Giulio Masciocchi. Contemporary Designer.
A one-on-one interview with Giulio Masciocchi, a young 27-year-old designer from Como. We met him to tell us about G.Disegni.
G.Disegni is his new start-up company, an innovative textile design studio based in Cernobbio. A textile design studio that is built on the basis of ever-changing concept of style and conveys through contemporaneity…
Who is Giulio Masciocchi?
I am a contemporary designer: a concept designer, I envision ideas and not necessarily just products. In the various fields of applied arts: I am passionate about vintage and secondhand materials; after highschool, for example, I lived for a while in London to work as a textile designer, and there I bought a “london cab” that today I keep in my studio in Cernobbio, parked in a green corner of the garden of my grandfather’s villa.
From furniture to clothing, passing through accessories, products, technology, the web and art. I started working in Italy as a freelancer designing sunglasses chosen by, among the many famous personalities, like Justin Bieber, Cristiano Ronaldo, Anna Dello Russo, Kourtney Kardashian… I then continued with various projects and collaborations: certainly among the most significant is with Versace, for which I have been providing ideas and professionalism for years. I also had the opportunity to work with Giulio Cappellini, guru of Italian design, with Amazon, with Sharebot, the Italian leader in 3D printers, Adidas, LG… during the early stage of my career, I was also able to participate in photographic projects
with Maestro Aldo Fallai for whom I posed in an advertising campaign and also, for the exhibition “from Giorgio Armani to the Renaissance”. In addition to all this, I still continue research in terms of visual experimentation, stripping objects of
common use: I try to uncover when an object is really bare and shows its deepest soul so as to embody the poetics of the “nude object”. My latest project was to establish a design studio “G.Disegni”, building it as a chest of pure creativity. I am especially positive and at the same time open to dreams.
How and when was G.DISEGNI established?
G.Disegni, deals with exclusive designs for fabric. It was founded as an intertwine between my passion for decoration and the printing traditions of the context where I grew up in: that of Como.
After some experiences as a textile designer, and, having gained an awareness of designers in different fields but parallel to textile industry, in February 2017 I decided to establish and build a team, who like me, was young, fresh and without a pre-established vision of the textile industry. The approach I had in choosing the people who could help me in this project was serious and laid-back. We are a team that firmly believes in quality through a search for a new approach.
Me and my team: Matteo, Lorena, Nereide, Arianna and Anna, we face a small but great challenge, that of competing in the local and international context.
How does your textile design prints created?
Our designs emerges from the sensual attraction that is triggered by the encounter between different and distant worlds. A loving unity between the contemporaneity of the visual world and trends, the requests of our clients and the manual skills of our textile designers… my role, in this case, is to bring external inputs and visions that enriches our textile designs and reality. Our designs, therefore, do not have a single creator but are generated, shared and modified by multiple hands and minds.
Handmade fabric designs? A return to the 80s?
Me and my team were all born after the 80s. We haven’t even experienced them… Yes, we draw by hand, and we know the tradition but the cyclic nature of fashion is not linked to our designs, which definitely have a contemporary and alternative character. Our inventiveness also lies in the philosophy of being able to be commercially viable, clinging and letting ourselves be strung along by world trends.
Future projects? How do you see Como’s textile industries in the coming years?
Our world teaches me every day that the future is unknown by definition… the only way to touch it is with the imaginative power of creativity. By nature and personal history, I believe it’s not only possible, but a duty to bet on tomorrow! Our convictions, subject to corrections and evolutions every day, are that Como and more specially our region, will continue to be a strong point for creativity in the global world of textile. Like in oenology, the Terroir determines the character and exclusivity of the wine produced, so Como and its “Terroir” are crucial for the uniqueness of the designs created here. The new millennium teaches us that creativity does not necessarily have to be physically close to production.
While we are convinced that textile industry in Como have a future specially linked to luxury and fast fashion, we think that creativity can be self-reliant, precisely by the virtue of that unmistakable flavor that comes from our “Terroir”.
Our goal is to grow and communicate our declination of creativity by coming into contact and harmony with the most diverse realities in terms of product and interpretation of contemporaneity.
We must make our small and young studio run as much as possible!
-Sara Biondi
