Dell Goes Designer

High-tech meets high-fashion in a new collaboration between Dell and D.L. & Co. creative director Douglas Little. The designer has created a limited-edition line of opulent Adamo laptop skins, which evoke various “Tales of Technology”—working with Bergdorf Goodman’s senior director of visual presentation, David Hoey, to enhance each computer’s concept with a dazzling display in the store’s famed Fifth Avenue windows. Little spoke with us about the project.

1. Divine Design: “This laptop is about chemical symbolism and the idea of the beginning and the ending; it’s about creation,” says Little. “I wanted to use a primitive concept that had a lot of historical research as the basis but also that felt like a lush brooch and very relevant to what’s currently happening in fashion.” Its accompanying window includes a trio of hoop-skirted mannequins styled after Russian nesting dolls.

2. Reshaping Technology: “This is caiman crocodile skin, which we pieced together,” says Little. “We just used its shape to make the corsetry. It’s all hand-stitched and embellished with black-diamond Swarovski crystals.”

3. Web Master/Master the Web: “This laptop is very much inspired by 1920s and ’30s design,” says Little about this crystallized spiderweb. “It’s based on a Cartier brooch.”

4. What the Future Holds: The main piece in this window, which depicts a fortune teller grasping a deck of three Adamos that bear Gothic tarot-card designs—just in time for Halloween—is the Amore image, which Little chose because “Adamo means to fall in love.”

5. Ultimate Temptation: “This one’s obviously based on Eve, the apple, and the snake,” says Little about the biblically inspired Swarovski serpent. “Michael Schmidt, a costume designer who does Cher, Madonna, and Grace Jones, collaborated with me on this.”

6. Seduce the Senses: “It’s inspired by the 1930s art deco movement and opium dens,” says Little. (The corresponding window design will depict a 19th-century opium den, with “ethnic-inspired” pieces from Naeem Khan.) “I wanted this laptop—and all of them—to feel like a Victorian lap desk, those writing desks that you have in bed with you. The laptop is the modern version of that.”

7. The Princess and the PC: “The story of the Princess and the Pea is that the princess is the only one who can feel the pea underneath her mattresses, so this speaks to the idea that this is the slimmest laptop available,” Little reveals about this laser-etched mother-of-pearl design.

(Elle)

Beautiful and innovative pieces of artistry.....they are absolutely unbelievable! I would love to have the "Divine Design", that superb "crystal-laden" work of art.