by MILAN — Pasticceria Cova, the historic café and pastry house located in Milan controlled by LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton founded in 1817, saw fashion collections from top brands such as Berluti drape its halls and wallpapers from Jannelli e Volpi drape a walls. Indeed, for its chief executive officer and shareholder Paola Faccioli, the fields of fashion, design and food are closer than ever.
“We love dressing our products. We work with many brands. We have a lot of fun… designing a mignon or a box and it’s fun because we’re trying to stand up to our brand [heritage] by combining it with other brands,” Faccioli told WWD Milan bureau chief Luisa Zargani during a panel discussion dedicated to the topic of the importance of design in food, drink and hospitality.
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At the Fashion Loves Food gala held at Palazzo Parigi in Milan on November 5, Faccioli was joined by fellow speakers, design expert Alberto Alessi, president of Alessi, and renowned pastry chef Fabrizio Fiorani.
Fiorani said his work experience, including stays at historic hotels like Il Pellicano in Porto Ercole, Italy and the Bulgari Hotel chain, taught him how to convey the essence of a hotel brand and eventually even fashion brands.
“We are noticing in this period that none of us eats out of hunger. Think of dessert,” Fiorani told the crowd, explaining that design is the key factor in infusing haute cuisine with fashion. “We have to touch the soul, heart and fantasy and awaken them and we try … with design. To try to eat this brand … with a mountain of white chocolate, 4 meters high for the company Moncler, where we distribute 300 hammers and Pharrell [Williams] he eats a piece of chocolate like this, I say to myself – ‘Heck, we did something good,’” he enthused in front of a crowd of fashion, design and hospitality food luminaries.
Maintaining quality and historical values is essential to stay on top of the ongoing wave, where fashion, design and the culinary world continue to cross-pollinate and evolve together. No one understands the synergies that occur when these worlds mix quite like Faccioli, who in 2013 saw LVMH take a majority stake in her family’s prestigious Pasticceria Confetteria Cova Srl, owner of the Cova brand and the Cova Montenapoleone firm Srl which continues to manage. arguably the most fashionable and iconic coffee house in Milan, located on Via Montenapoleone.
Following the transaction, the Faccioli family remained shareholders and continue to manage Cova to “guarantee the continuity and success” the company has built since its foundation in 1817. The company’s expansion strategy was set in motion in 1993 when the first cafe was launched in Hong Kong, followed by units in Shanghai and later in Monte Carlo and Dubai. The company now has 37 stores worldwide.
“Cova is family to me. It is not always easy to transmit this sense of familiarity in Shanghai and Hong Kong and Kuwait City. It’s a tradition that always looks forward,” she said, emphasizing the importance of her constant task of staying on top of trends in all creative industries.
Alberto Alessi, grandson of Alessi’s founder, Giovanni Alessi, grew up around designers. His closest mentors were Alessandro Mendini and Aldo Rossi, Achille Castiglioni, as well as Ettore Sottsass, under whom he worked for about 30 years. A pioneer of collaboration, and a key catalyst for the brand’s international expansion, he officially joined the company in 1970, at a time when Alessi had shed its industrial past and emerged as a hub of creative design that resonated throughout the world on him.
In the ’80s, Alessi invited young architects and designers to take part in a competition to create a new series of tea and coffee, which became a major pivot for the company. In recent years, he sought the late fashion designer Virgil Abloh for a series of cutlery and recently Arthur Arbesser to interpret a corkscrew designed by Mendini in 1994. Some collaborations for the 103-year-old company, however, did not work, like the he tried to join the forces of world-class chefs with designers in the late 70s. “It was not very well received. They understood nothing about design and the designers understood nothing about cooking,” he joked, with a round of laughter.
Alessi’s president recognized that much of the company’s success is driven by its motto that functional objects such as toasters and spoons can be poetic.
“We have to strike a balance between the best expression of international design and on the other hand, people’s dreams more than needs … the public’s imagination versus what they need.”
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