Cover A lounge area at Shang Residences at Wack Wack features custom furniture by Vito Selma layered with design artefacts, a mix of pre-Hispanic and contemporary pottery and a large wall piece by Nixxio Castrillo that anchors the vista
A lounge area at Shang Residences at Wack Wack features custom furniture by Vito Selma layered with design artefacts, a mix of pre-Hispanic and contemporary pottery and a large wall piece by Nixxio Castrillo that anchors the vista
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As one of Southeast Asia’s most compelling taste makers, Miguel Rosales has the ability to balance knowledge of design with, well, let’s just put it simply and honestly, good taste
In an era in which interiors are increasingly consumed as a deluge of images, Miguel Rosales remains rarefied in his interest in something less immediately visible: how culture is lived. As founder and creative director of Caramel Inc, he occupies the intersection of art advisory, interior decoration and collecting, approaching each not as separate disciplines but as parts of a broader cultural conversation.
Rosales belongs to a cadre for whom decoration extends well beyond the aesthetic. His philosophy has informed projects across private residences, corporate and institutional collections, where an eye for craftsmanship is matched by an appreciation for the quieter narratives objects accumulate through use and inheritance. When you sit down for supper with Rosales, you see that his dry wit and humour perfectly complement his exacting standards.
Civilisations are often remembered through the monuments they leave behind. Individuals, by contrast, are remembered through the rooms they inhabit. Long before museums codified taste, domestic interiors served as repositories of craftsmanship, memory and cultural exchange, where objects from different places and periods accumulated into something resembling biography. It is within this tradition that Rosales has established his practise.
What distinguishes his approach is a resistance to novelty for its own sake. Rather than pursuing what may only be momentarily fashionable, he favours narrative. The result is interiors that reward their viewer after repeated observation, revealing new relationships between art, architecture and everyday life. This conversation Rosales has with Tatler considers properties not merely as designed rooms, but as a cultural document.
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Above Miguel Rosales at the Shang Summit showroom
Miguel Rosales at the Shang Summit showroom
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Decorative arts have often occupied an ambiguous position between utility and fine art. Do you think that distinction still has meaning, or have the boundaries between art, design and decoration become productively blurred?
Oscar Wilde, I believe, once said that “all art is quite useless”. While he was a purist who lived in a different time and probably meant that art should not be judged by its usefulness or by its industrial purpose, and should exist only for its beauty and the experience it provides the viewer, I think art and design can also be instruments of change. In fact, historically, both the fine and decorative arts have been used as tools to define the times in which they were created, the people who created them, the people for whom they were created, and how they inspired and impacted the world around them.
Domestic interiors have historically reflected prevailing ideas about family, labour and privacy. Looking at contemporary homes, what social assumptions do you think our interiors reveal about the way we live today?
Sadly, I find that many interiors today reflect a certain homogenisation; that is, so many have a rather generic, predictable look. Likely, these are trend-driven, derived from images we are constantly bombarded with on social media, for those who perhaps have certain aspirational intentions, or those who don’t really want to live in very personal and thought-out interiors.
Much has been written about architecture as a record of civilisation, yet comparatively little attention is paid to decoration. Why do you think interiors have so often been treated as secondary to buildings themselves?
I don’t think interiors are necessarily treated as secondary to buildings themselves. Perhaps historically, the architecture survives the interiors, as tastes change and styles change; maybe interior spaces are the first to be modified or changed altogether in a more immediate manner.
Above Exhibition design of Annie Cabigting’s epic 2018 show ‘Museum Watching’ at Finale Gallery by Miguel Rosales, Caramel Inc
Above A den in a private collector’s residence, Artworks by leading Southeast Asian contemporary artists hang on antique wood-panelled walls, a custom silk velvet sofa by Pierre Frey
Exhibition design of Annie Cabigting’s epic 2018 show ‘Museum Watching’ at Finale Gallery by Miguel Rosales, Caramel Inc
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Many of the great historic houses we admire today were assembled slowly over generations. Has modern life made it more difficult to create rooms that possess a genuine sense of continuity?
Perhaps it is because everything is so fast-paced and a focus has been placed on trend-driven interiors with more disposable elements vs rooms that have more lasting value. Decorative objects frequently move across borders, periods and cultures.
What responsibilities accompany the act of placing objects from one context into another?
This depends, I suppose, if they are objects of cultural significance or objects of veneration; in which case they should remain in the spaces they were created for. That said, there are of course circumstances when moving them for conservation or preservation considerations necessitates their migration to other spaces. Then there is the multitude of artworks and artefacts that are already in circulation; and with these, one should probably remember that we are only caretakers of these things for the next generation.
The 18th-century often regarded the house as a reflection of character, while the 20th-century increasingly treated it as an expression of taste. Which idea do you find more persuasive?
I think that both come into play historically. Interiors and the home have long been a vehicle to establish both character and taste.
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Above A rhythmic custom Brutalist-inspired metal wall relief by Caramel Inc anchors the other end of the lounge
A rhythmic custom Brutalist-inspired metal wall relief by Caramel Inc anchors the other end of the lounge
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Museums remove objects from use to preserve them, whereas domestic interiors ask objects to remain active participants in daily life. How does this tension influence the way you think about art within the home?
Museums also play an important role not only in preservation but, equally as importantly, education. They allow a wider range of audiences to experience them, learn from them and be inspired by them. In a home, these are not viewable by many unless the collector lends them for shows.
The language of authenticity has become increasingly prominent in contemporary design. Do you believe authenticity resides in objects themselves, in their histories, or in the ways they are lived with?
I think authenticity in design is also a combination of those factors, from the design integrity (avoiding perhaps dupes that steal a designer’s work) to how the pieces are assembled together in a space (personal style). They can take on new meanings, new histories.
Historically, many decorative traditions emerged from scarcity and necessity rather than abundance. Has material abundance made it more difficult to produce interiors with genuine character?
Design is made more accessible, but also more disposable. The influence of social media on trendy design has pushed for more mass- produced products and cookie- cutter looks that satisfy the urge for instant gratification.
If future historians were to study 21st-century domestic life through its interiors, what aspects of contemporary culture do you suspect they would find most revealing?
Hard to imagine the future when we should be focusing on trying to fix the world we’re living in now in our own little ways. With today’s super fast-paced, short-attention-span world where we have to question reality, who knows what “ism” will define our times?
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Credits
Photography: Jon Hipe
