An esthete in every sense of the word, Fabrizio Buonamassa Stigliani, executive director of product creation at Bvlgari, is no stranger to the power of lateral thinking, having designed a wide range of products, from stunning cars to sleek furniture and groundbreaking, record-breaking Bvlgari Octo watch collections Finissimo. While he was in Singapore recently for the fourth edition of LVMH Watch Week, we met with him to pick out the hallmarks of a distinctive house, the need to nurture one’s creativity and the meaning of good design.
Is there a through line between the Bvlgari watches presented at LVMH Watch Week 2023?
Color is one, but for Bvlgari, color is always a translucent line. This year, we’re bringing you jewelery watches and when it comes to jewelery, we talk about color.
How would you describe the unmistakable Italian way of color mixing and matching, because it’s quite striking and different.
And unique. We have a natural talent for certain things. For us, beauty is not a philosophical concept; it is part of our DNA. We grew up surrounded by beauty, thanks to the amazing history we have in art, and after that, in matters of taste. Bvlgari is well known for playing with different and unique color schemes and with colored gemstones. In the end, it’s the brand’s DNA that plays with color.
Tell me more about the creative process in developing a watch.
It’s hard to say because we don’t just have one design process for one watch. The creative process is one of the greatest mysteries. Everyone is a creative person in a different field, to be honest, but the difference between a skilled creative person and an ordinary person is that the former is able to manage his creativity and nurture it. And even the way creativity is nurtured, that’s important because it’s like a field of grass: Sometimes you have to cut it. At certain moments, you have to completely change your point of view. You have to nurture your creativity with different things because otherwise you will end up creating the same object every time. Visit places, see things, talk to interesting people who are different from you for new perspectives. You have to be open minded and then maybe you can come up with ideas.
You’ve talked about the relationship between designing cars and watches and your background as an industrial designer. How have your interests and experience in so many different product categories influenced the way you create?
It gives us the opportunity to change our point of view. It’s interesting that when you design jewelry, you design jewelry against the backdrop of watches, and vice versa, so that mixing and matching different designs, technologies, suppliers and clients makes products different and unique. The idea is to be versatile and creative, and each time try a different way of expressing a brand spirit that makes sense for both old and new clients. The brand is modern and that’s why we don’t use the archive much. We rely on archives for our cultural approach because [they’re] an awesome resource, but as a creative person, you have to know the archive and forget about it [them] at the same time, because otherwise you start making copies from archives.
What does design mean to you?
For me, design is not aesthetics; design is a way of thinking. When we talk about design, we often [think of it in terms of] design object, very well made item. You see, in Italian, we don’t have the word “design” — we use “art applied to industry.” We mix art and industry, and it’s unique. Maybe that’s why the Italian design is different. Aesthetics is good if at first the idea is a quality idea that makes sense by taking into account market needs and even being able to anticipate market needs. This is by design; it’s not just one word or an aesthetic — it’s a real point of view.
