At Milan’s Eurodomus 3 trade show in 1970, Florentine manufacturer Poltronova unveiled Mobili Grigi, a far-out bedroom collection that had been designed by architect Ettore Sottsass. Fashioned from slick, vacuum-molded plastic and cast fiberglass, it was part of the brand’s mission to bring novel industrial materials—which had already revolutionized nautical and automobile design—into the home. The radical range was produced in a very limited edition, with one exception: the neon-lit pink mirror called Ultrafragola, or “the ultimate strawberry.”
The thermoformed plastic reflector (which debuted a decade before Sottsass established the Memphis Group) celebrated femininity—the curves of a woman’s body; the waves of her hair; some other choice elements of her anatomy. Today we might call that objectification. But women the world over have embraced the mirror ($10,500; now available in LED), still made using the original 1970 mold.
