Domus and fashion

Domus has dealt with fashion on many occasions and always in an exceptional manner. This year, Domus takes part of Pitti Uomo – from 13 to 16 June 2017 – with a photographic exhibition held in the heart of Fortezza da Basso which highlights the development of the relationship between fashion and architecture through the design of spaces.

In particular the issue of designing spaces given over to fashion was addressed in a programmatic way already in 1942 by editor Melchiorre Bega: “today Domus is getting out of the house and onto the streets of Italy where shop architecture provides us with a comprehensive document of a twenty-year experience”. And again, “less recent interiors are also interesting because they indicate a transition that is not accidental but necessary towards shops as we see them today.”

Architecture, like fashion, is a physical, tangible expression of a historical, social and cultural context that is represented by the spaces we live in as by the clothes we wear. At times critical and disdainful towards fashion, architecture has often been fascinated by it: while Le Corbusier manifested a well-masked hostility, stating that in architecture style had no more significance than feathers on a lady’s hat, “pretty but not really important”, Adolf Loos always liked the subject of clothing. For architects, “the accent is still on the combination interior/garment,” – emphasised Alessandro Mendini in a Domus Moda special in 1985 – one – as in the designs by Michael Graves, Kazuhide Takahama, Gae Aulenti, Clino Castelli and Antonia Astori– in which the shop is seen as the ideal occasion for trying out the architect’s interests on a short-lived project. A second in which the rigorous organisation of the furnishing components seems to correspond to an interpretation of the interior as a neutral container of interchangeable typologies.”

The exhibition crystallises the most important moments in the design of spaces dedicated to fashion. From the first known examples of designer shops created between the 1940s and 1960s, through to the experiments of the 1970s and on to more recent partnerships in which architecture has been asked to translate into tangible forms the implied values of the brand.

Architects on one side, fashion designers and brands on the other, join forces to express ideas about personal, social and cultural identity. From display machinery designed by Giancarlo De Carlo and Cini Boeri through to the play of architecture and fashion introduced by Shiro Kuramata, the exhibition brings us a Norman Foster ante litteram and the total look of the Esprit shops designed by Sottsass Associati, the calibrated equilibrium of material austerity and sensuality of David Chipperfield and finally the architecture wanted by Rei Kawakubo for the Comme des Garçons shops that with a radicalism similar to that of the clothes, marked a break with every precedent in terms of form and materials.

The heart and history of Domus, the Archives are intrinsically linked to the magazine, guarding a vast documentary patrimony made up of material of different origin and nature used over the years for editorial publications.

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