“The thing that I’m actually ever so proud of, more than any of the work we have done, is honestly the celebration of creating.” So said Jony Ive, founder of design agency LoveFrom and former chief design officer at Apple, at a dinner created to serve up the hottest scoop of Milan Design Week: Moncler and Ive are collaborating on a new collection.
The dinner was hosted by Remo Ruffini—Moncler’s chairman, CEO, and driving force—at his home in the heart of Italy’s design and fashion capital. The exact nature of the products that Ruffini’s Moncler and the Ive-founded LoveFrom will launch this September remains unrevealed for now, yet there were some clues to be gleaned as guests arrived and got down to chatting. A screen in the living room displayed an illustration of the Italian brand’s historical mascot (and washing instruction overseer) Monduck. He sat pillion on a motorscooter alongside a new character, a bear: perhaps tellingly, both wore jackets with triangular flap pockets. There was talk of a new “duo button”—magnetic, apparently. We were left to join the dots…
Although long-based in San Francisco both during and since his aesthetic-defining decades shaping products for Apple, Ive is very much a Brit. Last night’s dinner brought together many of his friends and co-creatives in London to mingle with Ruffini’s from Milan and beyond. LoveFrom’s co-founder, Aussie Marc Newson, was there with his wife Charlotte Stockdale; she sat alongside Kering’s CEO François-Henri Pinault and opposite the architect Norman Foster. There was Ruth Rogers of River Café fame, engaging enthusiastically with a magnificent artichoke tart, sitting alongside the peerless Italian dancer Roberto Bolle and the great graphic designer Peter Saville (also a member of the LoveFrom collective). Gildo Zegna, Karla Otto, Linda Evangelista, Karl Templer, Maria Sharapova, Anna Cleveland, Giovanna Engelbert, Deyan Sudjic, and Gabriele Muccino further graced the tables. John Elkann, his wife Lavinia, and brother Lapo were there too: John is the leading scion of the Agnelli clan and chairman of Ferrari, for which Ive and LoveFrom are currently developing the Prancing Horse’s first-ever electric car. In short, despite the tone-lowering inclusion of a few journalists, this was a guest list with serious clout.
Yet it was richly convivial too: The guests swamped Mirazur’s maestro chef Mauro Colagreco with applause at the end of the evening, and were just as ebullient at the end of Ive’s speech —in which he proffered a few more key details about the LoveFrom Moncler collection to come. He said: “We’ve been working together for four years, and the only reason is love: and the only reason is the practice and the joy of creating together… There’s a moral imperative of somehow celebrating making something with people that you think is important and curious and special.” The product of that process—a collaboration I suspect might turn out to be Ive and LoveFrom’s first-ever exercise in the design of clothing—will be revealed in full when it launches globally this September.
