Let’s start from today: Marta Ferri, textile consultant for Molteni&C, presents a new collection of fabrics. Tell us about the new products and how the collaboration with Molteni&C came about.
I can say that the collaboration with Molteni came about almost by chance. They asked me for some advice on fabrics and colours. The company lacked a figure who knew how to “dress” their furniture and design interiors. I went to visit them at the factory to personally see their production and their style. The understanding between us was immediate. I have been working with them as a Textile Consultant for three years now, I have redesigned all the colour charts, also proposing a new fabric scenario for all the layers that characterise the Molteni furniture proposals. For the previous editions of the Salone del Mobile I created the MATERIA, GEA and TRAMA collections, and, to dress the wardrobes by Vincent Van Duysen, present in the Molteni showrooms, I created “The Styling Closet by Marta Ferri” a capsule collection of clothes and accessories, all made with furnishing fabrics. For the next Salone we will present a new collection that will interpret natural fabrics in a contemporary key, a mix of innovation and tradition, creating layers that are ideal not only for furniture but also for surfaces and spaces.
Marta Ferri, Molteni&C’s textile consultant
Marta Ferri, Molteni&C’s textile consultant
For your clothes you use furnishing fabrics. On request, you enjoy dressing furniture. Can you tell us more about this cross-dialogue between fashion and design that has become your trademark?
I love the weights, the colours, the patterns and the oversized designs of the furnishing fabrics. The fabric is the thread that connects fashion and interior design. Fashion and furniture are similar to one another, they have a common sensibility and desire to create beautiful things that make people feel good in different
Atelier di Marta Ferri
How was your passion for the world of furnishing fabrics born? What are your favourite fabrics?
I grew up in an environment where design, style, aesthetics and absolute taste were distinctive elements. My father, the photographer Fabrizio Ferri, taught me the importance of light and colour, my mother Barbara Frua, interior decorator, is the sorceress of colour, able to create atmospheres with unthinkable colours, from her I got my passion for furnishing fabrics. I learned so much from them and they helped me a great deal to develop a particular sensibility that links my fashion dress with the design of the fabrics I choose.
Atelier di Marta Ferri
My first clothing collection, made exclusively with upholstery fabrics, was designed almost as a lark and got the special mention of “Who’s on next” for the sartorial quality and the innovation of the materials. At this point the first requests began arriving and then the real work begins.
My favourite supplier is Colefax & Fowler, truly one of a kind fabrics. Their colours and their embroideries are for me a source of inspiration from which the idea for the realisation of each garment starts. The quality of the upholstery fabric and the relationship of the drawings in fact allows greater creative freedom.
You often post on Instagram shots of your world, your atelier of experimentation in Milan. Can you tell us more about it?
Coming to my Atelier is like going to an old tailor. I like craftsmanship and the creative process, I feel free from trends and massification. I only create personal clothes, bespoke clothes. Every customer each has his or her own story, a personal identity, and the same is true for every garment. When a client comes to my Atelier, I try to interpret his or her taste. It takes empathy, I spend the first twenty minutes just talking: seeing how the person moves and how she expresses herself. This helps me to understand what the right clothes to propose will be. Each time the challenge is to create clothes that will look good on everyone, adapting to the most diverse forms. I like dressing women, not putting a costume on them.
“The Styling Closet by Marta Ferri” designed by Marta Ferri, Molteni&C
“The Styling Closet by Marta Ferri” designed by Marta Ferri, Molteni&C
Recently you were in charge of the interiors of “La casa di Marta”, the resort in Borgo Egnazia. Can you tell us about it?
“La Casa di Marta” is a new all-round design project. In Borgo Egnazia in Puglia I am furnishing a house, a unique place, a colourful environment different from the style of the village, but that fits harmoniously in the white tuff scenery. La Casa di Marta, in addition to being my refuge in Puglia, will also be an atelier for my creations, and there are also spaces to let.
Molteni&C, Divano Paul Vincent Van Duysen 2016
One last curiosity: what is your house like? What are its fabrics, furniture and colours? Did you do the interior design yourself?
I have lived in many houses, first in New York and then in Milan, in each one I have always created different environments, but ones that made me feel at ease. My home is eclectic, furnished with furniture and objects that come from all over the world, collected over the years, each piece has its own story. I put together what I like without asking too many questions, always starting from the fabrics. It’s a great mix of different styles but, incredibly, together they find their own balance. I made several technical errors in designing and furnishing the different rooms of my house, but the good part about that is that I can only blame myself.
