Let's continue yesterday's thread with a follow up on the theme of interior design and fashion.There is a recently unveiled collaboration that may indeed be filed under this label.
Sharing a passion for interior design, Cabana magazine editor in chief Martina Mondadori Sartogo and Gucci's Alessandro Michele created six limited edition chairs upholstered in the label's herbarium fabric and featuring animal figures (two snakes, a tiger, a fly, a hare and a bird) hand-embroidered on the seats.
The chairs will be sold on Cabana's pop-up store on 1stdibs.com for €1,200 each; the sale will coincide with Cabana's fifth issue release with a cover designed by Michele.
The chairs incorporate elements that Michele has used in his previous fashion collections, but it is undoubtedly true that, so far, most designs by Michele for Gucci have heavily borrowed from interior design fabrics and motifs.
Take the recent Gucci capsule collection Michele designed for Net-a-Porter: it features quite a few garments in which floral prints are remixed with classic Gucci stripes and other modern elements. At times Michele's garments look like the wearable interpretation of the porcelain cats by French designer Emile Gallé.
Taking inspiration from nature and plants and influenced by Japanese design, Gallé created sereval pieces representing cats with mesmerising glass eyes and a cheeky expression on their faces that seemed to be "wearing" chintz kimonos and lace bonnets. Gallé's cats were very popular in his times and they often indicated the social standing and taste of the owner of the house where they were displayed.
Yes, you may argue that garments, accessories and ornamental porcelain cats may belong to different product categories, but in this case they seem to be based around the same aesthetics in which floral elements are recombined with other motifs to create eye catching decorative effects.
Finding Gallé's cats and Michele's Gozzano-infused aesthetic a bit too much for your tastes? Come up with your own fashion collection moving from somethign else, such as this silvery day bed and screen from the 1930s designed by Armand-Albert Rateau.
Rateau studied cabinet making at the Ecole Boulle. As artistic director of the decorators Alavoine & Cie., he designed boutiques for Tiffany and Boucheron and made important contacts. After serving in World War I, he worked for wealthy private clients, such as fashion designer Jeanne Lanvin, composer Cole Porter and the French Government.
This bed and screen (wood decorated on gesso with water-gilding and oil-gilding with silver leaf), were designed for his wife's bedroom in their Parisian house and combine simplicity of form with richly patterned surfaces and details borrowed from antiquity but filtered through Rateau's style. Could be a great inspiration for a Space Age-inspired collection incorporating some arty and interior design references.
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