R&Dlab: a curious group

r&dlab, photos by Giulia Agostini

In this sunny and warm afternoon, I stopped in the brand-new showroom of R&Dlab in Via Tortona. Here, I had an incredibly out-of-the box conversation with Roberto Vaccari, member of the Creative Department of this research and design centre.

That lab is sprouted from a long period of work of its art director, Michele Ruffin, and his staff in Okinawa's firm. Before arriving in via Tortona, Mr. Ruffin gained his first experience in belts, then he moved to labels, finally he interested on bio and eco products and grouped together creative and curious people and opened his own business.

Indeed, curiousity is one of the keyword of the team. Their research extends from fashion and design to materials. As Mrs. Vaccari asserted: "Everything is transformation; nothing has to be created, everything we need already exists: we have only to take it from the waste bin and give it a new identity, a new function". And with this ecological phylosophy, they start working on small things to a deeper and bigger goal: respect our enviroment.

Because the ambient place where part of them grewn up is Italy, the creative department chooses made in Italy and high quality elements and neglects cheap, low profile, far east materials. On the other hand, the first doesn't benefit the price.

But is this appreaciable effort comprehended by the customers? Unfortunately, not too much. Whereas the lab invests a lot on research and has already created a particular kind of recycled paper cloth washable, the clients prefer to waste their money and their future on cheaper and short lasting material. Even though it proposes diffirentiated and personal produts, the mass continue to follow the mass in the wrong way.

It's all about culture. Actually, R&D doesn't sell fashion, it suggests a culture where the object is the mean in the relationship between the man and the nature.

r&dlab showroom

via Tortona n°15 angolo via Forcella

Milano

tel. +39 0283242148

www.redlab.info