‘When fashion, film and architecture work together, it’s an empowering thing,’ says film director Luca Guadagnino, who explored the links between the mediums when designing the show set for Jonathan Anderson’s first Dior womenswear collection, for S/S 2026, which debuted last October. A collaborative project, it was the second time Guadagnino and production designer Stefano Baisi had worked with Anderson, who was the costume designer on Guadagnino’s 2024 film Queer.

Anderson’s brief for the show was for a standalone space that also acknowledged his respect for Dior’s history. Says Guadagnino: ‘The way Jonathan works is to involve people dear to him, pushing everybody to get to their limits. It’s beautiful to see that the space we created was really real – physical, massive, very architectural. It didn’t feel transient.’

The purpose-built space was dominated by an inverted pyramid that protruded from the ceiling, becoming a screen as the show began. On it, played a specially commissioned film by British director Adam Curtis, best known for his documentaries on power, politics and the media. Anderson was keen for the space to be monumental, a concept he introduced in the runway set for his S/S 2026 menswear collection for Dior in Paris, which drew inspiration from Berlin’s atmospheric Gemäldegalerie art museum. ‘There is always a lovely playfulness in what Jonathan does,’ says Guadagnino.

The womenswear show also responded to its location in the Jardin des Tuileries, opposite the Place de la Concorde and the Louvre. ‘We started to reflect on the axis that connected the Louvre and the Place de la Concorde, and on the idea of an iconic Paris landmark. The reverse pyramid was one of the topics we discussed, and that was the moment in which Stefano and I brought this architectural museum sensitivity to the place. And then – and this was a beautiful intuition from Jonathan – we thought of using the pyramid not just as decoration, but as the diamond upon which this video could be shown, letting you into the new era at Dior.’

The modernist backdrop was offset by the evocative narrative of Curtis’ film, which interspersed archival footage with his distinctive eclecticism. Clips from Dior’s history are juxtaposed against fragments from horror movies. Curtis keeps the anxiety cranked up throughout, ending abruptly on a pure white frame, signalling the clean slate Anderson is beginning at Dior.

‘I think the documentary-style way in which Adam works inspired Jonathan, showing a better way to communicate,’ says Baisi. ‘He has this big challenge of designing a new collection for a brand that has its own important history. He’s been very successful in writing his own vision. Using irony is the key to his success, and this also comes through in the lens of the way Adam works.’

Taken together, the film and the set confront Dior’s history, before turning the page to Anderson’s new chapter. ‘The idea of making a mini haunted mansion film – which is traditionally Anglo-Saxon Gothic, from an Anglo-Saxon designer and filmmaker – shows that the ghosts inhabit the past and the present, and it’s inevitable that we have to deal with those ghosts,’ Guadagnino says. ‘What was beautiful here was that not only did Dior go for this very evocative piece, but when the movie finished during the show, the audience had an incredible reaction to it even before the first look was out. It was very emotional and very strong.’

dior.com

This article appears in the Wallpaper* March Style 2026 issue, available in print on newsstands, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News + Subscribe to Wallpaper* today

‘Luigi Ghirri: Felicità’ at Thomas Dane Gallery proposes happiness not as a condition to be attained, but as a way of inhabiting the world through images. This is not joy as spectacle or affirmation, but something quieter and more exacting: the felicity of naming, noticing and holding things in view without exhausting them. Curated by Alessio Bolzoni and Luca Guadagnino, and unfolding across both of Thomas Dane’s Duke Street spaces, the exhibition makes a persuasive case for Ghirri as one of the most lucid thinkers of photography’s perceptual limits – and one of its most generous practitioners.

The exhibition’s physical split is not incidental. Moving between the two galleries feels like moving between registers of looking: from surface to space, from image as object to image as environment. Bolzoni and Guadagnino’s curatorial touch is deliberately light, allowing Ghirri’s internal logic to emerge through juxtaposition rather than didactic framing. What results is not a survey, but a carefully calibrated rhythm – one that mirrors Ghirri’s own conception of photography as an open, elastic system rather than a sequence of definitive statements.

The photographs that anchor the first space are small, restrained, almost stubbornly unassuming. Works such as Sassuolo, 1970 and the cluster of Modena images made between 1970 and 1973 appear to offer very little at first glance: fragments of walls, signage, partial horizons, colours softened into chalky blues and muted reds. But this reduction is precisely the point. Ghirri understood that modern landscapes – particularly the Italian countryside – had become visually exhausted, over-coded by clichés and nostalgia. Rather than attempting to restore a lost pastoral ideal, he chose to work from within this representational void.

These early images operate like a pared-down vocabulary of place. In Modena, 1971, a sign gestures beyond the frame, pointing nowhere in particular. In another Modena photograph, from 1972, a strip of sky presses against a flat plane of colour, collapsing depth into surface. The photographs refuse narrative resolution; instead, they ask the viewer to stay with the act of looking itself. Happiness, here, is not revelation but attention.

This emphasis on surfaces, maps and signs establishes a logic that carries into the second Duke Street space, where interiors and landscapes extend the same conceptual enquiry. Wallpapers photographed in the mid-1970s flatten rooms into graphic fields, turning domestic space into another kind of atlas. Walls behave like pages; photographs become images of images. The boundary between inner and outer worlds – so central to Ghirri’s thinking – begins to dissolve.

The later works bring this sensibility into the open air. In Capri, 1981 and Croce Bianca, Piacenza, 1984, colour becomes more luminous, but never expressive in a sentimental sense. The compositions are precise, almost architectural, holding the viewer at a measured distance. Landscapes from the late 1980s: Campagna Emiliana, 1985-89, Marina di Ravenna, 1986, are neither celebratory nor elegiac. They refuse the familiar drama of old versus new, rural versus industrial. Instead, they present a world shaped by coexistence, where distinctions have lost their visual productivity.

This curatorial decision to skirt Ghirri’s most iconic images in favour of quieter, less resolved works sharpens the exhibition’s thesis. ‘Felicità’ is not about reclaiming landscape or reasserting photography’s authority. It is about recalibrating the gaze. Ghirri believed photography should organise attention rather than overwhelm it – offering a pause within a world increasingly governed by speed, repetition and visual noise. His images do not seek to transform reality; they allow it to appear, lightly and with measure.

Seen today, Ghirri’s work feels less prophetic than necessary. In an image economy driven by excess and instant legibility, ‘Felicità’ argues for another mode of seeing: photography as a way of staying with things, of accepting their partiality, of recognising that meaning often resides in what remains unresolved. Bolzoni and Guadagnino’s exhibition doesn’t present happiness as an outcome, but as a condition of looking – one grounded in silence, precision and the radical modesty of paying attention.

Luigi Ghirri: Felicità is at Thomas Dane Gallery from 23 January to 9 May 2026, thomasdanegallery.com

Hitting big screens this week (17 October), Luca Guadagnino's After the Hunt stars Julia Roberts, Ayo Edebiri and Andrew Garfield in a twisty psychological thriller from a script by Nora Garret. Set in New Haven on the Yale University campus, the movie follows the mundane life of two university professors and a PHD student as they navigate accusations and secrets.

Watching the film is worth it for the sets alone, their locations becoming characters in themselves and sucking in viewers with their multilayered, well-crafted approach.

Architect and production designer Stefano Baisi has previously worked with the director on production design for Queer (read our interview with Guadagnino and Daniel Craig) and has taken on the challenge of recreating iconic New Haven locations and the Yale Campus for After the Hunt’s production (filming took place in London and Cambridge). 'Everything you see on screen has been faithfully recreated from scratch, based on extensive visual and historical research,' says Baisi.

'Being so tactile, textured and layered, sets like these are a gift to actors,' said Garfield. The film is set in 2019, and the team did painstaking research to reproduce its public locations as faithfully as they could, taking key Yale spaces back to their pre-pandemic appearance.

The film also marks the return to the cinema of cinematographer Malik Hassan Sayeed, who had worked on legendary blockbusters including Spike Lee’s Clockers and Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut, but had been absent from movies for over two decades.

Hassan Sayeed was able to reproduce the East Coast light by orienting the set to capture the sun in a way that was faithful to the geographical location. He and Guadagnino looked at the likes of cinematographer Gordon Willis for inspiration: 'We were looking at those [directors of photography] who envelop reality with a kind of gilded light,' comments Guadagnino.

After the Hunt film set: Alma's apartment

Design lovers will be sucked into the film from the incredible apartment interior of main character Alma (played by Roberts) and her husband Frederik. 'A set like [this] informs you in ways you’re not even ever aware of,' says Roberts. 'You start slowly getting saturated in the subtleties until you’re just these two people living in this space that is home.'

The apartment is inspired by turn-of-the-century New York interiors, with the Langham Building and Dakota Building serving as specific inspiration to Baisi and Guadagnino. They created a set based on a 'Classic Seven' apartment typology, with a formal dining room, living room, kitchen, three bedrooms, maid's quarters, and two baths. The set features wood-panelling, mirrored surfaces and decorated ceilings, with rooms interconnecting to reflect its inhabitants' rich lives.

'We wanted an interior that could quietly tell the story of these characters,' says Baisi. A multilayered family history is portrayed within the space, imagined as a family home passed on through generations.

This fictional interior was initially the home of Frederik's grandparents, who fled Nazi-occupied Europe, bringing influences from the Bauhaus and Wiener Werkstätte. Baisi looked closely at the work of architect and designer Josef Hoffman, whose designs were recreated both in specific furniture elements (such as chairs and a table in the dining room) as well as whole rooms, like the kitchen, inspired by a late 19th-century Hoffman project.

'Alma is cosmopolitan, [the couple] had travelled the world, and so we also included Haitian and North African art within the space,' adds Baisi.

More elements came from Guadagnino's own collection, from Gio Ponti chairs to Piero Portaluppi sofas, as well as a Guglielmo Ulrich bed. Every element – from the books in the libraries to the contents of the drawers – was carefully crafted by the duo, to give a sense of a space well lived in that becomes a theatrical set for some of the film's most poignant scenes.

'Stefano and I did extensive research to choose every book, every work of art, every piece of cookware and every miniscule detail,' adds the director. 'And the apartment’s design became a great open theatre for exploring power dynamics.'

Guadagnino uses the apartment in a theatrical way, making the most of its layout and visual richness. An opening scene is set across its sitting and dining rooms, with the camera view changing throughout the scene as we meet the characters. The bedroom becomes the stage for a visual repetition that recurs throughout the movie, while the kitchen is the set of a memorable scene that makes the most of the room's layout and entrance.

The New Haven Wharf apartment

The grandeur and multi-layered design approach of Alma's home is placed in heavy contrast with her Wharf apartment, an austere, bare space that becomes a plot device to unveil different aspects of her history.

Placing the character in this space comes from a desire to represent the reality of a town like New Haven, and create a contrasts with the typical landmarks of the city centre with its Gothic towers. 'So these large windows allow you to see the chimneys of the wharf, a landscape that is very different and much more industrial.'

The Yale campus and iconic locations in New Haven, Connecticut

If you have a peek at online discussions about the film, there is a general sense that it has been filmed on location at Yale, such is the work done by the crew to recreate venues and spaces that are key to the storyline.

In particular, the sets of the Tandoor restaurant – a New Haven restaurant that opened inside a former diner – and popular bar Three Sheets were reproduced with their pre-2019 interiors, following extensive image research.

'As a designer, being guided by a story is extremely fulfilling, and it gave me the opportunity to access locations that are usually inaccessible; it is a great privilege,' says Baisi. 'I have dreamed of accessing these cinematic spaces since I was a child, and I found that compared to architecture, working on film production allows the creative process to be constant.'

Luca Guadagnino, the fearlessly inventive director of Call Me by Your Name and Challengers, calls his new film Queer 'a story of unsynchronised love'. Adapted from a novella by Beat Generation hero William S Burroughs, it follows an awkward but sometimes tender romance that develops between two very different men in 1950s Mexico City. Swapping the sharp tailoring of Bond for a louche, loose-fitting Brooks Brothers suit, Daniel Craig plays William Lee, a lonely functioning drug addict based on Burroughs himself. When Lee first glimpses dashing young serviceman Eugene Allerton (Drew Starkey) – a head-rush moment Guadagnino soundtracks with an incongruous blast of Nirvana’s Come As You Are – he is immediately mesmerised.

Though Lee shows his feelings more easily and eventually offers Allerton a financial incentive to travel with him to Ecuador, he is no sugar daddy – at times, the younger man is the more proactive party. 'I do think Allerton is as in love with Lee as Lee is in love with Allerton,' Craig says, sitting next to Guadagnino in a Soho hotel room. 'Allerton just can't show it, but Lee is looking for responses [from him]. And the less Allerton gives him, the more Lee fucks it up. That mistake is fascinating to me because, you know, I've been there, done that. We've all done it.'

The film's title may feel political – 'queer' is a reclaimed slur that still carries negative connotations for many LGBTQ+ people – but Craig believes this story 'deals with many universal themes about love, desire, loneliness and the need to connect'. Screenwriter Justin Kuritzkes, who also wrote Guadagnino's last film, Challengers, a lusty tale of quasi-throupledom among pro tennis players, says he wrote Queer's realistic, gloss-free gay sex scenes to be emotionally revealing. 'This is a movie about people trying to find the language for connection, so those intimate scenes are essential because the story is still happening there,' he says. 'I think we've been conditioned to some extent by bad sex scenes from the 1990s to think of them as a break from the movie – like, the story stops and there's a little pop video in the middle of it. But that [approach] to me is cinematically dead.'

When Lee and Allerton arrive in Ecuador, they're sucked into the jungle in pursuit of yagé, a plant-based psychedelic more commonly known as ayahuasca. Lee believes it contains a magic ingredient that will help the men to communicate on a deeper, nonverbal level. At this point, the film deviates from Burroughs' source material and becomes incredibly trippy – there's even a dazzlingly surreal dance sequence. 'That was one of the first decisions that Luca and I made,' Kuritzkes says. 'When the book gets to the jungle, they open a door but very quickly close it because they don't get the yagé. But we felt like it would be interesting to step through that door and see whether it would solve anything for Lee and Allerton.'

Here, Guadagnino and Craig talk about Queer's key themes, working with Jonathan Anderson on the costumes – he previously teamed with Guadagnino on Challengers – and the visual inspirations behind the film's deliberately artificial depiction of Mexico City.

Wallpaper*: What made you want to work with Jonathan Anderson again on this film's costumes? What do you like about his designs?

Luca Guadagnino: I like his mind. I think he's a great artist, a great intellectual. I have these very in-depth conversations with Jonathan about everything [to do with] form. And we have companionship – I like to invite people that are not necessarily cinema people to join the art of film.

W*: Did you give him quite a specific brief, or did you leave it to his imagination?

LG: I don't work like that. I know what you mean, because I have learned that there is this idea that the director gives briefs and every department works [on them], and then the director conducts all the instruments. [But] I don't think that's the way we work. The way we work is that we are inspired by the same thing – the book, the script, the world we want to bring to life – and then we go deep.

Daniel Craig: It would be a bit like me coming to set and going, 'This is how I'm going to act it.' Actually, you want to be as free as you possibly can – you don't want to make any rules and block yourself from something magical happening, especially through the mind of somebody like Jonathan or Stefano [Baisi], who designed our production. You want to be moved by something as it's happening, and not stuck in some restricted feeling.

W*: Lee wears this loose-fitting suit that kind of gets grubbier as the film goes on. Did that deterioration help you get into his mindset?

DC: I've worked with some amazing costume designers over the years, and Jonathan I include among them. He has this way – there's no 'we're going to do this'. It’s more 'I'm thinking this, maybe this' and then you go down [the rack]. He had these two suits sitting in a rack as long as from here to the wall, and maybe he put those two suits in exactly the right place, but he wanted me to discover them. He allowed me to discover them for myself.

I was like, 'They're old Brooks Brothers?' And he was like, 'Yeah, they're originals.' And I literally put one on and [looked at] the other 100 suits that were there and went: 'I'm not gonna bother trying them.' It was that simple – there were other things we had to figure out, but the costume fitting literally lasted half an hour.

W*: Though Lee does look increasingly dishevelled, he retains a certain style. Do you think that's innate to him as a character?

DC: I do think that he is a functioning drug addict [and] alcoholic in the truest sense of the word – [in that] he functions. We don't show him writing in the movie [because] we weren't making a movie about a writer. But clearly there's a typewriter there, so he writes.

He has discipline in everything he does, but there's also a looseness about what he does, because he's a smack addict and a drunk. Those two things coming together are very interesting to me: that he gets up, cleans his teeth, showers, does all the things he's supposed to do, and then takes drugs. That's a beautiful contradiction.

W*: Your production designer Stefano Baisi recreated 1950s Mexico City at Cinecittà Studios in Rome in a way that intentionally looks like a movie set. Luca, did you and Stefano have a clear vision for how you wanted Mexico City to look?

LG: We were always thinking of making it an artificial projection [of Mexico City] from the book and the mind of Burroughs. But we didn't have a pre-concept; we worked on many elements, from the historical accuracy of the places [to] the nature of the places through the lens of the book and the descriptions in the book. We also looked at other filmmakers' work, particularly [1950s directors] Powell and Pressburger, and then patiently built from that.

W*: Things get super-trippy when Lee and Allerton head into the jungle and take yagé, or ayahuasca. What were your visual reference points for those eye-popping scenes?

LG: There was a great exhibition, I think, in London about Francis Bacon and animality [Francis Bacon: Man and Beast at the Royal Academy in 2022]. That and the work of the Flemish painter Michaël Borremans, who acts in the movie as the doctor in Quito, were really our points of reference. And then, of course, Sol León and Paul Lightfoot choreographed the dance sequence that you see in the film.

DC: We're not trained dancers, so that sequence was physically tough to do, but also incredibly liberating because it allowed Drew and I to get to know each other. And also, coming to set having figured it out… I mean, if you've watched Strictly, you'll know that getting a dance right is quite a good feeling.

W*: Did it become like muscle memory?

DC: I don't think that ever happened – I'd need about ten years for it to become muscle memory!

W*: Luca, what made you want to include three Nirvana songs on the soundtrack?

LG: Because I think Nirvana, in a way, is connected with Burroughs historically. And because this is a movie for now, I felt that Burroughs was bridging with Nirvana and Nirvana were bridging with the audiences now. There was this kind of emotional knot in the anguish of [Nirvana's] music that could be really played properly in the movie that we were doing.

W*: One of those Nirvana songs is Sinead O'Connor's gorgeously raw cover of All Apologies – what made you choose her version?

LG: Intuition and the purity of it. I would say that her cover, to me at least, is sort of like a distillation of the song and goes straight to the point of it.

W*: Do you think Queer is a movie for now because in theory, we live in an age where connection is easier, but actually, genuine connection feels harder than ever to find?

DC: I think that's incredibly insightful. I mean, I wish that's what it's meant [to people], because I believe what you're saying. I believe very strongly that we're not connecting in the way we once did through all sorts [of means] including sadly, through cinemas. We're not going to the cinema and collectively watching things and having [those sort of] relationships with complete strangers.

We've had an incredible response from what, for me, is a younger audience and that's been incredibly moving. Something about the loneliness and the isolation and the need to connect [in the film] is having real resonance. So yeah, I agree with what you said.

Queer is in cinemas now

Stepping inside an Aesop store is an immersive and deeply sensory experience shaped by Marianne Lardilleux, the brand’s director of global retail design, who has looked to cinema as the inspiration for many of Aesop’s brick and mortar spaces across the globe.

In the Knox, Texas store, Lardilleux took colour cues from Wim Wenders’ Paris Texas (1984). In the case of the Zurich Airport boutique, she referred to Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). In 2018 and 2019, Aesop even partnered with Luca Guadagnino, the director of Call Me By Your Name (2017) and Challengers (2024), on interiors for retail locations in Rome’s Piazza di San Lorenzo and London’s Piccadilly Arcade.

First look: Aesop’s cinematic Christmas campaign

In fact, throughout the brand’s lexicon, which spans almost 40 years, you’ll find a nod to the art of cinema in even the smallest of details, including the naming of products. (‘Breathless: A Bout de Souffle’, a hydrating body oil, references Jean Luc Godard’s 1960 New Wave masterpiece, for example).

‘You go to the cinema instead of watching a movie on your TV because you want to be immersed, to have all your senses awakened,’ Lardilleux explains from her studio, which is adorned with mood boards and a visual inventory of furniture placed in Aesop stores. ‘When we build a new space, we’re thinking of the five senses. I feel you are looking for a similar experience when entering the cinema – this immersion in a new territory.’

Aesop’s 2024 Christmas campaign also draws upon these themes, with three limited-edition gift kits – ‘Screen 1’, ‘Screen 2’ and ‘Screen 3’ – each containing an edit of Aesop’s star products.

In Screen 1, there are four formulations to ‘scent the scene’ in your home, such as the ‘Resurrection Aromatique Hand Wash’ and ‘Resurrection Aromatique Hand Balm’. For Screen 2, you’ll find a ‘trilogy’ of body-care items from the Geranium Leaf range: ‘Geranium Leaf Body Cleanser’, ‘Geranium Leaf Body Scrub’ and ‘Geranium Leaf Body Balm’. Finally, Screen 3 focuses on a ‘three-part saga for both hands and body’, including the ‘Eleos Aromatique Hand Balm’.

The packaging for the kits is a novel take on the season of light, printed with scans of super 8, 16mm and 35mm film to create a representation of celluloid. Accompanying this is a Christmas campaign film titled The Soap Service, which was also shot on 35mm, to maintain this textural continuity. Depicting moments of gift-giving, it also appears as vignettes in the window installations of select Aesop stores, with creative direction overseen by Lardilleux.

Her connection with visual arts and culture (which have always been central to Aesop’s DNA) stems from her background. Cutting her teeth in architectural practice before making the move to retail via Louis Vuitton and Céline, she joined Aesop in 2016. ‘[In moving from architecture into retail] I discovered a whole new world and also realised how much attention could be paid to detail,’ she says. ‘When you design a building, [those things] are constrained by time and budget. But in retail, each door handle, button or fabric matters – and so I completely fell in love with it.’

To take the Knox store in Texas as an example, aside from the obvious location reference to Wenders’ cult classic, the film’s characters manifest in the scale of the architectural design of the space. (It was conceived to channel images of ‘human fragility against the huge landscape of Texas‘ in Paris Texas, Lardilleux notes).

Ultimately, the effect of all of these cinematic touches, large and small, is more significant than something pleasing to look at, too, intended to set the tone for the impassioned discussion of art and film among Aesop’s following. ‘It's not just for the beauty of it,’ Lardilleux concludes. ‘All the stories we’re building with film is to spark conversation, which I see as another immersive layer that not only responds to a space but fills it too.’

Aesop’s list of films to watch over the frantic festive period

Watch Aesop’s Christmas campaign short The Soap Service above. Below, find the brand’s selection of films to ‘provide tranquil moments of inspiration during the frantic festive period’.

The Adventure (1960) by Michelangelo Antonioni

The Spirit of the Beehive (1973) by Victor Erice

Paris is Burning (1990) by Jennie Livingston

The Scent of Green Papaya (1993) by Tran Anh Hung

Beau Travail (1999) by Claire Denis

Unknown Pleasures (2002) by Jia Zhangke

2046 (2004) by Wong Kar Wai

I Am Love (2009) by Luca Guadagnino

The Great Beauty (2013) by Paolo Sorrentino

Faces Places (2017) by Agnès Varda and JR

Monos (2019) by Agnès Varda and JR

Great Freedom (2021) by Sebastian Miese

The Eight Mountains (2022) by Felix van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch

La Chimera (2023) by Alice Rohrwacher

Perfect Days (2024) by Wim Wenders

aesop.com

The 3rd edition of Homo Faber opened its gates at the weekend for the month of September 2024, taking over the Fondazione Giorgio Cini on San Maggiore. Across 11 spaces, visitors are introduced to ‘The Journey of Life’ where more than 800 crafted objects by around 400 individuals or studios from 75 countries around the world are on display. Beyond curation, creative direction was always going to be a vital part of bringing the experience alive in a coherent and compelling way. Hats off to the Michelangelo Foundation for selecting director Luca Guadagnino and architect Nicolò Rosmarini to oversee proceedings. Away from the late-summer, humid funk of the lagoon, Wallpaper* sat down with the two men to hear more.

Luca Guadagnino and Nicolò Rosmarin, the creative minds behind the 3rd Homo Faber biennale

Wallpaper*: Congratulations, first and foremost. It’s no easy task to bring such a wealth of different objects together and not make it feel like a jumble sale. How did you begin to draw a thread through the curation to tie everything together?

Nicolo Rosmarini: Hanneli Rupert brought the idea to us of ‘The Journey of Life’, and discussing this with her, it became apparent fairly quickly that we could divide the stages of life into themes for the different rooms that make sense for grouping objects with shared functions or materials together. Our challenge was to make the different spaces relate to the theme and the works, and the interiors together.

W*: Presumably you developed a concept before knowing what the works would be?

Luca Guadagnino: We started to design an idea that became a framework both for object curation and artistic direction. So with childhood, we would show toys and objects related to children in a soft environment that might feel like a playroom. For celebration, we would show objects for the table in a spectacular installation where the table anchors the space and elevates the objects too.

W*: Craft is by definition a broad and unwieldy subject – what have you learnt about craft through this process?

LG: One moment that will stay with me, was when we went to Paris to visit a jewellery house. There, they showed us how they create the jewellery they make. It is so detailed, so precise yet also so ephemeral. I found it very moving to witness the dedication. The art of making manually is something extraordinary. There is great beauty and richness embedded in the practice of craft, but it’s not only the act of manipulating precious materials. There is much to be learnt about life from seeing how things are made, by whom, where and why.

W*: I agree. There was a different energy in the areas of the rooms in the exhibition where the artisans were doing live demonstrations. Suddenly you see far beyond the object to understand embedded knowledge and humanity.

LG: This is why we wanted to design the tables on which the craftspeople are working for the show, so they feel integrated and embedded in the experience. For us it was a beautiful way to make love to one another: the artisans and the craft, the exhibition and the experience.

W*: For me this was one of the more successful interventions, helping bring the craft experience, not just the objects to life. Yet it also made me crave to see and learn more about the hundreds of works that didn’t have their artisans with them. Each piece is a human story of knowledge, time, material and place. What do you think people will take away from the exhibition as a learning about craft?

LG: As you say, craftsmanship deals with the need of form and expression (and sometimes function) through a material. It is such a human practice and so linked to humanity. From building your first sandcastle to becoming a jeweller in a Parisian maison, we harness the profound powers of action through materials, from fantasy to function, via time and skill. For me, the absence of the artist keeps the focus on the presence of the craft itself. The exhibition allows us to understand the depth of what craft means.

W*: There’s a school of thought that claims craft is nostalgic. What do you say to this?

LG: I think this is salacious. Just because craft deals in places with traditions does not make it nostalgic. Many objects in the exhibition demonstrate how alive craft is to new ideas, expressions and tools. I think of the Nature room where there is a table of basketry from Ghana, Japan and China among other countries – these forms are not classic at all. The skill and material might be classic, but the expression is definitely forward-looking.

NR: This is why we love the giant 3D-printed ribbon at the start of the exhibition in the Birth courtyard.

W*: It is a memorable start to the show. What will happen to this at the end of September when the show is finished?

LG: It will stay in your memory forever.

W*: Nicolo, how does craft inform your architecture practice?

NR: In several ways. I get close to craft working with materials of course, but also in thinking about details and how they come to life in spaces and buildings. Craft raises the quality of architecture, and it also helps people to connect to buildings and environments.

W*: What is one thing that has surprised you in the show?

NR: One of my favourite experiences is seeing the different techniques used in the Goose Game tapestries that line the Birth courtyard. Each artisan was given a design by Nigel Peake, who was responsible for the graphic identity and also for the basic design of the Goose Game tapestries, which were then sent to artisans all over the world to complete as they wished. Here you see different techniques to get to the same goal; different skills, materials, details and feelings. Despite tight parameters, they reveal the power of craft for individual expression. I also love our 13-metre papier maché trees that line the stairway up to the Celebration room.

W* They are fun. In fact what I enjoyed most in your design intervention is the lightness and whimsy you brought to the intensity of the scale show. Whether through colours, mirrors, fabric, rugs – your language lifted the atmosphere and stopped things becoming too earnest.

LG: We talked about the architecture of the Cini and how to frame each room respectfully but also to make them feel different; how to honour the architecture without hiding it was our challenge, and we looked to Carlo Scarpa’s exhibition in the 1950s of Antonella da Messina in Sicily, where he wrapped fabric around the rooms. This has a strengthening, rather than diminishing effect. We wanted to empower the objects and spaces through colour and light. Every room has daylight, apart from the Cini pool (Dreams room), and in most rooms we have incorporated mirrors to reflect and enliven the natural light.

W*: In the Dialogues room, where you have coated the interior architectural elements in gold leaf, I greatly enjoyed that you had even coated a cable cover in gold leaf on the floor.

LG: I’m so glad you noticed this. We love details!

W*: Luca, we are increasingly getting to know you as an interior designer these days. What are you learning about life through interior design?

LG: My experience of the past eight years in interiors has taught me about the personality of architects and architecture, and how space expresses itself to come alive. My goal in time is to find the essence of things and make places that are empowered by few strong ideas and elements, not disguised by too much.

W*: Design is often described as an editing process.

LG: I’m interested in minimalism through my lens. I am inspired by the great musician John Adams who created an incredible wall of sound – you feel the magnificence in such a powerful way. Here is a great minimalist at play, and I wonder how I might approach minimalism in my work? For me it’s about striving for the essence of form, light and colour to build an experience.

W*: Is there still room for playfulness?

LG: I like playfulness. You should not take yourself too seriously or you risk becoming boring.

Homo Faber's 'The Journey of Life' runs from 1 – 30 September 2024 at Venice, Fondazione Giorgio Cini homofaber.com

Earlier in 2023, it was announced that British designer Jonathan Anderson – creative director of Loewe alongside his eponymous label JW Anderson – would unite with Italian filmmaker Luca Guadagnino (a former Wallpaper* Design Awards Judge, and behind Bones and All; Call Me by Your Name; A Bigger Splash) on costumes for the latter’s next movie. Titled Queer and starring Daniel Craig, it is an adaption of Beat author William S Burroughs’ 1950s-penned novel of the same name, which began filming in April.

Released today (15 June 2023), ahead of the movie and in anticipation of Anderson’s menswear show for Loewe, to be held on Saturday 24 June in Paris, is a short film from the pair that previews the S/S 2024 collection. Titled I Dreamt of Loewe, the film is set in the David Zwirner New York gallery amid pieces from the Franz West exhibition ‘Echolalia’, which ran earlier this year (9 March – 15 April) and featured the Austrian artist’s colourful rock-like sculptures. 

Luca Guadagnino and Jonathan Anderson unite on Loewe film

Across its two-minute runtime, the collaborative film features models Andrea Isidori, Elliott McDean, Malick Anderson, Bruno Krahl and Adrians Smats, who find themselves in a psychedelic trance among West’s works. It begins with Isidori falling asleep on a sofa before waking up nude, and the model experiences visions of the rest of the cast dressed in the S/S 2024 runway collection, which includes (at a brief glance) contrast-collar shirting, polo-neck sweater, wide-leg trousers and jeans, crossover cardigans and an array of crystal-adorned sunglasses.

’The hallucinogenic vision reaches a bass-thumping crescendo; transfixed by the sculptures and dressed in the new S/S 2024 runway collection, [the models’] uncanny poses highlight the season’s elongated silhouettes, tactile fabrications and crystal-embellished sunglasses,’ says Loewe of the film, which can be watched below.

The S/S 2024 men’s runway show will take place at 12pm CET on 24 June, 2023 in Paris, and can be live-streamed on loewe.com 

Stay tuned to Wallpaper.com for more from Men’s Fashion Week S/S 2024.

With a visual language that indulges viewers in seductive fashion and architecture, filmmaker Luca Guadagnino has etched a singular mark on the public imagination, giving sumptuous shape to movies like his breakout hit I Am Love and the Oscar-nominated Call Me By Your Name. Yet Guadagnino’s eye for settings, costumes and landscapes also turns lavishness into a shroud for layers of emotional appetites, drawing us deeper into his tales as he examines the flares and interactions of human desire, all pulsing with enigmas under the gloss.

Luca Guadagnino: from film to design

The Italian director, who grew up in Ethiopia and Sicily, possesses a polymath’s talent that has catapulted him into unexpected territories. He delved into the horror genre with the upcoming Bones and All film, set in America’s Midwest and starring Timothée Chalamet, Taylor Russell, André Holland and Chloë Sevigny, after his previous remake of Dario Argento’s Suspiria. He experimented with television in the probing coming-of-age series We Are Who We Are. And he took a deep dive into fashion with the recent documentary Salvatore, about Ferragamo’s legendary founder, which followed on the heels of several campaign films for the brand alongside a number for Fendi, prompting The New York Times to label him ‘fashion’s go-to director’.

The Lake Como home of former Yoox Net-A-Porter Group CEO Federico Marchetti, with interiors by Luca Guadagnino

In a move that is at once surprising for an internationally renowned filmmaker, but utterly logical for someone with his precise sense of the sublime, Guadagnino moonlights as an interior designer. This second career began with the interiors of his 17th-century home in Crema, a small town an hour from Milan, which figured as a backdrop in Call Me By Your Name, and the design for a Lake Como getaway for his friend, Yoox founder Federico Marchetti. Guadagnino then founded his eponymous design studio, and current commissions include a new hotel in a landmark Rome building set to open in 2023, terracotta fireplace designs for the historical Nymphenburg porcelain company, and a series of private homes. As with his film sets, his design taste runs towards the misty colours of antique candy shops, and handwrought details by the kind of artisans still found in Italy and central Europe.

‘Working in architecture and design has given me a lot of drive and focus,’ says Guadagnino. ‘Movies have been part of my personal landscape since I was a kid, but in learning new tools to attain new goals, I found something that relieves the repetition of cinema.’

Judging the Wallpaper* Design Awards 2022

That personal connection to the stimulating power of design drew him to the Space of Mind cabin in this year’s Life-Enhancer of the Year category. ‘It’s a beautiful and articulate idea,’ says Guadagnino of the cabin, whose Finnish timber planks form a construction of oblique geometries that gracefully mirror the natural slopes of terrain. ‘It’s a lovely organic shape that can easily fit in among green areas, and it would be great for public or private purposes.’ He sees the cabin as a useful structure for cities to create havens of tranquillity for their residents, or as contemplative retreats in private gardens, describing it as ‘an installation with a real benefit for people’. Guadagnino, who has a newly purchased plot of land to consider, had thought of constructing his own design for a contemplative space there, but, he says, ‘I don’t think I have to design it myself anymore – this one is already the perfect sanctuary.’

He was also captivated by Objects of Common Interest, citing the duo’s intelligent approach to beauty, otherworldly creations, and ‘a way of placing objects in space without any need for function’. After all, in Guadagnino’s domain, the real function of the pieces of furniture and fashion we see is not utilitarian but to create allure and drama, to conjure an elegant realm as intriguing as the lives he portrays. It’s a multi-layered method nourished by his friendship with Silvia Venturini Fendi, which began in 2005 and flowered into a long-running collaboration, including a film of poetic imagery shot at the Fendi headquarters for the A/W2021 couture collection. 

‘Fashion has a capacity for daring that doesn’t exist in cinema,’ he says appreciatively. ‘When I discovered the world of Silvia, I saw she understood how to make everything contain a sense of memory, and how to simultaneously combine space, time and architecture into what she was doing. She expanded my knowledge of how you can work with many sectors at once, and make them interact.’ The insight is at the root of Guadagnino’s devastatingly voluptuous splendour, with all the yearning and volatility of his characters framed by the prettiness of his elegiac style.

Luca Guadagnino's film for the Fendi Couture A/W2021 collection

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@studiolucaguadagnino
The Wallpaper* Design Awards 2022 are revealed in full in the Feburary issue, on newsstands. Subscribe today!

Can there be such a thing as fine-taste fatigue? Maybe it’s fourth estate problems, but if there is such a thing, Aesop might have become a victim to it, if it weren’t for shaking things up with their latest store opening in Rome.

Aesop and its visionary founder, Dennis Paphitis, wrote the manifesto for the anti-globalisation movement in retail and have led the way using promising and established architects and local vernaculars to embed the brand around the globe. Not only does it make every shop a local shop, it turns shopping into an experience, with the unique basin designs in every store, novel material use, inspirational interior architecture and considered refreshments. ‘We try to stay true to the aboriginal saying “touch the ground lightly”,’ says the Melbourne man at a dinner this week to launch the Rome store, an inspired collaboration with the celebrated film director, Luca Guadagnino.

‘Serendipity’ is the word that both Paphitis and Guadagnino use when explaining how this unusual partnership has come about. Paphitis, one of the most culturally fluent people you can meet, founded the skincare brand 30 years ago but sold it (in part, and then wholly) six years ago to Brazilian cosmetics company Natura.

Supposedly now in a backseat, his unabated, quietly dignified pursuit of cultural connections (something that made this week’s launch dinner at Rome’s Villa Medici a fascinating gathering of fashion designers, restaurateurs, architects, actors and art directors) led him to handwrite a note to Guadagnino, inviting him for a coffee, when he found they were sharing air in LA’s Chateau Marmont during awards season earlier this year.

Up to this point, Paphitis’ pursuit of Guadagnino had been silent, manifesting only in his obsessive playing and replaying of the director’s seminal 2009 film I am Love, and here was a moment to connect for real. Guadagnino, it turned out, was equally admiring of Paphitis and the architectural heights achieved with the Aesop brand, and what Paphitis didn’t know at the time, as of two years, Guadagnino was heading up a studio of interior architecture, pursuing his fantasy career alongside his lauded film career, and had already cut his teeth on the interior of his friend Federico Marchietti’s Lake Como house.

The pair soon found themselves on a train from Milan to Rome with Aesop’s in house architect Jean-Philippe Bonnefoi on their way to view a location in Rome’s Piazza San Lorenzo in Lucnina that had already been secured. A snowstorm blocked their way and a three hour journey turned into seven hours, which was seen as a good omen – ever since an unusually heavy snowfall over Milan greeted the film crew of I am Love, making for the stunning, eerie opening sequence, Guadagnino views snow as some kind of a lucky charm, while team Aesop knew that an unbroken rally of ideas and stories after hours on a train with a dwindling supply of food, water and wine could only be a good sign.

Paphitis showed Guadagnino a news clip about Maria Callas pulling out of a concert in Rome in 1958, and this became the rather odd launch pad of the store’s design. Somehow though, the pair were speaking the same language, and the film director understood that imbuing the store with an essence of its locale, taking, for example, material and design inspiration from the San Lorenzo in Lucina church interior and melding this with cultural, material and form prompts taken from the time of that clip, a time when Pasolini was making an impact on the screen, and Carlo Scarpa shaped interiors, was what was going to make a success of the Rome store design. ‘Everything was very organic from my first meeting with Dennis,’ says Guadagnino. ‘He is drawn by an idea of Rome that is not the usual. Rome relies on its vestiges in a lazy way and Dennis talked about a modernism that gave us an identity after the War. Our minds wandered through the canon of Pasolini and his aggressiveness of modernity.’

The harmonious mix of material is striking, along with the ease with which the store sits among the terracotta facades, the ecclesiastical architecture, the marble monuments of the area’s interiors and exteriors. The previously featureless space is now filled with floating shelves in red, cream and black lacquer that hold the product, the lacquer a nod to Pasolini’s signature spectacles. Blocks of straw in staggered relief form the ceiling, a detail drawn from Pasolini’s film Oedipus Rex, combined with the peasant culture of Agro Pontino in Rome’s immediate rural surroundings. The large curved glass pendant light, handmade in Murano, a one-off (since the back-up model broke) is a 1950s form that recalls the setting sun as seen from nearby Villa Medici.

The cream and mocha travertine floor tiles are inspired by the floor of nearby San Lorenzo in Lucina church, and the vast, monolithic counter and basins, formed from a patchwork of marbles, also taken from the church interior, have superb modernist curves and uncompromising mass. ‘I’m a newcomer to the job and mindless to what is problematic, I can’t understand why you can’t do something,' Guadagnino-the-film-director replies to a question about the complexity of combining marble in this way, simulaneously acknowledging the talent of his architect sidekicks, Giulio Ghirardi, Nicolo Barbisotti and Stefano Baisi. ‘I torture these guys.’ The taps are unapologetically Scarpa-inspired, and along with the mirror, the bench, the Murano glass vase that sits on the counter, all is custom-made for the store by Italian artisans, all bar one low-hanging monastic pendant light, by Peter Zumthor for Viabuzzuno.

How do Guadagnino’s two careers compare? ‘They couldn’t be more different. There is more discipline in the building of a physical space than the set of a movie. It just so happens that at the age of 45, I made my debut in interior design, inspired by my interaction with architecture.’ Jack of all trades he may be, but he’s mastering them all. His studio’s sequel will be another retail project in New York’s Soho, yet to be announced.

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For more information, visit the Aesop website