A Designer’s Death Marks the End of a Decades-Long Partnership

New York—Jewelry designer Roberto Faraone Mennella died Thursday at his family estate in Italy.

He was 48.

Rewind exactly 30 years to June 4, 1990, to a friend’s 18th birthday party. It’s the night that marks the start of three decades of partnership between Mennella and Amedeo Scognamiglio.

They’re the same age and from the same small town outside of Naples. Their families have known each other all their lives. But this is the occasion where their relationship begins in earnest.

“That’s the summer,” recalled Scognamiglio, from Mennella’s family estate. “We started both going to the same university and became friends more and more.”

Scognamiglio described the totality of their relationship as: “A human partnership, business partnership and soul mate. At one point, we really didn’t know anymore what came first.”

Mennella is Scognamiglio’s first kiss that summer. The two have no way of knowing he’ll be the last hand he holds before he dies of cancer.

Beginnings
Mennella originally pursued law, studying at the University of Naples Federico II, but credited his grandmother with encouraging him to pursue design.

He went on to obtain a degree in design marketing at famed university The New School Parsons School of Design in New York City.

In 2001, he launched Faraone Mennella with Scognamiglio.

Part of the brand’s folklore is a chance encounter with Patricia Field, costume designer for “Sex and the City”

Mennella’s designs were prominently featured on the show, a centerpiece of the cultural zeitgeist. TV’s iconic show led to iconic retailers. Bergdorfs came calling.

In the year before his death, Mennella experienced somewhat of a design renaissance, executing jewelry abstractions that bring to mind exotic underwater creatures, expressing movement and energy, rendered in psychedelic shades of titanium.

“We realized our customer was, yes, very wealthy and very well-traveled and sophisticated, but she was different from the old-school jewelry client,” Scognamiglio explained. “She was wearing Alaïa and high heels and dancing on a yacht, so her jewelry had to be in the same spirit.”

The collection has been a hit, but it was one of Mennella’s very earliest designs that was his career-long best seller: the Stella necklace, named for the grandmother that inspired him to follow his passion.

Faraone Mennella 18-karat gold “Stella” necklace ($10,300)
“I couldn’t believe while Roberto was dying and I was holding his hands I see my phone and the notification from our website that they just sold two of those necklaces. I said, ‘Can you believe that those necklaces will never go out of style?’ That’s the biggest accomplishment for any designer.”

The two worked together under the same creative umbrella for the entirety of their jewelry design careers.

An Iconic Partnership
Especially in the beginning, Mennella and Scognamiglio designed jointly, but, creatively, Faraone Mennella bore the stamp of its…