Prada and Armani museums, Ferrari factory and Singapore Air’s haute cuisine

Two designer museums; making a Ferrari; and Singapore Airlines’ very haute cuisine.

WISH 4 Sep 2015

Earlier this year two new museum spaces were opened in Milan by two of its biggest fashion houses.

As part of the celebrations for his 40th anniversary in business, Giorgio Armani opened Armani/Silos in a former grain silo across the street from his company headquarters on via Bergognone. “I decided to call it Silos because this building used to store food, which is something we all need to live. For me, like food, clothes are part of life,” Mr Armani tells WISH. The inaugural exhibition at Armani/Silos features more than 600 looks from Giorgio Armani’s ready-to-wear collections spanning the period from 1980 to the present. Although Mr Armani launched his own label in 1975, he says there are no works in the exhibition from that period as he simply doesn’t have them. “When I started I didn’t think about an archive,” he says. The exhibition is arranged thematically rather than chronologically and Mr Armani says it will change slightly every six months. It will also be open to other exhibitions, designers and art forms. “But it needs to be things I like,” he says. “Everybody can come, it’s a gift to Milan and a gift for Italy.” The other cultural gift for Italy this year came from Prada.

In the midst of producing this Italian-themed edition we thought we’d get out of the city and take a tour of the countryside — and what better way to do it than in an Italian sports car? A Ferrari California T, to be precise. And where better to get your hands on such a machine but the carmaker’s factory in Maranello in Northern Italy? The turbocharged V8 California T is considered to be Ferrari’s most driveable car and we certainly found it to be so on our drive through the Modenese countryside. We enjoyed it so much we decided to get one — sort of. Next month marks the 10th anniversary of WISH and as part of a special issue of the magazine we toured the Ferrari factory and built our very own California T as part of the company’s Tailor Made program. We went through the entire process of building a unique version of the car — except the part where you hand over a very large cheque. You can discover the very special WISH Ferrari California T in our next edition, which will be published on October 2.

A lot of airlines have enlisted the services of a celebrity chef to create their on-board menus, but Singapore Airlines has gone a few steps further with a panel of eight well-known chefs from around the world. One member of the panel is Carlo Cracco, who is considered one of the leaders of a new generation of Italian chefs who are pushing the boundaries of Italian cuisine with creative takes on traditional food. His restaurant, Ristorante Cracco, in the centre of Milan has been awarded two Michelin stars. Cracco, who is also a judge on the Italian version of the reality TV show Hells Kitchen Italia and created the sumptuous dishes for the 2010 film I Am Love, says his menu for Singapore Airlines is more about “the real Italian cuisine with the real flavour”.