MOROCCO IS ACCELERATING! feature - Alstom
MOROCCO IS ACCELERATING! feature - Alstom
MOROCCO IS ACCELERATING! feature - Alstom
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When Xavier Allard, Director Design&Styling <strong>Alstom</strong>, meets<br />
the young design prodigy Ora Ïto, what do they say to each other?<br />
Tales of technological anticipation or children’s dreams of<br />
the trains of the future? Projections, free of constraint, where each<br />
gives his vision of today’s brands and the mobility of the future.<br />
BACK TO<br />
THE FUTURE<br />
Xavier Allard: You are young but you<br />
already have an impressive career…<br />
Ora Ïto: I began at a design school<br />
which I left before I had fi nished the course.<br />
At 19, I became well known by inventing<br />
the fi rst virtual brands. I changed Vuitton,<br />
Apple and Nike products into 3D …<br />
After reports in the press, thousands<br />
of Internet users wanted to order these<br />
products which did not in fact exist.<br />
This buzz – I was one of the fi rst people<br />
to generate one on the net! – introduced<br />
my work to the major brands.<br />
Since then I have worked for the tableware,<br />
cosmetics, fashion, accessories and furniture<br />
industries: Christofl e, Guerlain, Steiner,<br />
Roche Bobois or Laguiole, each of whom<br />
is a mythical brand in their fi eld. It is<br />
a coincidence that these brands are mostly<br />
French. I’m not at all obsessed by everything<br />
French; I am more interested by a mix<br />
of cultures, but I like the idea of working<br />
for the fl agships of my country’s industry!<br />
X. Allard: What is your creative process?<br />
Ora Ïto: I initially go into a project weightless<br />
and uncontaminated. I then get to know<br />
the brand’s history, its identity and DNA.<br />
I am like an actor who immerses himself<br />
for a while in a character.<br />
Guerlain, for instance, is baroque,<br />
feminine and sculptural…<br />
There is the insignia, the history, the saga…<br />
morphing all this helped me to create<br />
the most recent bottle for the perfume Idylle.<br />
For Miss Pucci, I reworked in 3D one of<br />
the brand’s recurring motifs. Madame Pucci<br />
said to me: “Your design has imposed<br />
itself as the obvious choice among<br />
the fi ve others.” This is the type of reaction<br />
I’m looking for!<br />
To sum up, everything remains an Ïto object,<br />
but I would not have been able to design<br />
it without the brand.<br />
X. Allard: Do you give a lot of importance<br />
to the brand universe?<br />
Ora Ïto: Brands are extraordinary! It’s<br />
fantastic what they contain in terms of grey<br />
matter, intelligence and different forms of<br />
know-how. Tradition too! I like modern things<br />
but I also like tradition. I don’t think that you �<br />
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