BEAUTY BEGINS INSIDE, 2026
On the occasion of Milan Design Week 2026, the Intimissimi boutique on Via Montenapoleone 21 hosted Beauty Begins Inside, a site-specific installation by Andrea Crespi, curated by Sandie Zanini, transforming the store into an immersive experience in the heart of Milan’s luxury district.
The project celebrates femininity and sensuality through the language of contemporary art, strengthening the dialogue between Intimissimi and the contemporary creative and cultural landscape.
Beauty Begins Inside emerges from the encounter between this vision and Andrea Crespi’s artistic research. At the center of the space, a life-size sculpture of Antonio Canova’s celebrated Venus Italica is reinterpreted through continuous lines flowing across the figure without ever touching, defining its profile through a delicate balance between presence and material subtraction.
The Venus becomes a reflection on the body, identity, and the perception of contemporary femininity: a space where sensuality, self-awareness, and self-care converge, in harmony with Intimissimi’s philosophy, where the body is not an object but an experience, and beauty emerges through detail, perception, and natural movement.
The sculpture is created in sand, a fragile and porous material symbolizing impermanence and the passage of time, while simultaneously evoking vulnerability and strength. The store windows become an extension of the installation: surfaces of sand shaped by time and mirrored elements merge the rhythm of the city with the atmosphere of the interior space, inviting the public into a direct dialogue with the artwork and encouraging them to recognize themselves in a beauty that emerges from essence.
Inside the boutique, the sculptures interact with the architecture and color palette of the store, amplified by a system of mirrors that multiplies the perception of form and transforms each environment into an immersive journey through art, design, and identity.
The installation ultimately transforms the Intimissimi space into a place where aesthetics, perception, and identity converge, inviting each visitor to pause, recognize themselves within the artwork, and carry away a fragment of the experience.
