From Milan to Kuwait City to Dubai to Edinburgh, Italian luxury fashion houses have clearly conquered the hotel business. Now it seems condominiums might be their next avenue of expansion. This week, the polychromatic money machine Missoni released renderings for its very first residential project, a condominium tower in a $315 million master-planned community in the Philippines.
The flashy tower, called Acqua Livingstone, is scheduled to be completed in 2015. Since the condominiums went on sale at the beginning of the month, 25 percent of them have already been purchased, according to the developer. The apartments are cheap by New York standards: one-bedroom units start at $82,000. The common spaces, like the pool, lobby and gym, are all decked out in the brand’s variegated squiggles and stripes, but the actual residences are empty of Missoni design touches, which are offered for an additional premium.
“We brought our colors and our style inside. It’s a happy, positive approach: summer colors, solar colors,” Vittorio Missoni said of the 52-story building. “Coming from the outside you’re going to be surprised. … It’s like opening a box and discovering something unexpected.”
The Missoni tower is to be the second fashion-branded building in Makati, a section of the Filipino capital that the Manila-based firm Century Properties is developing at a breakneck pace. The company is also building a Versace-branded tower there, 80 percent of which is sold, according to the developer.
“It’s above and beyond what we’re used to when it comes to traditional luxury living in a developing country,” said Robbie Antonio, the managing director of Century Properties, who’s no stranger to exploiting commercial culture in the interest of selling condos. Last year, he hired Paris Hilton to design the clubhouse for another residential project in Manila.