Collab Alert: De Gournay x Aquazzura

Matches made in design heaven really do exist. Not convinced? Cast your eye on Amazonia, the second range from wallpaper specialist de Gournay in cohoots with Italian footwear label Aquazzura.

Nearly a year after the footwear brand and the heritage British wall coverings house first joined forces for its millennial pink range, the two companies have debuted a secondcapsule collection of Amazonia, this one in shades of blue.

Every inch as high-octane as you’d expect, de Gournay’s Chinoiserie wallpaper has been reimagined in blue and its tropical print plastered on to loafers, sneakers and slides.

We owe this blossoming partnership to a chance encounter, where de Gournay heiress Hannah Cecil Gurney found herself at the beautiful Florentine apartment of Aquazzura's founder Edgardo Osorio, and spotted ade Gournay Chinoiserie wallpaper. This lead, obviously, to the idea of a creative venture!

The brands put their heads together and flicked through archieve pictures of 18th-century illustrations by Albertus Seba for inspiration, as well as murals and paintings by Juan Gatti. The team at de Gournay drew up amazing mock-ups of different animals and then Aquazzura put them all together to create the Amazonia jungle design.

A tropical take on a traditional chinoiserie,depicting lush jungle scenes in modern, vibrant colours, the conspicuous motifhas been translated onto a collection of Aquazzura shoes and a hand painted de Gournay wallpaper.

Blue, in case you were wondering, is a nod to the watery surrounding's of de Gournay's new San Francisco showroom whiletheoriginal pink was inspired by the exquisite colour of the walls of the palazzo that houses Aquazzura HQ in Florence.

The blue still pairs beautifully with the lush green foliage of the motif, so it loses none of its tropical charm—on either the wallpaper or the shoes.

There’s even footwear for little ones – if tots can be trusted to keep them pristine in the playground, that is.