Images: Gabriel Eid, Flickr, Gina Garan
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MANDARIN ORIENTAL HOTEL
Commissioned by Chandelier Creative, New York, EMS creative director, Richard Smith, worked with Atsuko Inc to produce a special promotional ‘invitation’ for the Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group.
This limited edition invite was to given to a small selection of international fashion designers including Tom Ford, Yohji Yamamoto, and Oscar de la Renta. Each designer was invited to create a special ‘one-off’ hotel suite for the Mandarin’s Landmark Hotel in Hong Kong.
The piece comprised a large black plexi-box, wrapped in a black-on-black, foil-blocked belly band. Each box contained 8 inspirational abstract images, a personal hand-written invitation, and 8 individually hand-painted chinese fans.
Artist Erica Svec was commissioned to paint each fan with abstract illustrations depicting elements from the designer’s current collection.
Smith elaborates, ‘we had an idea from the beginning that we wanted to produce something comprising several elements, something that encapsulated the idea of luxury and opulence as well as high-fashion all at the same time, without giving anything away or going into too much detail.’ Atsuko Inc were given just a few weeks to produce this immaculate ‘object’ from start to finish including sourcing all the materials.
‘Consequently,’ Smith explains, ‘we had a limited amount of time to get all the details right. Typically the exact information was also changing on a daily basis, even up to the day before the project was due to be delivered. But like all projects of this nature, at the time we never saw the light at the end of the tunnel, even though it eventually came and went in a flash.’
Box and fans photographed by Gabriel Eid.
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These designs are beautiful! very suiting to the Mandarin Oriental!
this is unbelievable. I love this piece. Really a creative and innovative design!