Salvaged + socially-responsible = very cool furniture. 

Milan-based fashion house Marni created quite a scene with its 100 Chairs collection at last month’s Salone del Mobile. Lots of attention was generated in Milan, online and off, because the collection was created in San Gil, Colombia by craftsmen and former inmates as part of a post-prison rehabilitation program. Also because the chairs themselves are gorgeous – a candy colored collection of eighty chairs, ten deckchairs and ten tables in twenty colors, seven models and twenty-one variations. The collection is very much in the Central/South American aesthetic, reminiscent of Marka Moderna’s Stingo Stools.

What bowled us over, too, is that all the chairs were made from salvaged PVC thread wrapped around a metal frame.

The collection did sell out at the Marni Boutique at Via Della Spiga 50 – with proceeds donated to the institute ICAM of Milan, an organization supporting children of imprisoned mothers. But, as Marni told Design Bureau, expect to see a new collection at Art Basel later this year.

Also part of the initiative, this strangely relaxing video by photographer and filmmaker Francesco Jodice showing Marni staff sitting and lounging, sometimes nervously twisting their fingers and tapping their toes, in the chairs. The film is part of a project called ‘L’Arte del Ritratto’ – the art of the portrait.

Marni has given us the art of fashion, and now the art of sitting. The art of salvaging. The art of giving back.

Images: Wallpaper; Design Boom

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