Glasgow based, Sicilian born designer Giulia Fiorista has brought the maximalism and imagination Italian design is so well known for to this exciting new commission for Made in Glasgow by Local Heroes. Le Zite [Sicilian for The Girlfriends] is a collection of 5 illustrations depicting the loves of legendary Italian designer Ettore Sottsass (1917–2007). Each drawing tenderly imagines how Barbara, Bobitza or Lina may have looked during the time period of their love affairs with Sottsass and is vividly translated into a soft, lightweight silk square. Elegant and enigmatic, the Le Zite collection of scarves by Giulia Fiorista is a dreamlike homage to a design hero.
Giulia Fiorista is an Italian multidisciplinary designer with a passion for head-turning visual style communication and human-centred design. Giulia aka Lia Fiore, found out about the many possibilities of design at 15 in high school when the art teacher explained that the chairs the pupils were sitting on were copies of the 'Standard Chair' by Jean Prouvé. The idea that somebody spent time thinking about and creating that chair, before somebody else copied and mass produced it, so she could ultimately sit on it and stick her chewing gum under the seat, had never crossed her mind before then. It was a philosophical fascination, rather than a technical one, that defined her entry into the design world. Since then, she has studied and worked as a product designer in Milan, worked as a design researcher and visual designer at the Glasgow School of Art, opened her own quirky design studio SLAPS, worked in London as an illustrator, and is now a digital product designer at a start-up in Glasgow.
