Q&A Why did you choose a concept around time to connect to coffee? Marcel Wanders — With this collection, we wanted to pay homage to the extraction, preparation and the consumption of coffee, its timeless beauty and its connection to the human spirit. There is a ritual to brewing and making coffee that this collection celebrates, evoking the ceremonial notions of coffeemaking and the time invested in the process. What does time mean to you? Marcel Wanders — Time is a gift. It is the one constant in life, right? Enduring and never failing to hold you in a moment. I spend time on many things, I invest time in other things, and I even ‘waste time’ day dreaming. I try to use my time to give back to other people. To create things that create meaning for others, allowing them to connect with design and themselves in meaningful ways. How does the process of making coffee resemble your process of design? Marcel Wanders — Coffee is made in a very intentional way. Beginning with the hand-selection of the beans, there is an art to the curating, preparation and roasting processes that ensue. Sourcing is everything. The sourcing is reminiscent of our creative process, in that we bring all the elements of a design concept together, then share ideas and explore freely. There are nuances to the finished brew, with different levels — a medium 26 STARBUCKS | THE ILLUSION OF TIME or dark roast, for example. And much like our design, there is the same type of experimentation and time invested. We collaborate, ask different questions and evolve in a certain direction, like selecting our preferred ritual way of coffee-making. People have been making coffee for generations. With the concept of ritualised time, how did you make the collection contemporary? Gabriele Chiave — We started with looking at the process of drinking coffee. The intentional passing of time is the epitome of a leisure activity. We considered the iconic symbols of time like the hourglass and pocket watch. From there, we looked at the elements of coffee that relate to time, and that even affect time in a way, such as the tamper. To extend the concept and collection further, we considered the things that reflect concepts of waiting, anticipation and things that play with the pace of time. How did you make a human connection with something as intangible as time? Gabriele Chiave — Harvesting coffee is such a handcrafted process, which inspired us to also look in a certain way and explore an assortment of materials in this collection — from silk to aluminum to ceramics. We invested the same attention to details and love for materials as coffee growers, distributors and lovers do. Time is abstract, yet time invested in something can be made real. We wanted the investment of time to become tangible and felt for ages.
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