#INTERVIEW: DOMITILLA DARDI, EDIT Napoli

EDIT Napoli is an innovative design fair, founded by Emilia Petruccelli and Domitilla Dardi, created to support, promote and celebrate a new generation of designers. It focuses on the rise of the designer-maker who is at the forefront of a movement that is challenging the traditional chain of production and distribution. EDIT Napoli selects a specific group of international, independent producers, craftsmen and enlightened manufacturers, emerging as an autonomous force in contemporary design.

 

 

Hi Domitilla, we are glad to talk about this new project and we have some questions for you about it:

 

– How did it start? What led you and Emilia Petruccelli to initiate this project?

Thanks also to the experience as curator of the design section of Miart, Milan, for two editions, Emilia Petruccelli proposed me to create a design fair. Together we realized that collectable design has already its market channels as well as industrial design. We are more interested in the mid-range, the mix between entrepreneurship and research, which hasn’t an exclusive fair dedicated to. This is how EDIT Napoli was born, a design fair with a service: the exhibitors can create direct contact with the retailers and buyers will be able to choose between a selection of quality and authenticity.

 

– “Editorial design” is one of the keywords. What does this term mean? How does it relate to the contemporary world of design?

Editorial comes from “edition”, which means to have quality and a style to follow, with accessible products and not limited edition. Editors were the first great entrepreneurs in the design world and continue to be those who have a clear vision of what they want to produce. This is why sometimes editors are the designers themselves, or the artisans who produce by choosing their own reference authors, or even entrepreneurs with a recognizable product idea.

 

– Why Naples?

Naples has always been a cosmopolitan and international city, but also a deeply human place, where relationships between people have value. We want to take this energy and make it a new context for doing business, without giving up the pleasures that this extraordinary city can offer.

 

– EDIT Napoli looks like an innovative event, with a brand new format. What is the role of the residency program?

Once a year in September, we will do a residency program inviting foreign designers to work with Italian artisans, possibly from the South of Italy. It is the first time that a fair produces and sells the result of the collections as a real product. The aim and desire is to give new life to the project and to the craft production, creating a synergy between them. The result is research, but also a real product; a story of great fascination inside beautiful and functional objects.

 

– What does EDIT Napoli want to communicate to the world of design?

It is possible to make, sell and buy quality designs. Today for us what makes the difference are original and non-homologated, thought-out pieces, rich in a unique story that must be told with the right timing and in the right context. This is what EDIT is working for. Because true luxury lies in ideas, not in an old concept of “preciousness”.

 

– With EDIT Napoli, there is also the desire to approach the client, the people, raise awareness about materials and production methods. Why did you feel this need?

Too often we are distracted and do not allow ourselves the time to really know what we buy for our homes, maybe objects that will accompany us for a lifetime. The story of a project, of an idea, but also of a particular material, of how it was treated and worked, are not irrelevant details. Otherwise our inhabited landscapes will always be populated by numbers and codes, without a story and a soul.

 

Thanks to Domitilla Dardi for her availability and clarity. Waiting for the event, 6-9 June 2019 at Palazzo Mondragone, visit EDIT Napoli’s official page to stay up to date!

 

 

All Rights reserved to EDIT Napoli

Images by Claudio Bonoldi

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