Discovering Corrado de Biase’s apartment design is like plunging into a book. The book of his life. An avid reader – something he used when he was younger to “give shape to many parallel universes where we can be whoever we want to be, whenever we want” – this designer from the Pouilles region has succeeded in his objective of recreating incredible interior design in his own way. He discovered it thanks to the decadent details from Huysmans or Annunzio and it’s now part of his everyday life in different forms, and different scales especially. This Italian man is a shoe designer. Shoes are almost like miniature decor “which have an essential need to be animated by somebody’s personality” and that are as stimulating as they are technical, full of “stories about love, sadness, tears or eroticism.” A bit like the rooms in his home which he confesses are an extension of himself. Each of them is designed independently. Here there is a Moroccan living room, there a romantic dining room with all the freshness of a conservatory, all contrasted with a bedroom full of bold dark shades. “I make choices that many people consider ‘questionable’. I don’t regret it in the least, because I like them and see myself reflected in them. That’s all me. Whether it’s attractive or not.” He has a total freedom of tone, guided by one rule only: learning. Constantly. From other people mostly. From their stories, their preferences, their talents… But also from the past and the traces it has left behind. One of the reasons – and it may even be the main reason – that he found this location so charming is that it used to belong to a duchess. He wanted to breathe new life into it, and approached it through his reading. Corrado de Biase has the rare gift of knowing how to feel continually feel wonder. “We then fall in love with lots of things and our aesthetics are constantly evolving,” he writes to us, emphasising his deep respect for the workers – be it architect, gallery owner or artisan – who have supported him throughout this project. Acting on gut instinct, the designer is constantly progressing and changing his own little world. He has a voracious appetite which, from the outside at least, somewhat recalls the “more is never enough” maximalist approach of the American decorator Tony Duquette. Somebody else who, like Corrado de Biase, is never afraid to try something new.
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