When Arianna Lelli Mami and Chiara Di Pinto ran into each other on a deserted Mexican beach it was the big bang that would become one of the world’s most exciting design studios. That was 2005, the pair had both recently graduated from Milan’s prestigious Polytechnic University “and there we were, the two of us in straw hats, each thinking they were alone on a pristine beach with a few palm trees”, laughs Lelli Mami.

Hitting it off, they continued their travels in tandem, sympatico soon turning into complicity and “somewhere along the way we agreed to set up a studio together”, adds Di Pinto.