Alessi is one of those companies which embodies a typical phenomenon of Italian industrial culture, namely that of “Italian Design Factories”. From the 1980s, Alessi are particularly associated with the notion of "designer" objects - otherwise ordinary tools and objects executed as high design, particularly in a post-modern mode, from designers such as Philippe Starck. Most of the memorable "designer kettles," "designer toothbrushes," "designer graters" and so on were Alessi products.