Alla Lavin
Most of my professional life has had one thing in common: people.
Listening to them. Talking to them. Trying to understand what they are really looking for — which is not always the same thing as what they first ask for — and finding a solution that feels right.
At De Andres Design & Gallery, all the different threads of my life seem to have found their way into one place: design, art, communication, international collaboration, cultural projects and, above all, creating experiences.
I work with our B2C clients and partners, develop new concepts and projects, and help shape the direction of De Andres Gallery. I have never thought of a gallery as simply a room where beautiful things hang on walls or stand on pedestals. For me, it is a meeting place — for people, objects, ideas, stories and, sometimes, wonderfully unexpected conversations.
Then came art, poetry — and the stage
For more than seven years, I have been creating cultural projects, art lectures, literary evenings and events dedicated to poetry.
And I am not very good at staying behind the scenes.
I also host and perform my own programmes, and over the years they have taken me to Tallinn, Athens and Vienna. There is something I love about taking an idea that once existed only in my head and watching it become an evening shared with a room full of people.
Art is also a wonderful reason to travel
Another important part of my work is creating unique cultural and art journeys for small groups. So far, they have taken us through Greece, Italy, Austria, Georgia, Estonia and Latvia.
I look for places with character: hidden gems, unusual collections, remarkable architecture and experiences that rarely make it onto the obvious tourist route. These journeys are for people who love art, are curious about culture and appreciate savoir-vivre — the art of living well.
A day might begin with architecture in the city, continue somewhere completely unexpected outside it, and end around a beautiful table. I choose the restaurants as carefully as the cultural programme, because I don’t believe intellectual curiosity and pleasure should have to compete with each other.
The best journeys have room for both.
For me, the perfect cultural journey is a balance of art, knowledge, beauty, discovery and a little hedonism.
Culture should not only be studied. It should be lived.
Design came first
My relationship with design began long before De Andres. I have a background in design and accessories and once created my own accessories brand, working as a designer myself.
Later, my years at Max Mara opened another door into the world of design — fashion, visual presentation, client relations and international communication, including working directly with the company’s headquarters in Italy.
It taught me something I still believe: beauty matters, but so does the way you make people feel.
The same philosophy is at the heart of what we are building at De Andres Gallery.
We see ourselves as ambassadors of Scandinavian design. We want to take it beyond specialist circles and bring its stories, ideas and iconic objects to a wider audience. Because a great chair is never just a chair. Behind it is a person, an idea, an era, a problem someone wanted to solve — and usually a very good story.
One of the new formats I developed around this idea is Scandinavian Legends and Global Design Icons. We take design out of the showroom and into the city, discovering iconic furniture, architecture and the stories behind them through real objects and real spaces.
Alvar Aalto, Marcel Breuer, Gaetano Pesce and other great names stop being paragraphs in a design book and become part of the world around us.
Instead of simply saying, “This is an iconic chair,” I would much rather ask:
Who created it? Why did it matter? What was so revolutionary about it? And why, decades later, are we still talking about it?
That curiosity probably explains much of what I do at De Andres Design & Gallery.
I love starting with an idea, researching it, finding its character, building a story around it and bringing the right people together to make it real. Sometimes it becomes an exhibition. Sometimes an art journey, a design walk, a lecture or a collaboration with an artist. And sometimes it is much simpler: a client walks in and finds exactly the piece they have been searching for.
If I had to find a name for what connects all these parts of my work, I would probably call myself an architect of emotions.
Whether I am working with a client, a designer, an artist, a partner or an audience, I want to understand the person in front of me, create a real connection and leave them with something — an idea, a discovery, a beautiful object, a memory, an emotion.
Because in the end, design, art, culture and good service have one rather important thing in common.
They are all about people.
