Presented at its flagship store at the Design Centre at Chelsea Harbour in London, UK, Rubelli company, creating, producing, and commercializing furnishing products, for over 130 years, turns the theme of ‘Gardens’ into a collection that focuses on a botanical theme under the ‘Garden’ heading with an exploration of texture, light, color, and pattern that allows the beauty and craftsmanship of Rubelli to shine. Silk will continue to be a key component of the offering as well as decorative motifs, pattern and the advanced weaving techniques that are a hallmark of Rubelli textiles.

The new creative direction by Formafantasma Studio follows the collection design through to a new retail concept, graphics, a catalog, and photography, designed to refresh the brand identity. The approach sees a coexistence of decoration, fashion, art, and photography and a leaning towards simplicity.

Coming from the Venetian tradition, rich in textures, patterns, and reflections, on the 700th anniversary of Marco Polo’s death, Nicolò Favaretto Rubelli, A.D. of Rubelli company, comments: “The time has come for a more radical evolution for Rubelli. We therefore decided to entrust the creative direction of Rubelli to Formafantasma. Their first challenge, the recent relaunch of Kieffer, has been very successful. Now it’s time for the main undertaking: to generate a new, fresh energy for Rubelli, working alongside our design studio.”

The collection focuses on one of the most archetypal, era-spanning themes of textiles: the botanical theme. Gardens as a theme can easily be metaphorical. As gardens are small ecosystems of different elements coexisting and complementing each other, Rubelli products form a vibrant, meticulously cultivated landscape. The Gardens collection hosts herbs for medicine, vegetables for food, symbolic plants, or beautiful decorative flowers. Sometimes plants are even secondary in a garden: think of a Japanese dry garden. The collection follows the same pattern of multiplicity.

The Gardens collection has in fact a double spirit in terms of application and approach: home and high performance/outdoor. The home collection brings the garden into the house through the extensive use of bright, fresh colours and figurative decorations coming from different eras. The outdoor/contract part follows a reverse process. It explores the abstract, geometric side of a garden, in elegant and subtle tones. The textures here are the protagonists.

The Gardens collection is a bouquet of decorative patterns, as you expect from Rubelli, but also of textures and especially of colours. Colours are arguably the most significant aspect of the collection. They come from melons, pistachios, lemons, orchids. They are bright and shiny and fresh, a verdant landscape. They intuitively adapt to the different textiles giving uniformity to the collection. The textures are equally inspired by the chatoyant patterns found on large tree trunks, as well as by the traces left by rain droplets in the fresh loam. Silks become alive: they reflect the light in unexpected ways, almost following the seasons changing.
The Gardens collection is conceived to highlight Rubelli’s quality staples: the richness of decorative motifs, the outstanding quality of silk, the depth and care of colours, and the eclectic approach to techniques. Rubelli’s beauty lies in the quality of craftsmanship applied both to a delicate, diaphanous veil as well as to a technical textile that can withstand heavy use.