There’s a certain metaphor for Art Basel Miami Beach in Champagne: Like much of the art sold at the fair, the bubbly concoction was developed in squalid conditions by people who didn’t always know what they were doing. (Dom Pérignon himself was still trying to rid his vintage of bubbles, which he viewed as an error, when he died in 1715.) Imperfections though there may be, the results of both efforts have gone on to be enjoyed by playboys and duchesses around the world. It’s appropriate, then, that Perrier-Jouët has once again partnered with Design Miami (which is affiliated with the more globally known art fair down the road) for an artist-designed take on the brand or its bottle, the latter originally designed by Art Nouveau forerunner Émile Gallé in 1902. Though this year’s collaborator, the Japanese artist Ritsue Mishima, spends half her time in Venice—a city famed for its colored glass—she works with the medium in its classic clear form. While planning her proposal, she stayed at Perrier-Jouët’s Maison Belle Epoque, the onetime residence of the Perrier family that’s now home to a collection of Art Nouveau furniture and art. There, she let the influences effervesce into her practice. Axelle de Buffevent, the style director for Perrier-Jouët, notes that she was particularly taken by the idea of working with Mishima, because she sees a symbolic parallel evolution in the artist’s techniques and the Japanese anemones that normally bedeck the bottle. “Her proposal echoed so beautifully, and in a very unexpected way, who we are,” De Buffevent says. “It’s all about the refraction of light and how to bring life to a space, just with light.”
