On the occasion of the Milan Design Week, Italian fashion house Versace has teamed up with interior designer Sasha Bikoff and artist Andy Dixon to present the 2019 Versace Home Collection with a special exhibition in Via Gesù. Sasha Bikoff is an American interior designer whose aesthetic inspirations range from New York City and Miami where she grew up, to 18th century French Rococo mixed with 1960s Space Age Modern, 1970s French Modernism and 1980s Italian Memphis Milano.
For the exhibit, Bikoff has created bold settings displaying new pieces from the Versace Home Collection. Drawing inspiration from the Versace Fall-Winter 1994 campaign photographed by Richard Avedon, her design makes a connection between Versace fashion and the Home Collection. Classic Versace motifs have found their way into a candy swirl-like carpet while neon clouds and islands enhance the fantasy setting. Bikoff has created individual sets that showcase special reinterpretations of pieces from past Versace Home Collections, playfully referencing Versace imagery and materials. She has also designed window displays for Versace’s Milanese boutiques and the Home Collection boutique.
“I have always felt a deep connection to Versace as it embodies everything I believe in, a sense of fun and freedom to be daring,” says Sasha Bikoff. “Versace lives through color and pattern breaking rules and promoting a sense of confidence and glamour which is how I decorate. Versace has always been a source of inspiration.”
Andy Dixon is a Canadian artist based in Los Angeles who plays with the tropes of art history and questions the inherent value in luxuries from past and present. His influences are eclectic: Flemish still-life, Versace silk shirts and vintage Playboy magazine spreads. For Fuorisalone, his recent exhibition held in New York called “Look at This Stuff Isn’t It Neat” will be displayed in Via Gesù. One of the key pieces of his exhibition, an installation of a hand-painted, nine by seven foot Versace shirt is re-visited and re-imagined for Design Week.
Collaborating with the House’s menswear design studio, he developed two new prints that mix elements of his own art in a Versace context, including a motif of the original shirt he created, making things come full circle in an ironic way. Two of these over-scaled shirts will be displayed in the palazzo along with the original, and two others will be shown in the Versace store in Galleria Vittorio Emanuele in Milan.
“I have always been drawn to Gianni and Donatella’s work, especially the imagery used in patterns,” says Andy Dixon. “There are a lot of commonalities between Versace and my own work – how we both plunder culture and art history, collaging tropes into new ideas, playing within the space where high and low-brow kiss.”