Julep: going leather

The iconic collection designed by Jonas Wagell meets leather.

With its soft and enveloping shapes, Julep has won the hearts of those who experience it every day. This family of upholstered furniture is linked to full and generous lines, which acquire an unexpected lightness thanks to the recessed base which almost seems to lift the various elements off the ground. Julep is simple but extremely expressive, it is a play on volumes and proportions available in different finishes which today are enriched with a new variant: leather.

In the occasion of the launch of this new covering, we met Jonas Wagell.

What drove your creativity in designing Julep?

JW — The sofa embodies my passion for simple and very graphic shapes, where function is beauty and aesthetics, as well as pure practicality which here translates into extraordinary comfort. With Tacchini I established a dialogue, and, in their philosophy, I found the perfect context to express my minimal forms, while at the same time creating something new and very expressive, a contemporary piece that exudes a sense of heritage and elegance.

In just a few months Julep became a best-seller.  What do you think was the secret to its success?

JW — I believe that my design, made of graphically simple and expressive shapes, found the perfect combination with Tacchini’s attention to detail.  When we finally presented Julep at the Salone di Milano in 2018, the feeling that it would be the start of something special was in the air.  Maybe because Julep was slightly ahead of its time, it didn’t follow a trend, but it helped to pave a new path. Today people are much more informed about both contemporary work and the heritage of design: Julep has managed to position itself between these two worlds and I believe it will remain an iconic piece for a long time, also thanks to the variety of coverings proposed by Tacchini’s refined sensibility. Today, even more so thanks to the expansion of the offer to include leather upholstery.

Why is it called Julep?

JW — The name is a joking reference to an imaginary scene of how the sofa would be used. I thought of an aperitif from the 1950s, with well-dressed people moving slowly to the notes of music played by an orchestra, around beautiful, curvilinear furniture.