Interview with Alex Caruso, founder of Vanità & Casa

The mirror not only as a reflective surface, but an extraordinary piece of furniture designed to decorate every room in the house. With the ambitious goal of expanding the traditional functions of the mirror, transforming it into an extraordinary ally in interior design in terms of both aesthetics and technology, in 2011 Alexander Caruso, building on his long experience in the bathroom industry, founded Vanità & Casa. We asked him a few questions.

1. Today Vanità & Casa can be considered a benchmark in the mirror industry. How was the path to get here?

AC Our mirrors are the result of a successful combination of design and technology. Having worked for years in the bathroom industry, I matured the choice – now a winning choice! – to combine technical innovation and technology with high aesthetic quality, to design mirrors and mirror cabinets that would be protagonists in homes, hotels, and offices. I had noticed the lack of products with these characteristics on the market, so I sought excellence together with my entire team, primarily the technicians, and then designers and various collaborators. In more than a decade, since 2011, the year of our founding, we have examined and integrated every possible functional, aesthetic and technological evolution to offer refined, practical, easy-to-install, versatile and environmentally sustainable furniture complements. I can now say that we have achieved our goals.

2. Which are the main technologies developed over the years that have enabled you to achieve this goal, which has been internationally recognized, including through the awarding of the most important design prizes, such as ADI Design Index and IF Design Award?

AC Into technology we have and continue to put a great deal of focus. Technology pervades every sphere of the world in which we live, so it is logical to think of it applied to a mirror as well. When we founded Vanità & Casa, we did a lot of research to find technological solutions that could also be integrated into mirrors, and we found that there was a lot of room to maneuver. We worked side by side with our engineers to design a revolutionary system that we are very proud of: completely eliminating the view of LED light strips when the mirror is off to have the entire reflective surface available. We have patented this technology, which we have called Ghost and have applied both in the frames and directly on the mirrors. From an aesthetic point of view, it is an elegant and refined result that has brought us important recognitions and awards such as those obtained by XO, selected in the Adi Index in 2022, and by Oceano Round, awarded the IF Design Award in 2023, both designed by our Art Director, architect Massimo Farinatti. And then we went even further by developing the Modular Light System (MLS) technology, which allows the user to decide, via a touch sensor, which of the various light modules in a mirror to turn on and which color temperature and intensity to use. The latest innovation, which we are patenting and focusing on, is the Foggy mirror, designed with Studio Adolini, again based on the Ghost technology, in which the very gentle light starts from the frame and fades, like a fog, toward the center. A gentle lighting which does not dazzle.

3. An unceasing commitment to research and development that has led you to revolutionize the mirror element, allowing it to also cover the function of a lighting element, and to move from the bathroom area to become protagonist, for aesthetics and functionality, in any living environment

AC The bathroom area was our starting point, then we also took into consideration the other environments of the home, but also of offices, hotels… In the company we know that the mirror is a transversal product, but we are also convinced that, although similar, bathroom mirrors and mirrors for living rooms must have their own precise identity. Thus, in 2023 we created the Vanità Living brand, with products designed to furnish every room in the home and also ideal for hospitality and office spaces. For example, the Freeway collection, with which it is possible to create decorative compositions thanks to the frame with the Ghost technology and to the Modular Light System, as well as Firelight, Cobblestone, Sweetheart, and Foggy itself, which we produce in different formats, including in the freestanding version. We have dedicated an entire catalog to the Vanità Living collection, which can be downloaded directly from our website vanitacasa.it so that architects or designers can have an accurate source of information when creating an environment. One last aspect that I would like to emphasize is the fact that all of our mirrors, in addition to being important light sources and decorative elements, both singularly and in combination can be integrated with home automation, and this is a relevant plus for personalizing the environment.

4. All this without ever neglecting fundamental issues such as safety and sustainability

AC For us, research and development have always come first. Every product results first of all from the passion of all of us, each one in our own area of expertise, who conceive it, design it and finally create it. This passion leads us to focus on all the distinctive pluses of our mirrors and on values that are not to be overlooked: they are designed for maximum safety, have the mark of every certification body worldwide, are equipped with Low-Power LEDs, and even the packaging is plastic-free to contribute to environmental sustainability.