Last week, on a warm September evening during Amsterdam Fashion Week 2024, there was something of a pre-show buzz in the city's Vondelpark as fashion crowds and a curious public gathered together around the park's central lake. All eyes were fixed on an amorphous cloth-covered structure that sat mysteriously at its centre. On the nearby bank, David Mahyari, the young and charismatic co-founder and CEO of stone brand SolidNature, rounded up a speech to mark its unveiling by declaring that ‘the future belongs to the dreamers’, before the cloth was pulled back to unveil a sculptural fountain made up of three stacked blocks of blue onyx. As water began to flow from the geometric volumes, the crowd cheered. Passersby stopped to pull out their camera phones and dog walkers sat on the grass to listen to the sound of the cascading water as the evening sunlight played on the fountain's silvery blue surfaces.
