Every producer of high-end goods, be it cell phones, footwear, clothes or furniture, has to be aware of such phenomenon as ‘fashion dictate’. Trends of fashion come and go really quickly: what seems modish today, may look old-fashioned in a year and ridiculously outdated in a couple of years. So, many brands adopt the approach that could be called ‘follow the trends or die’. They strive to notice tendencies as soon as they emerge and make the most of them before they go.
Bellavista Collection, a dozen-year-old brand, whose Italian luxury furniture is known all over the globe, prefers not to. It exercises quite the opposite approach to product design: this brand focuses on timeless beauty and high quality. This tactic has proved to be successful for the brand and perfect for its customers. That is why, it’s quite natural for Bellavista Collection to have bestsellers that are about a decade old.
A Decade-Old Best Seller
Here is just one of the best-selling pieces, which first turned heads at the 2012 edition of the Salone Internazionale del Mobile – the biggest and the most influential trade event in the industry, held annually in Milan.
PHILIPPE sideboard impressed visitors so much that a few years later, two more versions of PHILIPPE were designed. Named PHILIPPE LEATHER and PHILIPPE METAL, they have doors, drawer fronts, and sides clad in leather and metal respectively. All three models quickly became bestsellers and still are extremely popular with Bellavista’s customers.
If you open the detailed description of PHILIPPE sideboard, you’ll be surprised with a number of different variants available for this piece.
Depending on the size of your room, you can choose among four PHILIPPE sideboards, three of which differ in width. They can be 200 centimeters, 250 or 300 centimeters wide (78.7, 98.4, and 118.1 inches respectively). Other dimensions remain the same for the all four, namely, all of them are 55 centimeters (21.7 in.) deep and 78.6 centimeters (30.9 inches) high.
The 200 centimeters-wide sideboard comes in two models. The first one has four doors and one shelf, made of bronzed glass; the second one has two inner bronzed glass shelves, two doors, two drawers, and one deep drawer. Sideboards, which are 300 and 250 centimeters wide, have two inner bronzed glass shelves, four doors, two drawers, and one deep drawer. Needless to say, all the drawers are equipped with the soft-close damping mechanism, allowing them to close smoothly and softly.
If you wish, you can have the inner structure of your sideboard in bronzed glass; the sideboard will be equipped with two removable trays, made of the same materials the sideboard, plus one faux-leather cutlery tray.
However, when it comes to materials for the outer parts for PHILIPPE sideboard, you have even more choice. The outer structure, made of solid wood (Italian poplar, to be precise), could be veneered with natural or stained walnut or ash wood. There are five options in total, looking pretty different: almost black moka stained ashwood, dark brown moka stained walnut and dark stained walnut, natural American walnut and sherry stained ashwood, with its lovely dark-reddish hue. All the inner wooden parts are made of natural maple.
But that isn’t all. There also is an optional top inset, made of either hammered brass with antique bronze finish or marble. The latter, in its turn, is offered in four kinds of this beautiful natural stone. It’s so difficult to choose among white and light greyish Calacatta and Carrara; ochre-colored Breccia Damascata, and, of course, luxurious-looking Emperador Dark Brown marble, with its spots varying from dark to lighter shades of brown.
The base, hinges and handles of all variants of PHILIPPE are made of cast brass with antique bronze finish. They all are designed and produced in-house: the brand owns a foundry, where all its metal details come from. By the way, you can see these handles in the brand’s online catalog under the name MAN-08.
All in all, there is an impressively large number of options for the single furniture piece named PHILIPPE. But even this is not all!
Customizability is the Key Word
Bellavista Collection is justifiably proud of the fact that each its item could be customized to a great extent. It goes far beyond offering multiple variants to choose from.
Supposing, you are looking for, say, a sofa for your living-room. You open PRODUCTS section of Bellavista Collection’s website, choose the product category named UPHOLSTERED PICES and open SOFAS sub-category. The very first item you see there, ZIA MARIA, makes you say “Wow! That’s what I’ve been looking for!”. You click on the Download PDF button, opening the detailed description. Here you see that there are two size variants for it: 220 centimeters (86.6 inches) and 260 centimeters (102.4 inches) wide. The problem that your dream sofa is bigger – say, 3 meters wide (118.1 inches). What should you do? Just pick the bigger option, which is still smaller than you want? Of course, no! All you need is tell Bellavista Collection about your wish. You’ll surely get what you want – like hundreds of customers who already did.
Would rather pick oak veneering, but it isn’t available for this particular piece? Want a wider bench, bed, or sofa? No problem. What is more, you can have a furniture piece created from scratch. It will be one of a kind, and it’ll be yours!
Creating highly customized and bespoke pieces is actually routine work for the brand’s design department. This cherry-picked team of gifted designers is headed by Attilio Zanni – Bellavista’s co-founder and a brilliant all-round designer. Most of the wonderful items you can see on the brand’s website, are his brainchildren. The notorious ‘fashion dictate’ has no power over Attilio Zanni. Thanks to his outstanding talent, everything designed and manufactured in Bellavista Collection will never go out of fashion. When looking at their images, you’ll never tell when exactly this or that beautiful piece was designed – a decade ago or just yesterday.
