If you think that Milan Design Week (4th – 9th April) is just about interior décor, well, you're greatly mistaken. As seen in previous features regarding the past years, there are always several experimental projects by young and exciting creative minds, apart from presentations of products manufactured by fashion designers in collaboration with interior design companies. Dolce & Gabbana will for example launch small kitchen appliances inspired by Sicily and made together with Smeg (in the past the duo designed fridges with the domestic appliance manufacturer).
Yet there are also events organised by small independent designers who merge fashion and interior design together: French studio Forget Me Not will for example launch next week its new collection of home décor items.
Founded by French-born designer Coco Brun, this studio specialises in prints for the global fashion and interior industries.
Brun is known for her illustrations and textile designs, but also for her modernist and surrealist imagery created for luxury houses, famous publications, and young labels (her clients include Baccarat, Beauregard, Cartier, Evian, Vogue and Elle, among the others).
Forget Me Not produces a wide range of items (sometimes in collaboration with other companies and designers) – from scarves to swimwear and beachwear, from bags to homewear. Brun combines both traditional and classic techniques like pencil, watercolor, pastels or Indian ink with digital processes for her illustrations, often drawing everything by hand, and then montaging the images in Photoshop.
Forget Me Not's latest collection of reversible blankets (that can be rolled and carried around like bags) and cushions – set to be launched next week during Milan Design Week at the Artisanal Store – is produced with advanced Jacquard weaving techniques.
The pieces are inspired by nature and marine elements, but the offer includes some clever abstract patterns that move from geometrical figures.
As noticed in the previous years, Milan Design Week is keeping on becoming a flexible and friendly hub for a wide range of presentations and creators, with events open to the public and quite a few design opportunities for families with children as well (a market that shouldn't be underestimated).
Considering also the way it attracts a great number of artists, designers and universities from other countries, it has the potential of becoming not just another appointment for people from the fashion industry, but a serious competitor.
Besides, fashion designers who so far got away with a mere collaboration (usually chairs, sofas, and an assortment of kitchen appliances and home accessories), may have to start rethinking their presence at the design week as they may have to confront themselves with a young generation of creative people ready to steal the scene with well-edited events and compact collections of more exciting and less pretentious products.
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