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Get to know with us Nicoletta Gatti, the founder of Renaissance Rehab, an initiative that brings together discontinued fabrics with your family's historic seating.
Our guests are vintage lovers, and they are asked to pick their favorite interior from anywhere in the world. They describe the place, its objects, and decoration, and they tell us why these have an important meaning in their life or in their work. Today I'm really pleased to welcome Nicoletta Gatti, who founded Renaissance Rehab, a Milan-based project that pairs outmoded objects from the past and out-of-production fabrics.
English traslation:
Two years ago I founded the Renaissance Rehab, a brand that deals with the recovery and rebirth of objects of the heart. Sustainability, beauty and memory: I combine my skills in fashion and furniture and give a new life to chairs and armchairs, allowing families to keep pieces of their history with them, by redressing them with designer fabrics.
The cycle of nature never ends. Giving life to objects and fabrics by putting “beauty” back into circulation: this is the philosophy of Renaissance Rehab. It is also a way to avoid waste and take care of the health of the world.
The idea is to put back beauty into circulation, not only the furniture's beauty but also the fabrics', generally recovered from Rubelli's out-of-catalog collections, otherwise destined to end their life in a warehouse.
I launched two collections: Sedute Esaurite (Out of Stock Seats), which are upholstered, and Fuori Collezione (Out of Production), a series of Formica pieces, reworked and resinated, also suitable for outdoors spaces. They are all unique pieces.
After the 1st lockdown, I decided to embark on a very ambitious project that involves various players throughout Italy. I organized a tour that I called Renaissance Rehab On The Road, which moves from the north to the south of Italy, identifying for now 6 cities (Turin, Genoa, Florence, Rome, Naples and Bari). The tour aims to enhance the rebirth of Italian labor and the artisan savoir-faire of our master upholsterers, inviting citizens to bring me their objects of the heart, their "out of stock" seats to give them new life.
I call it a residence surrounded by "living silence", because you can still breathe all that atmosphere of the Milanese "beau monde" between the two wars.
This place corresponds to me and fascinates me, first of all because it takes me back to my childhood memories, and then because I am strongly fascinated by these two historical periods in art, architecture and the décor.
I love the functionality of rationalism as well as its interest in pure and simple forms.
Of Art Deco I love those lines that gradually evolved from floral organic giving way to a line that becomes progressively more geometric and rigorous, hosting soft volumes and rounded shapes.
All of these are stories for me, stories from a bygone era of which I cherish the dearest memories, thanks to the life spent with my grandparents.
My work always starts from my feelings, I work with passion and through my memories, and the memories of those who know how to tell me their stories, I explore, transform and create. I retrieve the past and make it mine processing it into something new.
For me, Villa Necchi Campiglio represents the creative inspiration that encompasses all this.
I also appreciate the décor details, which are for me the most fascinating part:
The radiators covered with metal grates.
The staircase with a rigorous but decorative design at the same time, a handcrafted masterpiece.
The cast iron door that divides a living room from the veranda. It looks like a jewel, I would never stop looking at it. It is so beautiful that it moves me: simple, linear, perfect.
The geometric game created on the floor, between marble and travertine.
The bean shape of the veranda sofa.
And then fabrics, my great passion.
Lampas, damasks, silks, and velvets, decorations mixed freely on Deco and 18th-century furnishings.
The fabrics are by Rubelli, my favorite company!
The bathrooms: I would spend hours admiring all the perfectly tailored interlocking details, the heated towel rail between the sinks, the same one that my grandmother and now my mom had in the bathroom. For me it is like entering my ancient world.
Finally, the beauty of the corridor leading to the rooms, that row of built-in wardrobes with simple and clean lines that enclose a world: a hats collection, haute couture clothes, scarves, handbags ...
Once again I find myself there, I capture that taste and that charm, which is typical of the made-to-measure, a quality I always put in my work by creating bespoke "clothes" for my Out of Stock collection.
The leitmotif in my work is tailoring, the pleasure of combining fashion (the world where I trained) with furniture.
I find this same element every time I visit Villa Necchi Campiglio, the same sartorial research in making custom-made furniture: the taste for detail and aesthetics that I seek so much in all my interior decorator work.
