and on nearby Como. Here, the group has focused entirely on updating hotels or creating from scratch small, serviced apartment buildings in the two lakeside towns. Each have their own vibe and, importantly, their own name, but all give access to the upscale services of the mothership herself. Underlying this unorthodox approach is the desire to protect the hinterland of the Villa D’Este against the encroachment of McDonald’s, designer shops, and anything else that might generally lower the tone. Currently in development in Cernobbio are the Hotel Regina Olga and the next-door Miralago Apartments (opening in June, with Harry’s Bar literally outside the front door). In Como, the waterfront Palazzo Venezia will expand in the next two years to encompass the old Hotel Terminus next door.
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Another view of Lake Como from the Villa D’Este.
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Over the years, the Villa D’Este has lost not one jot of its charm but bolstered it with 21st century service. It looks and feels grand. It makes you walk differently, in the way your old aunt might inspire you to sit up straight and mind your p’s and q’s, without ever saying a word. Its good to rise to the occasion. But as a place to stay, it’s comfortable, welcoming, and far from stuffy. Revisiting brought back to me that of all the hotels I’m fortunate enough to stay in. The ones I most love to spend time in are not the global chains but those unique places that could really only be precisely where they are.
From that oasis of calm I took a forty-minute drive down the Autostrada to Milan’s busiest week of the year. The Salone del Mobile design week has been around since the early ‘60s to showcase furniture, interior design, industrial design, and household objects in a thousand materials. Each spring, tutto Milano is out on the street, not only to see the latest in design but to celebrate Milan as a crossroads of taste. Big fashion brands have been prominent players in the Salone for a decade, sensing that, increasingly, home is the ultimate luxury.
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A blanket from the Pierre Legrain collection.
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The scale of the Salone is daunting, and as I was only there for a couple of nights, I centered my attention on the offerings of my hosts at Louis Vuitton, whose Objets Nomades has been producing furniture, textiles, glassware, and ceramics under the LV monogram since 2012, collaborating with a raft of international design houses and artisans to bring to life the brand in a livable, rather than wearable, format. This year, the Salone was the venue for a significant expansion of Objets Nomades, centered on a collaboration with the descendants of a leading Parisian craftsmen, Pierre Legrain, whose promising career was cut short when he died in 1929, at just 39.
Legrain was the epitome of the new mood in Paris that emerged after World War I at the 1924 Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes. Legrain had been active in Art Nouveau, the movement that preceded World War 1 too, but it was Art Déco, the name of which derived directly from the exhibition, that cemented his reputation. Legrain, an artisanal polymath, made furniture, illustrations, cigarette cases, and book bindings as one-off commissions for wealthy clients swept up in Art Déco fever. Relatively few of his pieces survive—perhaps as few as 40—but Vuitton’s reverent homage to his work underlines that Italy does not have the monopoly on taste.
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Tableware from the Objets Nomades Pierre Legrain Homage Collection by Louis Vuitton.
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For Objets Nomades, the LV team worked with Stéphane Cristol Barthèz and his brother Florent, great grandsons of Legrain, along with specialist artisans to create new carpets and blankets, boxes and furniture taken inspired closely by original Legrain pieces. Many of these are made-to-order only, though some textiles and tableware will be available in stores.
If you have a yen to hit Milan and don’t mind the peak hotel prices, the Salone is a thrilling time to be in the world capital of design. There’s a public, festival feeling about the Salone, one that in which the Milanese are happy to be swept up. But I’d say, before you dive in to the melée, it’s well worth heading first to Como for a spot of lakeside time to yourself.
Thanks for reading this week’s Big Black Book newsletter. See you in a couple weeks. Until then, feel free to drop me a note at nicksullivanesquire@hearst.com.
- Nick Sullivan, creative director
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