Designer rocks

Nadja Swarovski

Few people have been better positioned to witness the increasingly frequent intermingling of design disciplines as Nadja Swarovski, the woman responsible for positioning Swarovski at the forefront of the fashion, art and design industries.

“There has been a real cross pollinisation between all the different disciplines – from fashion to art to music to design,” she explained during an exclusive interview with Commercial Interior Design. “I think it’s because of the breakdown of so many barriers. It’s true – the world is flat.”

In fact, while Swarovski has no formal training in design – and readily admits to living “vicariously through the designers” that she collaborates with – she has played a key role in encouraging this interplay of disciplines.

The Swarovski Crystal Palace initiative, for example, was created to reinvigorate the relationship between crystal and lighting, by encouraging leading creative forces to reinvent the chandelier.

In addition to collaborating with product designers and architects such as Zaha Hadid, Ross Lovegrove, Karim Rashid and Ron Arad, to name but a few, the project has called on the talents of musician Lenny Kravitz, as well as figures more closely associated with the world of fashion, such as Solange Azagury Partridge.

“I think one thing is true – if you have an eye, you can certainly apply it to many different areas; you don’t necessarily need to be stuck in a certain discipline,” Swarovski, currently vice president of international communications at the company founded by her great-great-grandfather, said. “The crossover is tremendous and it’s certainly more accepted nowadays.”

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There are a host of other designers and architects that Swarovski is eager to collaborate with, she admitted. “I’m endlessly curious about how designers interpret the use of our product.

“We are a multi-faceted product – no pun intended – and just as multi-faceted as that product is, so are the types of application. Working with Norman Foster or IM Pei would be incredible. There are so many people like that, but also a lot of product designers; Martino Gamper, for example, is incredible.

“He’s from that young, emerging group that are so talented but also so thoughtful and so down to earth. That’s exactly the spirit that we want to convey.

“We want to work with a mix of well-established, successful designers, but also emerging designers who have totally new ideas and who might also have completely different experiences.”

The company has been working with Greg Lynn on an installation for Design Miami, and with Tokujin Yoshioka, Yves Behar and the Hariri sisters on a new collection that will be launched at the Milan Furniture Fair. “The direction is going to be not so much lighting, but evolution into furniture and art. The Hariri sisters did one chandelier for Crystal Palace, which is basically a rock crystal.

“Their new collection will be based on that, in combination with leather, crystal and metal. They are also creating a jewellery line that mirrors that furniture line – so talk about cross pollination!”

With her multi-faceted, front-row view of the industry, Swarovski is also perfectly positioned to gauge how the current economic crisis is impacting design. “What I’ve noticed with the latest collections in Paris, Milan, New York and London, is that they are incredibly celebratory of life. I have to say, the message there is that the financial crisis is not a creative crisis,” she maintained. “Just the opposite, in fact.”