Eleonore Cavalli talks about the beauty of Made in Italy

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The period of change, the desire to restart, the creative director of luxury brand Visionnaire talks about the “supersalone” experience

Internationalisation and the importance of building a system: Eleonore Cavalli, creative director of luxury brand Visionnaire, takes us through the design sector pillars while, in the showroom in Milan’s Piazza Cavour, she amiably juggles visitors, fond clients and buyers from all over the world.

Perhaps it’s easy to jump on the bandwagon of victory now, but the “supersalone” challenge was not to be taken lightly.

I confess that we really believed in this restart, right from the outset. It wasn’t just a challenge for our sector, the first “supersalone” was crucial for the entire country. We’re all proud of having been among the first segments to have put lots of our energy, our creativity and our community into this week, in which meeting each other again was fundamental.

There have been so many changes, not just a new edition and a new president but also a new digital platform.

The digital platform came into being in response to great demand. Working on it was very interesting because it took months of analysis to work out how an important brand at global level like the Salone del Mobile could build a platform worthy of its international brand name. The upshot has been not just a showcase but also a business hub, making it possible to stay close to everyone and to catch up on what they’re up to 365 days a year. It’s a project I was part of, principally for the design community. That was the start, it’s a trial run that will also help expand our services as of April 2022, when the 60th edition will be held, and therefore our 60th participation.

Are you Salone aficionados?

We were among those who firmly believed in internationalising a sector 100% Made in Italy, with the ability to win hearts all over the world and carve out a leadership position for every single company that makes up the system.

Hopes for the next Salone?

To carry on building a system.

What did you showcase at this edition?

We’re presenting a biennial collection in the showroom that was brought forward from June 2020 and which involves many national and international architects and designers. We presented our Caprice collection, a new collaboration with Marijana Radovic and Marco Bonelli, alias m2atelier. Besides which, we all need a bit of light-heartedness and escapism, don’t we? We’re also presenting a project for the outdoors, given that it became a major part of our lives and our lifestyles under lockdown. In fact the Babylon Rack project by Alessandro La Spada expresses the new versatility that every room has acquired, whereas previously they were more unidirectional.

What’s changed?

Nowadays you can relax, study or do physical activities in your living room. We’ve started making the most of every single centimetre of our houses and transforming them to suit our requirements. Making our homes more intimate and tailored to our needs has made people who took less notice of our sector and who tended to be more generalist realise just how important quality is. We can all interact with beauty every day.

We all create our own channels of beauty. What are yours?

We wanted to take on board and share the same values, not just relating to the quality of a product or a design, but also to the image the company projects through these forms. I’m talking about regional and social responsibility, about the traceability of materials, the circular economy and choices that are now fundamental. They might seem tough but they’re not, so we have to turn down illegal timber, say no to deforestation, support reforestation and obtain environmental certifications. All this is beauty.