April 14, 2015 – Hamburg, Germany (WTCE 2015): Inflight amenities specialist Wessco International has announced a multi-year collaboration effort with a major name in design: Philippe Starck. For those not familiar with the name, Starck is famous for his prolific design career, which has produced everything from electric cars to hotels, a VVIP A330 interior, and that lemon squeezer which seemed to grace every trendy kitchen in the 1990s.
Wessco has developed a distinctive collection of first and business class amenity kits with Starck, with a diverse palette of colors used across the range of hard and soft versions of male, female and unisex kits. The ladies hard shell business kit is pictured above.
“The concepts for the amenity kits arose from much personal thought from Starck on their form, function and context. Starck has driven the process from the beginning, insisting on quality and innovation at every level. He personally scrutinized each aspect of the modern amenity kit, from the outer shell to every individual content item. He has re-conceived and re-constructed everything from scratch, seeking to enhance elegance and functionality, as pieces and as a whole. It is this exploration that has led to something totally different. The kits will surely demonstrate an airline’s commitment to perfection and its focus on the passenger’s experience, both on and after the flight,” commented Luigi Auricchio, creative director for Asia and EMEA at Wessco International.
As a frequent flyer himself, Starck (pictured left) found the proposition of creating items for the aircraft cabin, especially ones that are sometimes simply discarded, truly challenged him. How to create something, within the often-inflexible parameters of cost and space presented by aviation, that people would keep?
“From the beginning of the creative process, two words appealed to me: the elegance and the gift,” Starck explained. “We create such an elegant and intelligent object that it would truly become a gift. And it might be the first time that passengers will open the bag and say: Oh! This is exactly what I wanted!”
According to Wessco, the scope of the collaboration will eventually extend beyond amenity kits.
