Currents; Design as Smooth as Skin
PAOLO CERMASI thinks the new LaPerla lingerie boutique that he designed suggests a romantic update of "a grandmother's bedroom." Hmmmm. Not unless Grandma is the model Jill Goodacre.
Mr. Cermasi, who brought to New York a crew that included Bolognese plasterers, gold-leaf artists, painters and stonemasons, was clearly inspired by the subject matter. The floor is made of off-white marble from Verona, as smooth as a bar of soap. A suspended display fixture is decorated with Murano glass pendants in eggplant shapes. The architect designed a partition wall of thick plaster that has a relief of a lace pattern. (It was flown to New York from Florence, numbered and crated like an archeological find.) Every wall in the 1,500-square-foot shop, at 777 Madison Avenue (66th Street), is curved and finished in creamy, soft stucco antico, a Venetian polished plaster technique that feels like, well, skin. "Sometimes when I look at the drawings, I cannot help but think of a bottom," the architect said.