The first question seems to be in order. From dress to wallpaper, from fabric surface that becomes a volume, a subject (never an object!) to flat surface that becomes architecture: continuity or fracture? Affinity or worlds too far away?

I have always lived in my own world, a world of messy order and disciplined mess. Outside the lines. What fascinated me was staining, tarnishing, rubbing together different objects and surfaces.

My imagination has always been a crowded chaos. Mountains of newspapers, books, sheets, crayons, sketches: when I was a teenager, in my room I had this folding table that was a breath away from crumbling under all that weight. Nobody could touch it.

The urgency to translate in drawings what lived around me and inside of me became more and more pressing during time. It is something that wants to spring out, a wave I cannot stem. That is why I always carry notebooks, journals, diaries. Without them I feel lost and with them I am never alone. Lines, drawings, sketches, ciumpulls, ciuroddus, are my unsaid words, the code through which my world materializes.

So you see, getting to work on walls… is a dream come true! “Nulla dies sine linea”. Not a single day without taking up a pencil and tracing some line…

In My Africa there is a theme very dear to you: the journey. In La Famiglia Pois, which reminded me of Queneau’s “Pierrot Mon Ami”, there is your poetry of sticking, stacking and scrapbooking, as if you turned the pages of your famous journals into a wallpaper. In Kaleidos one can breathe the same sense of wonder that emanates from some 18th century illuminated printings. Are there any other sides of your creativity that you would like to explore together with Wall&decò?

I never make distinctions between fashion, art, movies, dance, literature, theatre. Between a “higher” culture and a popular one. To me, it all amounts to the same thing. I am lucky enough to have a job that allows me commixtures, even the most undreamed-of. From fashion, I always end up somewhere else.

As I said I make no distinctions: mix, combine, invade and then see where it goes. These are my traits: the combination of different languages, experimentation, the blending of artisan know-how with modern and unusual techniques. And more, deconstruction and decontextualization. I am attracted to the rawness of objects, their irregular features. Their crudeness is unique and beautiful to me.

An aesthetics of imperfection, a research that walks the line between antique and modern, between uniqueness and mass production.

I would love to work with Wall&decò on singular projects, made ad hoc. Like a sartorial dress. I get commissioned a house, a room, a wall - we work together on the detail, draw from the owner’s experience, make it very personal and unique.

A room dressed with one of your wallpapers. Inside, a character from History or Fiction (from literature all the way to movies). Who are they?

Of course, Alice in Wonderland!  Actress and friend Lella Costa wrote a rhyme for her play about Alice, and I designed her stage dress. I totally find myself in her words and I love the idea of a room with a wallpaper designed for her.

photo credits: Daniela Zedda