Architecture and fashion have in blueprints and patterns their crossing lines; in rock, paper and scissors, their icons. A relationship that MADRID ES MODA approaches in the exhibit Arquicosturas, in the Official College of Architects of Madrid. DEVOTA & LOMBA, MIGUEL MARINERO, JORGE VAZQUEZ, MAYA HANSEN and ULISES MERIDA dialogue in window shops with the creations of six young designer architects from the specialization course in Architecture, Fashion and Design by ETSAM: Elena Zapico, Lucinda Carrizosa, Maria Garcia Orille, Anabel Garcia, Sofia Cano and Naroa Díez.
A common history
Architecture arises as man’s need to create a second skin that will provide him with shelter, give him some thermal and protective comfort. Therefore, the great architects of modernity felt they had to design fabrics and garments.
In Bauhaus they taught fashion and textile design together with the design of furniture, interiors and architecture. The architects of the Viennese Secession, or the constructivists, designed clothing as an indispensable part of their concept of total revolutionary art: they would explore in the garment what later would be implemented in their buildings.
As designer Miguel Marinero points out, “obviously the aesthetics of architecture is linked to fashion through the creative process and also through the historical context itself: the reflection of architectural design, as pictorial, sculptural and literary in the evolution of fashion is nothing more than the history of mankind, taken as a whole. The Bauhaus school, one of my greatest weaknesses, is an example of this. ”
He is also heir to the 60s, when couturiers with architectural training such as Paco Rabanne, Pierre Cardin and André Courrèges, revolutionized fashion creating “architectural” dresses, with enveloping articulated structures, robotic, space capsules, etc. The garment was conceived as a light, nomadic structure that solved certain functions of architecture under an atypical material confection.
Arquicosturas
This line has continuity these days in the discourse of couturiers such as Hussein Chalayan, Issey Miyake, or Spanish designers such as Maya Hansen and Devota & Lomba, and has inspired the creations of Marinero, Jorge Vazquez and Úlises Mérida. All of them exhibit in Arquicosturas.
In the opinion of Mérida, the connections between the two disciplines “are complex and complete, in terms of volumes, the importance of dimensions, the need, or not, of usefulness in architecture as well as in fashion … Both are part of culture, but there is architecture and there are houses, and there are clothes and there is fashion “. So he abounds, “in the same way that a building is constructed according to a blueprint, a bad blueprint and a bad pattern lead to bad buildings and bad garments.”
MIGUEL MARINERO
“I have absolute preference for William Van Alen, creator of the Chrysler Building. In all my collections, and now when presenting the first complete textile proposal by our brand, even further, the weight of Art Deco styles is a must. It was disruptive, challenging, marked a milestone and it also has a personal story behind … I never get tired of watching the needle on 42nd Street with Lexington Avenue. Perhaps even unconsciously I believe that it is until a symbol for me: the needle, the Art Deco movement that liberated women from the corset and opened the door to fashion with capital letters. ”
“This coat exhibited in Arquicosturas perfectly sums up my concept of geometry, it is a model of my collection ROMBO (RHOMBUS) and lives up to its name. The symmetry upon the fur showcases a marked characteristic of Miguel Marinero throughout the years. The rhombus is a perfect figure, absolutely integrated with the leitmotifs of the exhibition. It is also a tribute to the great figures of architecture: are there not rhombus in the pyramids of Egypt? In the Louvre pyramid? In the T4? In Aalto’s creations? It is a constant, it represents balance. Frank Owen, Frank Lloyd, Philip Johnson, also represent the essence of pure geometry. ”
ULISES MÉRIDA
“My favourite building is the Pantheon in Rome. I was passionate studying it. I was fascinated by the film “The Belly of an Architect”. And I fell in love when I had the chance to know it personally. My favourite architect is Alberto Campo-Baeza “.
This design “is representative of my latest collection, RAICES (ROOTS) It is a model that goes to the root of Spanish fashion and culture. With an inspiration from Balenciaga, and also Zurbarán. And very much in trend, as we are talking about a cape.”
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