I am a Tailor Made Consultant, striving to make your experience in (and around...) Milan as unique and unforgettable as possible.
Giorgio Cotti, the sommelier, runs the business with his wife Michela and daughter.
The Cotti family, operating in the wine world for four generations, has contributed to the "revolution" in Italy with the qualitative leap in the wine sector.
The renunciation of dealing with low-quality products was for Cotti the fruit of passion and love for the treated material; the sacrifices and commitment lavished there have been amply compensated by the satisfaction obtained.
- Milan Design Week Experience -
Milan April 17-22, 2018
Sorting out the myriad of events, showrooms and exhibitions of the Milan Fuorisalone is the task that every Milanese and every visitor in the sector and not, during the design week in the City.
Although the events are usually scattered throughout the city, the Fuorisalone recognises a series of main districts, premiering the latest trends for the forthcoming year and heralding a tidal wave of events, exhibitions and presentations.
Young and talented designers from all over the world pack their innovative creations and come to Milan, rent one of the city’s garages from locals, and show their prototypes to the curious crowd and important buyers who visit the districts talent-scouting for great ideas.
�Exhibitions, shows, extraordinary openings, presentations of new products and exclusive parties redesign the areas of Milan which are transformed into real Design Districts.
Orientation is not easy and events are multiplying from year to year and every year someone says "the show has got tired" .. in the end, however, for those insiders and the non, it is always worth it.
What can you do though? Where to go without getting tired walking endlessly trying to see what are considered the most exclusive news and the latest trends? How to know which settings are really not to be missed? There are many guides and many maps to help creating your own path in advance, but always a bit blindly.
So Yourbespokeguide can do it for you creating an experience to discover the places not to be missed during the Design week. A journey through the most exclusive spots of the City, designed combining your interests and our experience in the field.
We will have a blast! Either walking through the street of Milan or, if you prefer, peeking into the best trade-show pavillons in Rho.
- Design Experience - w/ G LAB Milano
The busy streets of Milan’s bustling Chinatown conceal a sequence of courtyards and nineteenth-century balcony houses and this cultural melting pot has seen a recent increase in a range of different companies set up by creative young professionals. The beautiful laboratory, office and showroom of G|LAB opens its windows onto one of these fantastic courtyards, allowing a glimpse of a Milan full of new artisans.
�G|LAB was created as a project celebrating synergy, collaboration and interdisciplinarity.
The founders, artist and restorer Davide Grosso and architects Giampaolo Celada and Cristina Meucci combine a passion for reclaiming, inventing and transforming with the result of a close encounter with history.
G | LAB promotes an emotional relationship with the object in question, rejecting brands, serialization, self-referential design and the vain search for formalism. The materials are presented in their frankness, respected in their essence and wisely worked.
Their space, laboratory and showroom offer a sampling of the collections signed by G|LAB. These are furnishing items that reveal particular attention paid to materials and processing techniques.
From the courtyard you enter the ground floor of the G|LAB Atelier and go through a workshop/warehouse where the three artists finish the work started earlier in the workshops of skilled artisans. The actual showroom is on the first floor, where they also nurture their design secrecy. The space could be that of a private home completely furnished with their creations, complete with a kitchen and a terrace that in spring is filled with plants and flowers.
�The creations displayed in the G|LAB showroom are mostly unique pieces or made specifically for a selected clientele. Rare objects collected by them over time appear here and there.
The warm and intimate atmosphere is completed by the uniqueness of the Atelier's creations, where their look at the eighteenth century is not only addressed to purely formal aspects but should be understood as a revisitation of a cultured and dense minimalism of references.
G|LAB transforms the structure of 18th century neoclassic furniture and reinvents it focusing on its minimalist allure. Iron is the leading feature of these pieces, proudly boasting its natural hue as a result of oxidation or the artful painting of its surface. The industrial offcuts used to craft these timeless objects are adorned with striking decorations for a timeless look that aims to achieve simplicity through imperfect symmetry.
Thanks to the client, each piece of furniture is therefore a challenge to define objects designed for precise situations, unique pieces strongly contextualized, full of charm and mystery.
Craftsmanship, creativity and recovery is the spirit behind the G|LAB project, created to invent and transform furniture and furnishings while respecting their essences and functions and using natural products and artistic techniques such as the eighteenth-century Venetian process of lacquering and gouache gilding.
We will definitely make an appointment to go and see them if you want to see how the ancient techniques of craftsmanship are used to create unique pieces full of charm and mystery. Maybe on that occasion there will also be an aperitif
- Fashion Experience - w/ NonostanteMarras
Beyond the downtown fashion distric, you will find a new former industrial neighborhood southwest of the city center.
The area’s coolness is exemplified by Nonostante Marras, the fascinating shop of the Sardinian designer Antonio Marras.
Hidden from the street behind a residential building, past a locked gate and through a green overgrown courtyard, we find the boutique with its marvelous interior.
Behind the fronds it glimpses at the entrance door, inside
fairy-tale lights, artworks, antique furniture, flea-market mirrors and rugs, a cylindrical wooden bookshelf with selected volumes, and a cluster of hanging lamps inside long white dresses painted with geometric patterns.
This is the scenarium for clothing on sale, swinging on pleated lace from the ceiling.
Just by looking at all of this, you can clearly understand Antonio Marras passions, from interior decoration to art. This all makes sense when we discovered that he received an honorary degree from the Brera Academy of Art.
The showroom contains clothes of your wildest dreams. Not only a set for Marras fashion venues but also a cafè and an exhibition space for art shows.
This stop it will be perfect for us, when touring the new hub of creative shops sprouted in and around Zona Tortona.
THE LADY OF WONDERLAND: Rossana Orlandi
Rossana Orlandi is the owner of one of the most amazing shops you can visit (and not just for art and design enthusiasts).
In 2002 she had the intuition of the intuitions: to transform a former Milanese ties factory in Milan Magenta district, in one of the most important design and cultural destinations in the field. From there it has been a constant growth, thanks to the careful international research that she personally takes care of, while making use of trusted and valuable collaborators. A space for design and art, in the name of impeccable taste between unique and limited edition pieces. Part gallery space, part shop, Orlandi space is the ultimate in lifestyle retail. The beautiful court yard is filled with reclaimed and found items and contains an outdoor cafe.The rest of the ground floor showcases new work and exhibitions by established and new designers, makers and artists.
The space became a platform for avant-garde Design and Lifestyle. Miss Orlandi started her activity focusing on the rising dutch design wave with designers such Piet Hein Eek, Maarten Baas and Nacho Carbonell the research has moved widely around the world creating a catalog which reflects the most innovative scenes from Europe to Asia to America.
Showroom, a retail store, offices and a courtyard for events and meeting are mixed together with no boundaries between the different activities.
She opened the Gallery 15 years ago, and since then, Rossana is always the same. Same spirit of enthusiasm, freshness, simplicity and sincerity. Her enthusiasm has never disappeared and she is more and more in love with her work. �Some designers that she picked up when they were still taking their first steps, they have become important and requested all over the world.
After having worked more than 20 years in fashion as a spin yarn consultant for labels such Giorgio Armani and Donna Karan and for her family company, in 2002 she decided to transfer her passion for design as a private collector into an innovative gallery, a platform where to showcase her personal idea of design and lifestyle.
She has also been working as a curator for several exhibitions in Italy and abroad and she collaborated also with the high end brands in fashion, luxury and lifestyle. Her constant research worldwide has made her one of the most influent person in forecasting young and upcoming designers.
Her space is always a highlight of Milan Design Week. On top of discovering and championing new designers, the lady, from her wonderland heaven continues to support them throughout their careers, whether they are recent graduates or more established deputies of the design scene, showing their wares alongside the bigger brands.
During our Design Experience in Magenta Milan district, Spazio Rossana Orlandi it will be a must to see and before we’ll leave we will probably spott the fashinating lady floating around the courtyard, wearing her trademark huge glasses and looked every inch the style icon she is.
- Architecture Experience - w/ Casa Canvas
In the heart of Brianza there is an area that lately rises different realities of young creative people. Casa Canvas is born here, a gallery dedicated to young creative people and contemporary art.
The office is a ground-floor apartment of the Villa Stanga Borromeo, an eighteenth-century house in the Lambro valley, a bucolic setting of greenest Brianza, surrounded by lush vegetation, the apartment opens out onto a quintessentially Italian garden and has beautiful views of the Alps.
This nostalgic past has inspired Thayse Viégas and Maurizio Bergo, respectively a Brazilian fashion buyer and an Italian interior design, whose passion for their craft prompted them to make their home a modern platform for art and design.
A little piece of paradise, cut off from the rest of the world. Far away from the hubbub. Liberated from conventional rules. Casa Canvas is a unique place
Guided by an open, creative approach to design, the couple first combined their private lives (they are husband and wife) and later their professional worlds,
Every product shown in the apartment is for sale, mixing a business-oriented approach with the goal to offer a showcase to young creatives who attracts an Italian and international audience. A collection that includes objects and works of art by CTRLZAK Studio, Vittoria Parrinello, Luca Massaro, Gustavo Martini, Lorenzo Cereda, Claudio Beorchia, Geovana Clea, Francesco Viscuso, Alessandro Fusco, Chiara Gini, Salvatore Muso and Cristina Cusani and Allan Victor. All for sale.
During the summer Casa Canvas hosts other events, tastings and jazz music sessions.
At Casa Canvas iconic design pieces side by side with products designed by the owners themselves, are carefully selected and mixed together with vintage pieces from the 1950s and 1960s and a scattering of creations by artists looking to break into the international scene.
It is a haven of product, art and design, apparently miscellaneous yet – in reality – extraordinarily well put together and harmonised.
The living room (with includes the kitchen), studio and loft sleeping area feature a delicate, minimalist style, with sophisticated retro influences.
Thayse biggest challenge is combining the modern style of the furniture with the classic lay-out of the house. The linear, clean design is punctuated with splashes of stronger colour which give personality to the pieces. It’s a reflection of the owners personalities: Italian design with a Brazilian touch.
Casa Canvas hosts 25 artists at any one time, with each season bringing with it a new collection, a new setting, with a total of 106 works available to be admired and purchased.
We will obviously drop by during a visit we will make through Brianza to visit one of the many events organised in the space, including cooking demonstrations, casual meets, music events, or requesting an appointment for a private viewing. This truly is a home worth discovering.
The young Italian designer Marta Ferri runs her beautiful airy new atelier from the heart of Milan’s historical centre where she dreams up her bridal gowns and custom-made dresses as well as jewellery and handbags.
Inspired by the world of interior design, she creates custom haute couture dresses using printed furnishing fabrics.
Her creations, which stand out for their whimsical fantasies combined with a sophisticated and contemporary style, are unique pieces to wear on any occasion, from a chic garden party to a red carpet bash.
Her work space echoes her instincts for infusing her designs with a mix of personal references and artistic influences.
Chairs are upholstered in fabric from Ferri’s first ready-to-wear collection while Fornasetti table lamps — a wedding present to her parents— illuminate her office and stand on a 1930s store cabinet, across from a leather chaise longue taken from her father’s (photographer Fabrizio Ferri) studio.
This intimate space has a classical style animated by enchanting design one-offs and furnishings coloured in pastel tones resulting in an eclectic mix of antique pieces, vintage textiles, and fabulous spring blooms.
The designer’s skill in sourcing rare and vintage fabrics from all over Italy can be seen in every corner, from the doors of the studio, clad in a rich magenta canvas, to the Villa d’Este print depicting scenes of Lake Como and the hotel of the same name draped around a mannequin and waiting to be transformed into a dress. Boards covered in a print of fresh blooms enliven a blank wall and complementing those textiles are floral still-life oil paintings by Austrian artist Joseph Nigg that belonged to Ferri’s grandmother.
While making her name as a made-to-measure studio, Marta has quietly been expanding her repertoire to include artful, seasonal ready-to-wear items and the resulting Marta Ferri Atelier is a brand of discreet luxury, a timeless collection whose look has a vintage feel, but definitely not something you’d find in your grandmother’s closet.
She always encourages private clients who are in search of that elusive elegant-yet-effortless look to wear one of her pieces with something of their own.
The service from Ferri’s atelier is far from slow: you can have just a single fitting and the outfit will be delivered in four days (the effervescent Ferri keeps her private clients’ measurements on file, thus reducing the time they have to spend in the studio —delightful though it may be).
When we walk through the delightful 5Vie District I guarantee you won’t leave Milan without one of her whimsical skirts in fabrics covered in cupcakes and oversized flowers.
Clearly, this is one Milanese address worth keeping.
-Design Experience -
Giacomo Moor Studio
Skilled carpenters in Italy are known as falegnami, expert woodworkers whose handcraft has been finely honed over generations. Many of them live and work in Brianza, a furniture-making region 45 minutes outside Milan. And many of them are approaching their golden years.
Milan-based woodworker Giacomo Moor is an exception to this rule. In his nine-person workshop, young carpenters wearing baggy jeans, fashionable beards and big yellow earphones cut, trim, join and build sleekly designed furniture. Moor runs not only the youngest woodworking shop in town but also the only one that designs and installs furniture in addition to building it.
In Italy there are a lot of furniture designers and there are a lot of carpenters but there aren’t people who do both.
Moor graduated from the Politecnico di Milano’s School of Design. While studying, he also worked with a local carpenter, learning the trade.
Therefore he begins to develop a very personal method, combining the artisan’s manual ability with a rigorous design.
In 2011 he sets up GM Studio, with the aim to develop his work within a well structured environment.
He created a studio-workshop, a large space with a sloping roof with a ground floor carpentry and a space for the design on the mezzanine.
Here designers, architects and artisans can not only share space but where they can merge together their experience and specialist knowledge.
Such setting allows Giacomo to work in an innovative way and to follow projects on different scales, from limited series of furniture and furnishing accessories to integrated systems of furniture for private flats and offices.
His early customers were private clients who wanted to cut out the pesky architect middleman. He now does full-scale interiors, producing not just elegant walnut desks and oak tables made from reclaimed beams, but also custom kitchens with oak tops and cabinets made from rare blackened ash wood. Many of his pieces now combine his finely researched and treated woods with glass, iron or brass.
- Architecture Experience - w/ Six Gallery
Locals in Milan often believe that the beauty of the city is hidden behind the front doors of its buildings. Almost each and every one holds up a luxuriant garden, as well as the 16th century monastery courtyard, where now lies the green patio entrance of the the newest Project in Milan, Six Gallery.
Quincoces-Dragò & Partners, Milan-based luxury architectural and design studio, removed the layers of the latest works to bring back the original floors and exposed bricks (then painted with an elegant gray smoke). The result is an old Milan court that almost disappears to reveal a kind of exotic Riad.
Six Gallery is a perfect mix of neocolonial atmosphere and the classics of the twentieth century like Gio Ponti's armchairs, tables by Gabriella Crespi, Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret and modern Scandinavian furniture.
We will delve into this stunning, peaceful, old court where sense of time and space is lost. A definite must-see!
- Architecture Experience -
Anna e Giovanni home
Welcome to the home of The Chic Fish bloggers - Anna and Giovanni. Two professionals in the world of design and communication with a common passion in restructuring their collected vintage in a unique fashion.
Their blog was born from their shared excitement of attending old markets, which quickly turned into an all-round consultancy service.
The Anna e Giovanni home, in the late 19th century building, was built by two art directors who grew their careers out of their passion for collecting vintage items. They started their journey by initially renovating their own home towards their styling goals.
Their Milan space in the Porta Genova area can be described as a transposition of their infinite curiosity for this universe. Additionally, it is a touch of a new approach in working on ancient objects.
Renovating the apartment has been quite the challenge but it didn’t stop them from achieving their big dream of the final result.
The outcome is destined to compose of a kingdom of recovered and vintage objects, recovered materials, wooden floor from scaffolding boardsfloors (which they found in abandoned homes), and lastly a stained glass window from an old Fiat factory at Lingotto, Turin. Everything has been chosen with great care with absolutely nothing left to chance.
If you desire to enter into a home of your dreams, we will request a visit at their incredible place.
Multi-talented Giovanna Sugar Carboni’s home is a typical milanese flat in the Navigli area, or more accurately, it was...
It is a constantly changing space: her living portfolio and studio where clients have the opportunity to buy pieces used in a "real life" context.
Giovanna is a landscape architect, an interior designer, an interior decorator and on top of that, a mum.
She fell in love with the shabby and dull atmosphere of her living space about two years ago - it was like love at first sight. She refurbished and refurnished it entirely, completely on her own.
Every single piece of furniture, every bit of detail, and also all the items and art pieces inside, are either a Giovanna’s project or one of the art pieces she’s realized.
The amazing and continuous metamorphosis of this house is due to a dynamic turnover of objects that she buys, re-creates and sells to private clients "with special requests” in terms of style, taste and appreciation for sober beauty.
Giovanna’s aim is to breathe new life into old objects, while reshaping their functionality and purposes.
If this is to your liking, we will pop in with a guarantee that you will fall in love with a kind of cabinet of curiosities-house, where you can feel the historical, artistic and social value of craftsmanship.
- Food experience -
I have experienced many of the world's ‘hidden eateries’, especially that of the United States. In Italy, in the last couple of years, the social dinner option has become quite the popular activity.
When I discovered that a couple of young art directors started a career of this popular idea, in a fabulous secret place,
one of the most beautiful neighborhoods of the city,
I had to add them on my special list.
Emanuele and Melissa have been travelling and living for years in Unied States. They still do it very often.
With a big passion for vintage furnitures and unique pieces of American history, their house full of unique objects. If you like one, you can pick it up and buy it, while enjoying a master chef cooked dinner.
If we are in the beautiful Navigli district, we can pop in Ma' Hidden Kitchen Supper Club, to browse, to buy something rare, to eat or to just listen to their story.
- Design experience -
Alberto Levi studied towards becoming a chemist and researcher but one day he truly fell in love with his family’s business. His Grandfather started a fabulous carpet business in Samarkand but made the move to Milan after World War II.
In 1997, Alberto opened the Gallery in Via San Maurilio and began following his family’s footsteps, where they travelled to a variety of places; from Anatolia to the Caucasus, to China and USA.
Due to Alberto’s great exposure in the field, he rapidly developed a know-how and refinement of taste, which lead to him appreciating textile art at a greater extent.
From the very first day that Levi Gallery opened, it has been the best place for collectors, specialists and carpet enthusiasts.
This gallery includes important pieces from the deco to the most contemporary interpretations, inspired by abstract painting and made by contemporary artists, designers and architects. And obviously, ancient carpets, of which Alberto is known as one of the greatest experts in this field at an international level.
If you are interested in unique textile works and contemporary research, I suggest that we definitely stop on over at this gallery.
- Rita Rita -
Think twice before believing that it's easy to find Milan's best fashion. I will unlock some of the best attire in town.
RitaRita is a high quality research clothing brand. Their Daily Uniform is comfortable and longlasting; ready-to-wear fashion. They design and develop their own textiles, choosing Italian fabrics and detail-focused manufacturers.
Their brand is not easy to find in surrounding shops. Their store-selection criteria is strict. Entering their showroom, in a typical milanese courtyard, is an experience of an enchanting creative lab.
You will get a sense of their personal stories, love for travel and timeless clothing that created such a fashionable product.
RITARITA studio is based in Milan and born by the collaboration between designers Silvia Gherra, illustrator, and Margherita Mazza, fashion designer.
Should you desire this fashion explosion experience, we can plan this stop (being that we are around the Isola neighborhood). I bet you will love to see contemporary, beautiful womenswear focused on quality over quantity.
- Lù bar -
The Villa Reale in Palestro displays 19th century art pieces at the Galleria d’Arte Moderna. This beautiful setting with its romantic park now has a café-bistrot called LùBar.
This charming place was opened by Luisa Beccaria (also owns a fashion-line named after herself), together with her three eldest children, Lucilla, Lucrezia and Ludovico.
Lù Bar is one of the city’s newest, buzziest Sicilian restaurant, which fills daily with a circle of artistic, attractive promoters. The décor reflects the family’s heritage in diverse ways. The family estate in Sicily provides the olives, oil and almonds for the restaurant. The preferred Milanese cocktail, the Spritz, usually served with Campari or Aperol, is instead offered with a Sicilian liqueur called Amara. Dishes are served off the famed ceramics made in Caltagirone, in central Sicily, and the bathroom displays a beautiful collection of shells from Vendicari, also in Sicily.
Palms, cactus and ficus trees add sheen to the original period look of the bright dining-room. Original 17th-century arched windows overlook a public garden on one side, and from the other the view is of Villa Reale’s courtyard.
All the grandeur vibe is tone down a bit by a wooden bar found in Berlin, and twinkling lights that resemble those of traditional Sicilian summer festivals.
If we choose to walk through the Brera galleries, we can pop on over to grab a bite in this atmosphere of relaxion and buzz, perfect for every socialite.
- Brera Design Experience N1 -
When it comes to Interior design galleries in town, the first name to pop in my head is inevitably Nina Yashar’s Nilufar in via della Spiga.
She is the most eye-catching style expert in this fashionable town. She manifests most of her great vision in her flagship gallery, which she opened 36 years ago to make business in Oriental carpets - following the teachings in this of her Iranian father. In the late '90s, she started a venture into modernist furniture, initially focusing on Italian masters such as Carlo Mollino, Franco Albini, and Carlo Scarpa. This happened well before the now world-wide trend of collecting masterpieces from that era. Capable to anticipate the evolution of any forthcoming scenario, she earned a reputation when she started exhibiting in a different way, such as displaying modernist pieces alongside antique rugs.
Today, Nilufar occupies a storefront as well as a two storey meandering apartment building in the fashionable via della Spiga. If to see one of the world’s most eccentric arrays of collectible furnishings, from midcentury to contemporary, is on your to-do list, we can explore the works of this maven.
///Yourbespokeguide - my new project, my career, my passion!///
I am a Tailor Made Consultant, striving to make your experience in (and around...) Milan as unique and unforgettable as possible.
Not your typical tourist guide; I am a Qualified Architect and Interior Stylist. What I’ll show is much more than a glimpse of different spots in Milan. Instead, I strive to deliver a full-package deal. Are you looking to discover extravagant and unique places in this metropolis city? Then join me for a day (or more) to get the most out of your journey.
Many extraordinary people in the interior, design and fashion manufacturing business are hidden gems. With my direction, you will not miss out!
Together we will explore the true uniqueness of "Made in Italy". My experience and understanding of interior style guarantees our time together to be worth every minute.
Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Yourbespokeguide posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.
Send a message to Yourbespokeguide:
Giorgio Cotti, the sommelier, runs the business with his wife Michela and daughter. The Cotti family, operating in the wine world for four generations, has contributed to the "revolution" in Italy with the qualitative leap in the wine sector. The renunciation of dealing with low-quality products was for Cotti the fruit of passion and love for the treated material; the sacrifices and commitment lavished there have been amply compensated by the satisfaction obtained.
Want your business to be the top-listed Travel Agency?
