They're Fashion's Favorite Interior Designers. Can They Sell Olive Oil?
Crosby Studios is one of fashion's favorite design firms. Its founders and partners, Harry Nuriev and Tyler Billinger, are on speed-dial for much of the industry's biggest names: Nike, Balenciaga, H&M, Gucci, Dover Street Market, Sarah Andelman.
Naturally, their next move is to move into olive oil.
La Terra di Neena is Crosby Studio's artsy approach to the humble medium of olive oil, debuting in a manner appropriate for any high-minded design project.
These are the two extremes at play here.
On one end, there's La Terra di Neena's premiering in the curated Capsule Plaza hosted by Spazio Maiocchi during Milan Design Week.
That's a lot of proper nouns but all you really need to know is that this is very cool stuff, very cool people, a very cool event.
There, La Terra di Neena's goal of transforming olive oil into "collectible design" is epitomized by the "200 chromatic laser-engraved olive oil canisters" seen in its Capsule Plaza exhibition that look more like the contents of an android's bathroom cabinet than foodstuffs. Fancy, shiny, silver. Hold that thought.
On the other end of the spectrum, there's the humble olive oil itself. This is a centuries-old craft as humble as any farm-to-table product in your local organic grocery store. In fact, you could probably argue that there aren't many cooking materials earthier than olive oil. How much has the process of squishing olives changed over the past couple hundred centuries?
And how does a proposition that seemingly plain gel with Crosby Studios' lofty practice?
According to Billinger and Nuriev, it's actually a pretty perfect marriage of aesthetics and, er, oil.
The plant juice in question is four years in the making, sourced from a Tuscan farm restored and operated Billinger's family that's as faithful to the origins of olive oil as any small-batch maker.
The duo rail against "large-batch olive oil makers and mass-produced home goods brands" in their La Terra di Neena press release, emphasizing that their cold-pressed olive oil is a balance of old-world manufacture and new-school packaging elevated enough to launch with a Milanese design exhibit. It looks like the future but it tastes like the past.
"Working with the land has forced us to... embrace nature's slower, more deliberate rhythms," Billinger said. "It's why we're launching exclusively in-person — we want people to experience these objects tangibly first, to hold them and feel their weight, to inhale the earthy aroma of our olive oil and savor its distinctive taste before they become another fleeting image on a screen."
