Hamish Bowles on the 2019 Green Carpet Awards

[classical music]

Milan, for me, is this extraordinary city of secrets.

On this visit, I was taken to the Vineyards of Leonardo,

because the whole theme is determined by the idea

of the 500th anniversary of Leonardo da Vinci,

and it was the place of kind of rest for him

whilst he was painting the Last Supper.

It's a very evocative, potent, moving place,

and having this sense of a contained cloister, almost.

I was looking at visual references, historic references.

I was looking at contemporary gardens that recreate

that ethos and aesthetic.

We had this idea to recreate a vine pergola

that would really kind of encircle and embrace

the central area of the square,

and surrounding it we have vegetables and herbs

and all sort of fruit trees, figs and apples and so on.

After the installation, they're all going to be replanted

in the public spaces of Milan.

I created all these mood boards

that would cover every aspect of the evening,

from the tabletop to the table decorations,

to the music, and thought that we could kind of extract

the amazing backgrounds as the kind of visual cue

for the carpet, which is incredibly made

from repurposed office carpet.

The green carpet is green, it's kind of inspired

by the backdrop to these amazing unicorn tapestries

that I saw in the cloisters in the Metropolitan museum.

Extracted some of those plants and flowers and

exponentially blew them up, scale-wise,

not only for the carpet but also for the projection.

The carpet itself is created from econyl,

which is this amazing fiber.

You see behind me I have a pair of kind of

angelic renaissance wings,

made from salvaged fishing net,

discarded, kind of torn, found at the bottom of the ocean,

and gathered together, which is then woven

into this really kind of amazing carpet.

It's like a sort of 21st century tapestry.

We literally carpet the square,

becomes a red carpet, or I should say really,

a green carpet.

[classical music]