Inverted Architectures, Inverted Styles

Subverting and inverting structures is a recurrent theme in modern architecture. In the last few years, quite a few architectural firms put through the inverting process pyramidal, conical or trapezoidal buildings, fascinated by the fact that, when inverted, such shapes cause a sense of vertigo, dizziness and wonder.

Among the other examples we may remember the Hanoi Museum, designed by German architectural firm GMP in the shape of an inverted pyramid. Though the 30,000 sq m building looks quite bizarre as its inverted shape gives it the impression it's floating in space, there are quite obvious references to symmetry as well: the building can indeed be entered from all four cardinal points while a spiral ramp gives access to the upper levels.

Just like architecture, fashion has always been fascinated with subverting and inverting processes: throughout the history of fashion we have seen great examples based on blurring the genders and on changing or altering the human forms by wearing specific garments in revolutionary ways.

The architectural process behind inverted structures made me think about this design from Gianfranco Ferré's Autumn/Winter 1980-81 collection. This photograph was taken by Maria Vittoria Corradi, who always injected in her pictures references to art, paintings and architecture as well.

The dress – looking from behind like a jacket worn back to front and sensually leaving the back bare – and the pose of the model contribute to give a sense of surreal dizziness and to inject an element of chaos in what should actually be an ordinary garment, a tailored jacket.

Can you think about other ways to add an element of disorder/surrealism in fashion by subverting/inverting the role of a garment?

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