SKETCH ARTIST

After decades spent drawing, designer Andre Mellone drafts his most personal space yet

- SAM COCHRAN 

For as long as he can remember, Andre Mellone has been drawing. Growing up in São Paulo, he would spend afternoons doodling endless iterations of the same scene: a house, a tree, a dog, and a bird. Later, while living in Italy as an architecture student, he immersed himself in classical orders through pencil and ink, rendering Roman ruins and Palladian villas in dynamic detail. "Sketching turns something on spiritually," Mellone reflects during a visit to his new Manhattan apartment, where examples of those early works can be seen framed on the walls. "In order for a project to be successful, I need to draw. It gives a room soul."

Today, that daily artistic practice forms the foundation of his own AD100 design firm, Studio Mellone. Brainstorming begins on sheets of cheap tracing paper, as Mellone imagines floor plans, furniture, and elevations. Presentations then morph into layered illustrations that blend digitally scanned sketches with spontaneous markups, added on the spot to refine a particular element. Clients thrill to his gifted artistry, among them a who's who of the art world and fashion brands like The Row, Thom Browne, and Carolina Herrera. But for Mellone, drawing is not just a pitch. It's a process.