Corriere della Sera
Artist and fashion enthusiast, Addis presented his collection for millionaire men in Palo Alto: for a limited-edition pair you have to shell out between 400 and 1,000 dollars. The company's headquarters in Milan Since 2017, for four years, Piero Addis has been the general manager of the Royal Palace of Monza. Artist, contemporary art historian, lecturer in various universities in Italy and abroad, he has worked on events such as the Cannes Film Festival or the Turin Olympic Winter Games. He had brought an exhibition by Andy Warhol to Monza and destined the Orangerie as a "nursery of new artistic talents" with contemporary art exhibitions. Addis had also shown a keen interest in fashion and luxury. At the time when he was director of the Monza palace, he promoted an exhibition dedicated to Renato Balestra's clothes and had also asked the designer to create new uniforms for the staff in charge of visits to the country residence of Archduke Ferdinand.
Today, however, Piero Addis has changed his life. He moves between Milan, Malibu, New York and in Palo Alto he recently presented his collection of luxury sneakers Euforia (for a limited edition pair you have to pay between 400 and 1,000 dollars) made for the founders of the PayPal group. "Let's say I made Elon Musk's shoes," Addis says, recounting his new adventure. I have a company in New York for the sale of works of art and this summer my partner, Dylan Ratigan, anchorman of the American TV Bloomberg, asked me if I wanted to design sneakers for the founders of PayPal. They are the richest men in the world, responsible for Tesla, Space X, Facebook, Sequoia, LinkedIn, YouTube, Ancestry, people who have the resources to have the greatest designers design what they want.
Of course, I accepted, I involved other artists and I found an Italian supplier in the footwear district of Venice to move from digital art sketches to the finished product."
As artistic director of the project, he personally designed the sneaker models for Elon Musk, Max Levchin and Peter Thiel, founders of PayPal, while he called on 13 other artists to create the entire collection for other super-rich Silicon Valley. There are two models designed for the owner of SpaceX and OpenAl: "On a sneaker I used the X, the symbol of the entrepreneur Elon Musk," he says. " Another pair represents space conquest and uses fluorescent colors in the dark." For the inventor of PayPal, Max Levchin, he thought instead of a black and gold shoe with the symbols of the different coins, but also a white shoe with the reproduction of the "digital puzzle" par excellence, or the QR Code that has revolutionized payment systems. The other two models that bear the signature of Addis are for for Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal and one of Facebook's first external investors. For him, a tribute to his best seller "Zero to one" with the letters of the title that seem to dance and a model with a fingerprint "because the act of creation is as unique as the fingerprint". After the official presentation, the new artistic sneakers of the American multibillionaires will be on the market. "Our Italian headquarters are in Milan, " Addis continues.
We would like to bring our shoes here too, we don't know if it will be during the fashion week, but more likely it will be at the Art Fair because sneakers are configured as an artistic product, handmade and customizable». The sale takes place mainly online with an app designed in Palo Alto that can establish the fit based on the measurements of the foot. Each shoe is accompanied by an "NFC" that tells everything about the artist who designed it, contains the warranty certificate and the serial number of the limited edition. In the words of Addis there is no regret for the years of work, first in Milan as head of events in the Region (he had the works of art projected on the façade of the Pirelli skyscraper), and then as director of the Royal Palace of Monza. "I don't have any regrets about Villa Reale, but I do miss my collaborators because they were a great team that also had a bit of fun with me."