Although they've "kept the exact recipe a secret," Milan-based Alcantara is more forthcoming about the manifold advantages of this revolutionary surfacing option: "a thoroughly avant-garde material with aesthetic, technical, and sensory qualities that no other material can equal."

Alcantara is soft, durable, versatile, and eco-friendly. The applications are vast, covering everything from fashion, automotive, aviation, marine, and consumer electronics venues. Of course it's also appropriate for interiors-walls, furniture, window coverings, and even floors.

The company boasts a history of strong partnerships with renowned design firms, including Cappellini, and Leolux.


The latest collaboration with designer Inga Semp© was recently exhibited at Paris Deco Off, where it adorned the unusually undulating contours of no less than a Ruch© sofa; a Samsung television; and the seats, soft-top, and doors of a luxury Ape Calessino Piaggio automobile.

Tara is intricate and alluring. Comprised of randomly interacting and sometimes intersecting dashed lines, Tara evokes cryptographs and math, the language of computers and the language of deconstruction, "creating a design reminiscent of the pointillist technique."

Alcantara offers Tara in multiple variations-a wide range of colors as well as a number of subtly different patterns, which, according to Semp©: "makes it possible to mix the different versions, with a combined but not visually heavy result, as would be the repeated use of the same pattern without the gradual interruption."

For specifying information, see Alcantara.