Dear readers, at the time of going to press,
we are still in search of our Brand &
Content Director, Tony Chambers. He was
last spotted in Milan during Salone del
Mobile at a late night dinner to celebrate
the 435th anniversary of one of the world’s
largest furniture design brands. Such events
are becoming more and more prevalent,
and the competition between brands fiercer
and fiercer. The strong-arm tactics of their
PR and communication teams to secure
the time and attention of journalists are
becoming curiouser and curiouser.
Kidnapping, though, is surely a step too far.
During the evening in question, we
received a number of increasingly desperate
texts from Tony:
‘The venue is miles from anywhere.’
‘They promised dinner would start two
hours ago – we haven’t even sat down yet.’
‘The CEO’s speech has been going
on for 50 minutes.’
‘My table is furthest from the exit.’
‘Sh*t, I’m sitting next to the CEO!
I can’t escape.’
‘Tell X, Y and Z that I’m not going to
make their events.’
‘HELP!’
You can feel the despair in that resort toNewsstand cover
Photography:
Leandro Farina
Interiors:
Olly Mason
‘Sign Filo’ chairs, £1,537
each, by Piergiorgio
Cazzaniga, for MDF Italia,
from Aram. For more
summer seating with
a twist, see page 144Limited-edition cover
by David Chipperfield
David Chipperfield’s
specially created
cover, with handwritten
annotation, features
an architectural drawing
of his bridge linking
London’s Royal Academy
of Arts to his new
extension. See our
interview, page 052
Limited-edition covers are
available to subscribers,
see Wallpaper.com
Wallpaper* is printed
on UPM Star, upm.comall upper case letters. Clearly the motive
behind these marathon events is not only
to entangle you in the brand DNA, but
also to keep you there as long as possible
so that you can’t possibly attend the event
of a rival. And, of course, it works. Other
editors have given similar stories of brand
kidnapping. Being bundled into limousines
and driven to locations hours from the
centre of the city, returned hours later
disoriented and desperately hungry.
Promises of a quick press lunch, meanwhile,
turn out to be a time-sucking black hole.
Whistlestop walk-throughs of collections
extend interminably as every design and
material innovation is explained in forensic
detail, while designers and curators are
called in to add anecdotal colour. But, on
returning to Wallpaper* HQ, these editors,
now glassy eyed and suffering from
low-level cocktail poisoning, are all full of
praise for their captors – classic symptoms
of Stockholm syndrome.
For now, we await news of Tony’s fate.
Despite being held captive, we are confident
that he is in the most comfortable and
elegant of environments. A Wallpaper*
hostage has to maintain standards after all.
No torture chambers for them!034 ∑
RANSOM LETTER