Timeless Appeal

Montblanc's new artistic director, Marco Tomasetta, is creating a sumptuous universe.

- CHE KURRIEN

TO CREATIVITY!" toasts Marco Tomasetta, Montblanc's artistic director, flanked by three excited Chinese celebrities, who are all wearing his exquisite new products. We are at Shanghai's historic Sunke Villa, where Tomasetta's creative vision of a sumptuous old-world library has been manifested into reality. Its walls display traditional Chinese texts as well as calligraphy, and on the lawns outside, an installation of cascading books is suspended in the air-imbuing the space with a sense of mystery and magic.

The three-storey house, built in 1931, was part of the Columbia Circle compound, once a country club and a gathering place for American expatriates who lived in this storied port city during the Gilded Age of the early 20th century. Just past the library, on one side of the sprawling living room rests an imposing mahogany desk, on which lies a miniature postbox, postcards, and a pen stand, holding a lacquered, jet-black Meisterstück-Montblanc's iconic writing instrument. The Meisterstück-German for masterpiece was introduced 99 years ago, and its timeless design is a source of great inspiration for Tomasetta, a trained sculptor, who joined the German heritage maison in 2021, after designing leather goods for luxury brands like Prada, Fendi, Louis Vuitton, and Givenchy. One of Tomasetta's aims will be to further elevate the look of Montblanc's products, giving them a cohesiveness across categories, without losing any of the brand's timeless appeal. His new Extreme 3.0 collection has been outfitted in a reimagined archive print inspired by the motifs created by Grete Gross, Montblanc's pioneering head of advertising and visual language in the 1920s, who drew heavily from the Bauhaus aesthetic. The results are stunning, most notably the distinct "fern blue" colourway that lends the products an appeal that's both striking and elegant.