Crossing Lines

Design Talk Crossing Lines

Last night’s final Design Miami/ Design Talk hosted by W Magazine’s Editor-in-Chief Stefano Tonchi, Crossing Lines, brought together fashion designer Joseph Altuzarra, interior designer Rafael de Cardenas, and product designer Patricia Urquiola. The talk participants explored the intersection of design, architecture, and fashion while also delving into the unique aspects of each discipline.

“I think the boundaries are becoming more and more blurred,” Patricia Urquiola, who has designed for Kartell, B&B Italia, and many other notable companies, stated at the start of the talk. “The society we now live in encourages more crossover than ever before.”

Joseph Altuzarra, a protégé of Marc Jacobs and former designer for Proenza Schouler and Givenchy, talked about the ways in which architecture, and Rem Koolhaas in particular, had inspired his fashion designs.

“What fashion design and architecture have in common is an emphasis on how design interacts with the body.” He went on later to note that a person’s design choices coincide with their life experiences and that people often choose to wear things that “remind them of the past.”

After Tonchi pointed out that most of the work of interior designer Rafael de Cardenas was different from the other panelists in that in involved no production and was more like the work of an artist, de Cardenas discussed his approach with new clients. “I’ve been asked to do something shabby chic, so I’ll say, ‘Sure! Let’s do shabby chic!’ but then I give the client something very different. Sometimes you have to subvert what the client wants—it’s a game of psychology.”

Urqiuola went on to explain how different it was for her to make a chair for a company like Kartell—drawing a comparison to a chair that was introduced at Salone del Mobile two years ago and is still not available for purchase given the complicated aspects of the chair’s production.