Well Woven: Missoni’s Hospitality Brand is Taking Shape

3.04.10

In sports, a triple threat might be considered a football player who is a skilled runner, kicker and passer. In Hollywood, a triple threat could be a knock-out actress who can also sing and dance. In the world of design, Missoni has come to effortlessly define the meaning of the term with a renowned fashion house, a home goods label that offers high-end furnishing accessories, and now a foray into the world of hospitality with the debut of a new hotel brand, Hotel Missoni.

“When we walked into the world of Missoni — their studio, factory, home and garden — you could see that if in some way you could bottle that lifestyle, you would have a fantastic product,” says Gordon McKinnon, the vice president of brands and concept development for the Rezidor Hotel Group, whose portfolio now includes the Hotel Missoni brand. “That’s what we set out to represent. It’s more than patterns, colors and textures, it’s more deep than that. It’s a family philosophy and a very typical Italian love of life, family and art. We reflected all of these things in the product itself.”

Missoni formed an internal creative team for interiors and collaborated with Milan’s Matteo Thun & Partners and Glasgow’s Graven Images for the first two projects, Hotel Missoni Edinburgh, which opened last June, and a second location in Kuwait, which will be unveiled in early 2010. The design inspiration started in familiar territory — Thun, whose studio provided input during the conceptualizing phase, had already developed a rapport with Missoni and its philosophy after designing one of its flagship boutiques on New York’s Madison Avenue nearly a decade ago.

“We are involved in a lot of hotel projects and offered to a hotel management group the opportunity to integrate a fashion brand in their portfolio,” Matteo Thun says of the initial discussions about the new brand. “When Rosita [Missoni] saw the plans of the Nhow Hotel in Milan [which was designed by Thun’s studio] she liked the generosity of the proportions and the lightness of the space. A team-work emerged; we offered the body, and Missoni added the dress.”

The “dress” that Thun is referring to is the signature blend of vivid color and bold pattern that has defined Missoni in fashion and home accessory spheres. While each hotel’s location will play a distinct role in defining color palettes and other design touches, the use of the stripes, zig-zags and geometric patterns pervasive in the brand’s fashions will carry through like an autograph, as will the use of giant mosaic tiled vases that stand almost floor to ceiling in hotel reception areas.

“The first concept of Hotel Missoni was principally the dressing,” says Thun. “Missoni’s fashion signature became the starting point. The dialogue between Rosita Missoni and us for this interior design project was all about marrying Missoni colors and Missoni lifestyle with Matteo Thun & Partner’s experience of hospitality concepts.”

In Edinburgh, for example, a palette of black and white was chosen to reflect the historic location of the hotel. Bold Missoni patterns are set off by the use of crisp, jewel-toned colors on the walls or as accents —barcode-patterned flooring next to cherry red wall accents, mirrors with zebra-patterned frames popping against a chartreuse backdrop. In Kuwait, colors reflective of the Gulf coast — turquoise, orange, gold — will have leading roles.

The interior teams incorporated products like B&B Italia armchairs and sofas, wall coverings and carpets by Missoni and T&J Vestor (an Italian textile manufacturer who produces products for the MissoniHome line), mosaic tiles by Trend Group and tableware and fabrics by Missoni. The hotel is also committed to sourcing local products and incorporating native services and customs into operations. The family philosophy McKinnon mentioned also comes into play in a design sense, with elements pulled directly from the Missoni’s private home. An example: the Hans Wegner Wishbone Chair that Rosita Missoni has at the dining room table of each of her family residences will also make guests feel at home in the brand’s hotel interiors.

“The Missoni Hotel brand has its own particular energy,” says Ross Hunter, director of Graven Images. “The really special thing is that Missoni is a real family, not just a marketing idea. It’s important to capture that very personal way of living — and it’s about enjoyment and richness and color, without the kind of crass over-indulgence that you’ve come to expect in some ‘five star’ hotels.”

It’s this understanding of Missoni that helped land Graven Images a job with the hotel brand. They’re continuing with the next round of rollouts, including a more resort-like version of a Hotel Missoni planned for Oman and another property in Cape Town. According to McKinnon, the brand is considering a few design firms to interface with the Missoni creative team that’s led by Rosita Missoni on future projects. But an understanding of the brand, and a willingness to work within certain parameters is crucial.

“It’s very relationship based,” says McKinnon. “The appointment of designers takes place though a long chain of courting processes. They have to understand and accept the hierarchy of the decision making process. They’re allowed to have ideas and proposals and creative thoughts, of course, but at the end of the day this is a Missoni hotel and not any other. It can’t be a designer’s interpretation of a hotel — it has to be absolute Missoni.”