Make Mine A Milanese
The blueprint for Valextra’s boutiques.
As a proudly Milanese brand, it’s only fitting that Valextra brings a taste of our inimitable metropolis to our locations around the world. Heralding a new era for our physical spaces, in October 2021 the first Andrea Tognon-designed store opened its doors in Chengdu, Mainland China, and became a blueprint for all our future boutiques.
Internationally admired for observing how form and space can convey identity values, Tognon is the perfect partner to interpret our ethos and capture the tension between the external sobriety and internal warmth for which our shared hometown of Milan is famed.
Designing, as he says, “through the eyes of a poet-engineer”, Tognon created what he describes as “a clear functional diagrammatic program” to achieve “functional clarity and complement the ritual of selling” for spaces, from the intimate areas that play host to our icons and collections to the wrapping counter and payment point.
Juxtaposing structures and materials bring Milan’s architectural negotiation to life as stoic recomposed stone is contrasted against carpets and backdrops rendered in multi-dimensional green fabric. The contrast, continues Tognon, “refers to the softness of the Milanese palazzos in contrast with the clear stones of the Italian rationalist architecture”, while the dark green mirrors the colour of nearby Lake Como in a windy sunny day.
Elsewhere, sculpted stone pots filled with plants and flowers are an homage “to the complex beauty of the secret gardens of Milan and the botanic culture of Brera, the inner soul of this city”.
Taking his cue from the attention to detail seen in Valextra creations, Tognon translated Valextra signatures into shop fittings. Handles in the store take their leave from our legendary Tric Trac wristbag, while strategic shadows that fall around the space reference the artisanal Costa and Inchiostro lines which form the finishing touches on each Valextra handbag.
Calling the process, “an attempt to reach a timely synthesis of Valextra inner values,” Tognon has captured the essence of Valextra’s constant and evolving pursuit of engineered beauty and masterminded a space that will engage our customers in an elegant and emotional way - the world over.
