LivingSettembre2015

ENGLISH TEXT
Leather and wood, stainless steel and hand-woven wool, black curtains and
tribal graphics. Sparse furniture: «I like lots of space. The house is already too
cluttered for my liking». Many pieces come from fea markets.
The North-American blankets are by Pendleton. Artwork on the walls is by
friends of his: a few B&W photos and a very colourful portrait of Marcelo by
Craig Redman. There’s no lack of souvenirs from Patagonia, evoking a world
to which Marcelo is deeply attached: ties used by gauchos for ostrich-hunting;
Mate mugs; musical instruments. And, on the terrace, the barbecue. Being
Argentinian, for Marcelo that’s a must.
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the PROtAGONISt
Sheila Metzner. This great master photographer is portrayed in her Hudson
Valley estate, between oak foors, a kitchen painted in blue, and the memories of
a glorious past. This title could have been: the secrets of Kinderhook Creek
Black, white and high-tech. this is Marcelo Burlon's house in Milan
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MY hOUSe IS YOUR CLUB
Easy to reconfgure, open to friends, and with a techno-folk vein: the Milanese
home of art director Marcelo Burlon. Dominant colours: black and white
Dining room, lounge, gym, cinema, disco. Also a guest room if a friend passing
through the city should drop in. You draw a curtain, open the sofa bed, and the
TV corner becomes a room. You move the black-leather poufs, put down a mat,
and you have a space for working out. The table sits eight but extra tables can be
added, and folded away when it’s time to dance. To watch a flm, you can retreat
to the corner sofa. In Marcelo Burlon’s house, the living area is open, fexible,
with more free space than furniture, and ever ready to fll up with people. The
bedroom area on the frst foor is a sort of island. White walls; dark wall-to-wall
carpeting; no wardrobe (it’s downstairs, near the kitchen: you have breakfast,
then get dressed); panoramic views of Milan, of the Unicredit and Velasca towers.
We’re behind Corso Italia, in Piazzetta Enzo Biagi, in the same building where
the great journalist lived for ffty years. Marcelo has the sixth and seventh foor:
190 sq. m. plus a 70 sq. m. terrace. Eighteen months ago he lived in two rooms in
the Porta Ticinese area. Now, in addition to this fat, he’s bought a 45-acre estate
in Patagonia, his homeland, where he dreams of building an estancia with an
outdoor dance foor and a backdrop of mountains. He would like a third home
in Ibiza, but for the moment these will do. He’s already made it: Marcelo Burlon
County of Milan, the frm he created two years ago in partnership with Davide
De Giglio and Claudio Antonioli, is doing well. They started of with sweatshirts
and T-shirts («the most basic item of clothing you can think of»), and ended up
producing a whole fashion collection – frst for men, then for women as well –
exported to the four continents and on sale in the likes of Barneys, Sacks, 10
Corso Como. Marcelo is the art director: «I’d never dare call myself a stylist». He
reached Italy from Argentina when he was 14 years old, and has been working
since he was 16. First as a blue-collar worker for a shoe factory in the Marche
region; then as a club kid on the Romagna Riviera; as a doorman at Magazzini
Generali in Milan; as a PR person for Dolce & Gabbana; as organiser of fashion
events with Marcelo Burlon Enterprise (whose clients include Riccardo Tisci,
art director of Givenchy). Over the years he has gathered a multilingual and very
hip tribe around himself. People like singer Devendhra Barnard, ‘a brother’, or
transexual model Lea T, ‘a muse’. The house is the right size for this extended
family: «I wanted a space I could share with my friends. For dinner, a party, a DJ
set, or for three of us to watch a flm together – rather like a private club: a place
for keeping in touch». To design it, Marcelo turned for help to Michele Pasini of
Storage, the Milanese frm of architecture in charge of County of Milan’s retail
image. They knocked down walls, pulled up foors, refurbished the terraces on
the frst foor and on the roof. The interiors are a mixture of high-tech and folk.
«Commerce was never a concern of mine. The idea of commerce grew as the
years went by. Originally, I was hired by Vogue as an artist, fnally the man who
hired me fred me as that artist Alexander Liberman. His fnal words were, ‘My
dear, you’re a great artist, but Vogue doesn’t need art’». So Sheila, you started
out as an art director. Tell me how you got into photography. When Raven
was born I decided that I had to be with him. And so I called my advertising
agency, and they asked if I was coming back. No, I said, and that was the end of
that. When I told my husband Jefrey that I quit my job, he said, great. So he was
supportive? Totally. I didn’t know then that I was going to be a photographer.
I did have a camera, but I wasn’t yet a photographer. A great photographer,
Aaron Rose said, you have a good eye, you live like an artist, and you’ll be good
at it. I started with the kids, just photographing my family, and then I included
friends. It took about nine years before I had 22 photographs for my frst
exhibition, Friends and Family. In one of your books you say, ‘A hobby became
my life’. Can you talk about that a bit more? Jefrey would call it a hobby. My
accountant said, Sheila, this is not a hobby. It just became what I did, became my
life, really. I photographed in the day and then I would print at night. I learned to
print, like cooking, from books. You’ve probably read this, too, when everybody
was either watching television or asleep, I would take a shower and get dressed
and put on lipstick and high heels and go into my dark room. I’d work until 2
or 3 in the morning almost every night printing, printing. I just did it for years.
Aaron would look at my work every few months, and he always had very strong
criticism. Then, after those 9 years, I brought him the 22 pictures and he didn’t
say anything. I knew that I was a photographer. Did you fnd having been
an art director was useful in being a photographer? It was useful in that I
knew what I didn’t want to do. When I was an art director I’d work with iconic
Photographer Sheila Metzner in her hudson Valley house