Aside from Milan Fashion Week, the Salone del Mobile is the event I look forward to the most when it comes to Milanese trade fairs. When you get down to it, Milan isn’t the most attractive city aesthically – especially when compared to Rome, Capri, and a slew of other popular Italian destinations. So while you can never go wrong strolling the Via Montenapoleone, trips to Milan are best planned around their fairs. In light of next month’s Salone del Mobile home fair (the largest in the world), Bottega Veneta will be opening up, for a limited time only (April 15-18, 10am-7pm; Via Privata Ercole Marelli 4/6 Milan), on the fourth floor of their new Milan headquarters.
As part of this year’s special Japanese collaboration presentation, the Bottega Veneta space will be filled with unique travel-ready items (so leave room in your suitcase when packing) that include special items not readily available outside of Japan, as well as a small collection of Bottega Veneta products designed exclusively for the occasion by Creative Director Tomas Maier.
The Japanese items for sale in the store were selected by Mr. Maier and Seiichi Kamei, editor-in-chief of the prestigious Japanese design and architecture magazine Casa Brutus. These include hand-cut Edo Kiriko glasses from a third-generation craftsman Yasunori Kimura for Taburo Corporation, hand-cut Shippo Kiriko glasses from the Tokyo-based atelier Glass Forest, Akita cedar wood pitchers by renowned artisan Yasutaka Shimizu, a wine opener by Mitsunobu Ogino of the Niigata Prefecture design studio Hyakunen-Monogatari (Tales of a Century), and a box featuring Hakone Yosegi-Zaiku, a traditional Japanese marquetry technique, by the award-winning craftsman Katsuhiro Kanazashi.
The most exciting items, however, will be four Bottega Veneta handbags, and several small leather goods fall designed exclusively and in limited edition for the event. Not bad to hold us over until the Fall 2010 beetle bags hit…
Images courtesy of the Fashion Spot forums.
