Design Côté is a timeless, upcycled, and vegan accessories brand that I created in 2015, after completing a postgraduate degree in furniture design. The brand was a space I found to explore different uses and new possibilities for small scraps of materials discarded by the furniture industry, a very prevalent industry in my hometown.
Our accessories were produced using technologies such as CNC and laser cutting to transform small scraps into raw materials with striking designs.
The brand was paused in early 2020—due to the impact of the pandemic on my personal life—and remains on standby to this day.
In the process of creating the products, I explored diverse materials such as MDF and marine plywood scraps, fine wood scraps, rubber scraps, all waste material from small local furniture industries.
And it was very interesting to create products from the materials available, and not the other way around, which would be the traditional path in product design.
The brand was an opportunity to deepen my knowledge of photography, fashion, and creative direction in practice. It was great to observe the evolution of these processes and the results. A great success was the immediate connection with our target audience, which consisted of architects, designers, advertisers, and artists.
Through it I also met many people in the industry, and had the opportunity to meet some of my best friends.
The displays and all the elements used for the brand's visual merchandising in the stores that resold the products or in the events in which the brand participated were also discarded or scraps from our own production.
The brand attracted a lot of attention from the local fashion and design media, being frequently mentioned in articles, used by designers in advertising campaigns and participating in some documentaries about sustainability.
All the pieces were inspired by a famous artist or architect, each named after the figure who inspired it. The most famous were the Lina necklaces, pictured above, inspired by the Italian-Brazilian architect Lina Bo Bardi, Mies - inspired by the architect Mies Van der Rohe, and Corbusier - inspired by the architect Le Corbusier. The brand has about 100 designs, maybe more, and even though it's on hiatus its Instagram continues to receive messages and affection from customers.
The brand's cards that accompanied the products sold in the online store featured artwork created by local artists, in postcard format, so that customers wouldn't discard the material and extended its useful life.
