Stories and Matters
2019
15
14
Milano, 18.06.2018
Is there any difference between fashion and design?
How do these two worlds interact, how do they co ˗ exist
in a city like Milan where they are so influential?
A conversation that has compared the fashion indusry
with that of produc design, two parallel and consantly
developing worlds that are making mutual contamination
on of their sronges point.
Talking About 2018, Fashion and design
Dialogue on current interacions and future exchanges between the two branches
In collaboration with Icon, Icon Design
Guess: Sir Paul Smith, fashion designer; Alberto Alessi, businessman
Moderator: Michele Lupi, Icon and Icon Design direcor
PAUL SMITH
ML: Fashion and Design: Can these two
worlds coincide?
PS: Historically speaking, fashion and
design have gone through different periods
but have always gone hand in hand. From
the 1980’s, where the combination of black
and white reflected a Japanese influence
common to both sectors, through to today,
where we have come to an extremely coura-
geous experimentation of colour, where
patterns and intricate features have become
the signature style of a number of brands.
This development has occurred in both sec-
tors, influenced by the same trends or as
the result of mutual fusions.
ML: How do fashion and furniture co-exist
in your stores ?
PS: In Paul Smith we have a team of 12
architects and furniture designers who deal
with designing our stores around the world,
as well as designing the fixtures and fittings.
Every store has to be unique, has to have
a different spirit and look about it, it has to
be closely connected to the charcteristics
of its geographic location and this explains
why Paul Smith buildings are so often
one of a kind.
ML: How have things evolved, starting
from your first stores in Nottingham?
PS: It was essential for me, right from the
start, to have a number of vintage pieces
of design in the shop. My first shop in
Nottingham, my home town, dates back
to 1970. It was too small, measuring only
3 metres by 3, including furniture, so the
store set-up was limited to a few items.
Later we opened in London and we could
finally have larger pieces of design, pieces
by Rosenthal, by Driade…
ML: And what about your inspiration from
a cultural point of view? What are your
interests?
PS: I am extremely interested in design as
well as architecture. I started reading
Domus in 1987, at that time it was very dif-
ficult to get it in Nottingham but luckily I
had some friends in Milan who were entrust-
ed with sending it on to me where I lived
in Holland Street. If I could, I would have
liked to thank the great Gio Ponti for hav-
ing published his works as early on as 1967.
I love the attention to the study of materials
that is evident in many buildings from the
past; select raw materials such as Carrara
marble enhance their surfaces. Aesthetic
and functional details had the same impor-
tance, there was a certain craftsmanship
in their design, the same craftsmanship we
can find in manufacturing.
ML: What do you think of Milan in this
day and age? Can it be considered a hub for
fashion and design? Do you think it has
changed over the years?
PS: It has most certainly changed, from an
architectural point of view as reflected in its
skyline, it has been enhanced by new icons
and art fixtures such as the Fondazione
Prada. Everyone likes Milan mainly because
of the important contribution that influential
names of the fashion and furniture design
world have given over the years. At the same
time it has always been a rather secret city,
Milano slowly reveals itself with its court-
yards and tiny galleries, going off the beaten
track to discover the city at its best.
ML: Design and Fashion – Is the thinking
behind their creation the same?
PS: I think that they are different and have
two very different creation processes. In
order to create an item of clothing you need
to actually check a number of details per-
sonally: from the choice of material, to the
work of the craftsmen, even the scissors to
use… but sometimes 30 minutes are enough
in order to have an idea of the finished
product. In furniture design times can be
much longer. Research, planning and design
often go hand in hand, evaluating very
different trends and techniques which are
however bound by common styles. Graphic
design is not the only way to design. For
example in our studio we use the computer
when necessary but we still experiment with
all those expressive tools of drawing, paint-
ing and printmaking such as screen printing,
which consider an error as a potential.
ML: Going back to the concept of stores,
in your opinion what will their future be?
Do you really think that e-commerce will
get the better of bricks and mortar?
PS: E-commerce has a significant impact on
annual turnover, in our case almost a 30%
increase, but we most certainly cannot think
of cities without shops. We cannot imagine
the total disappearance of shops and those
professionals connected to their design and
layout.
ML: You chose to paint your store in
Melrose Avenue, in Los Angeles, pink, what
was the reason behind that choice?
PS: It was based on the analysis of the
location, I wanted the building to stand out,
to be instantly recognizable in a an urban
system of similiar looking streets. I took
inspiration from the work of the architect
Luis Barragán, the clean solid geometries
and the use of bright colours and I trans-
formed what could be described as a cube of
cement into a point of reference for the city.
ML: If you had to name a designer or an
architect who you have drawn inspiration
from who would it be?
PS: I have always drawn a lot of inspiration
from the influential names in architecture
but above all from one great master from the
past, Palladio, and from his theories on
perfect proportions. The aesthetics of propor-
tions, the mathematical approach applied
+to architectural design are also prelevant
when designing a suit.
ML: You are also a car enthusiast, you have
a Bristol don’t you?
PS: That’s right, the Bristol is a 1956 English
car:mine is bordeaux just like the one in
the film with Daniel Day Lewis. Daniel is a
friend of mine and we have been in that car
many times together. There is a strong
kinship and compatibility between us, like
the importance we give to manual work.
Many people know that Daniel did some
work experience as a shoe artisan in
Florence but he has also done carpentry
activities, working with steel and iron.
Manual work is extremely important for
me too: I still create the mauettes by hand
for the new shops, carving and engraving
them myself.
ML: Is luxury still a good word? Today
it makes us think of excess and it does not
always have a positive connotation. What
is your take on that?
PS: I think the meaning of the word pro-
gresses corresponding to its use and in this
day and age the word luxury is most cer-
tainly overused. Any product name can be
followed by the word luxury in the des-
perate search to reach a certain status and
identity, in this way diminishing the impor-
tance of the word itself. I spoke before about
my interest for “handcrafts”, which for me
represents the real concept of luxury today.
Surrounded as we are by industrial giants
producing fast fashion, it has become increas-
ingly more difficult to find something
unique and made with passion. Speed is an-
other real problem today: it seems to be
directly proportional to our professional or
social worth. We are trying to find through
this intense use of digital channels a way
to satisfy our need to please. There is, how-
ever, a sentence I often repeat to myself:
“Nobody cares how good you used to beˮ.
ALBERTO ALESSI
ML: You are not a designer but, as you, your-
self, ironically point out, more a “designer
of designers”. In this passing of the torch
between a great fashion designer and a great
Italian designer I would also like to ask
you if there is a relationship between these
two worlds of Fashion and Design.
AA: That is right, I am not a designer
or rather I am a design manager. Speaking
with reference to my experience I have
had many contacts with the leading players
in the fashion world in approximately 50
years of business; I would have liked to have
seen the design methods and the ideas
of fashion design applied to product design.
Unfortunately the big difference between
a product or furniture designer and a stylist
lies mainly in the choice of materials and
then knowing how to draw and design
in 3D. The first encounter in with this limit
was at the end of the seventies, when we
organized a workshop in Berlin under the
tutelage of Alessandro Mendini and one
of the participating guests was Jean Charles
De Castelbajac who showed real difficulties
in getting to grips with three-dimensional
drawing. I also remember another episode
related, in this case, to Paco Rabanne who
had a wonderful idea for a mirror for Alessi,
he wanted to call it “The fairest of them all”
but at the end he was not able to really draw
it and it never got produced.
ML: You have a wealth of experience: dur-
ing these years in Alessi, you have had
the opportunity to design an incredibly vast
range of products. I can even remember
a Fiat Panda and other experiences related
to the automotive world.
AA: Actually the case you just mentioned,
the Panda, is one of the rare cases in which
we worked in two dimension, because Fiat
did not give us the opportunity to design the
whole car but only the shape of the exterior
and some interior details. The dream
of creating an Alessi car could have been
achieved with Starck some years ago, but,
alas, no car manufacturer was interested
in going through with the project. Perhaps
in the future…
ML: Perhaps it is closer than we think!
Thinking about the future of the car indus-
try we are moving towards a reality of
increasingly intelligent cars and driverless
vehicles, the safety constraints that make
design a uniform concept, and perhaps even
the exteriors, will develop and transform
increasingly free shapes and forms and the
interiors will resemble almost work-like
places. But market research is not always
reliable, Achille Castiglioni himself, when
I was younger said to me that the the only
important consideration when designing
is to disregard market research. Can you
give us any anecdotes, you knew him well?
AA: I remember having involved him
on a number of occasions, but when I asked
him to design objects for the kitchen he
was against the idea at first. He was worried
more than anything about not having
enough consolidated experience in the
kitchen. Then he went on to design them
and I have to say that, even if the kitchen
is a more female world, the designers who
created kitchenware have been mostly men,
who just like him didn’t have any particular
expertise. It is rather odd!
ML: Milan, the capital of furniture design
and fashion, have you seen the city undergo
any changes recently? Design has become
increasingly international, what has changed
now that many of the great Italian designers
have passed away?
AA: Milan most certainly continues to be
the capital of design but for reasons different
to those of the past. Let’s take the history
of Italian design: until the 1970’s the product
was designed by an Italian designer and
made in Italy by an Italian company. But if
we look at the later part of the 1980’s Italian
products were for the most part no longer
designed by Italian designers. Italian com-
panies opened up to a more international
panorama and I personally think it is a pos-
itive thing: they received a breath of fresh
air. If the Italianness of the design fizzled
out, the Italian production remained strong.
And in many cases today, there is no longer
even Italian production: Italian design is
represented by foreign designers and pro-
duced abroad. This practice of mediating
between the market and the international
players in the design scene is a more artistic
agreement for Italian brands. Perhaps what
has really changed is teh role of the entre-
preneur who today is more similiar to that
of a curator.
ML: Everyone knows that you have a for-
mula of success that allows you to choose
the products to produce without making any
mistakes, what does it consist of?
AA: That is right and it works. It is a math-
ematical formula that allows you to pre-
cisely define the success of the prototype
you have before deciding to put it on the
market. The formula is based on 4 parame-
ters, every parameter is broken down
into 5 levels with their corresponding score.
Over the years it has proved to be infallible.
ML: You perform a scouting activity with
the designers. Do you first think about the
object and then about who could make it
or do the designers put forward their
projects?
AA: More often than not we work as a tra-
ditional company would on briefs of new
products. Once the brief is written I propose
the project to three people and the one
who is interested in it starts it. If the pro-
posal I receive proves to be interesting, then
its production process begins, which can
take up to a year
ML: You are not really fond of the world
of fashion and yet there it does have some
aspects in common with design, even
at a production level.
AA: Design has picked up on the concept
of speed from fashion:now we present two
collections a year and this speed is almost
excessive for the timing of product design
where a designer who creates a chair is not
always able to keep up with market aspira-
tions. Enzo Mari himself affirmed “when
a project I created sells well I start to think
that it was not a good project”.
ML: This concept of doing a project for the
pleasure of doing it is a characteristic that
belongs also to the world of art and music.
Perhaps the projects that are created with
passion are those which in the long run ac-
quire more value?
AA: This prospect can pertain more to de-
sign than to fashion. A dress made 60 years
ago may have represented a revolution in
a certain period of great cultural importance
where it will be confined to without further
use; in design, a product can be a revoltion
related to a certain time but at the same time
continue to be used for its same purpose
in the years to come.
ML: What products are you most
attached to?
AA: Certainly to the first expresso coffee
machine designed by Richard Sapper in the
70’s, a tribute to my maternal grandfather
Alfonso Bialetti; it has been in production
since 1979 and it was also the first product
created by Alessi for the kitchen. From 1921
to 1979 Alessi only produced objects for
the kitchen table and for the bar, only after
the coffee maker did we begin to produce
kitchenware and other objects. Another
collaboration I fondly recall was the one
with Saeko, for a watch collection. Every-
thing started with Aldo Rossi who wanted
to design a watch. He arrived with a model
that was later called “Momentoˮ, then
Achille Castiglioni designed his “Recordˮ,
then Sapper and so forth… then Saeko
noticed these watches and proposed us to
make a collection including 20 models.
ML: How far does marketing affect the
work of designers? Do we still have a warm
relationship with some objects?
AA: Today everything succumbs to the
demands of marketing, a tool that often
favours the aspirations of the target, repress-
ing creativity and imagination to the detri-
ment of good design. For me marketing is
like a cage in which you try to compress
the reality of society by standardizing
the criteria and the aesthetics of products
coming out on the market. Today many
companies demand the complete control
in the creation and the development of
a product, giving increasingly less freedom
to designers to express themselves with
their skills and expertise potential. This can
only be damaging to the market and will
most certainly generate objects that will
fade over time.
ML: And how does design fit into the
world of luxury?
AA: In my opinion design is not luxury:
luxury takes advantage of the individual’s
ambition and desire to belong, but objects
of design are created for industrial produc-
tion and are therefore targeted for a wider
market segment. The exceptions are those
rare cases in which special or limited edi-
tions are created exclusively for the niche
segment of galleries.
