In a previous post we looked at futuristic inspirations that may come to us from the past and in particular from the '80s. Let's remain in that decade and go back to 1982 with another cover of architecture and interior design magazine Domus.
The May 1982 issue looked slightly cyberpunk and elegantly industrial in a Prada style (you can clearly see where Miuccia may have come from...): on the background of the cover there is Milano Fiori's World Trade Centre (a project by Lorenzo Martinoja with the collaboration of Renzo Piano), and you can see a plane flying in the sky, a "Megalodon" (1977) designed by Luigi Colani.
The model is sitting on a row of "Wave" armchairs designed by Giovanni Offredi for Saporiti-Italia and she is wearing a suit by Cinzia Ruggeri. This design had a very long title - it was called "Evoluzione del profilo in gradoni per favorire escursioni attraverso le geometrie invernali con segnalazioni luminose per UFC (Unidentified Flying Clothes)", which means "Evolution of the silhouette rendered in terraces, to favour excursions through wintry geometries with luminous signals for UFC (Unidentifed Flying Clothes)".
The "luminous signals" hint at Ruggeri's pioneering use of LED lights in her behavioural garments (an idea that was then replicated in contemporary collections as seen in other posts), while the terraced element refers to her passion for the ziggurat shape that then developed in her "Homage to Lévi-Strauss" dress (1983-84) and in other ziggurat-inspired designs that Ruggeri presented in the '80s in the Church of S. Carpoforo, Milan, accompanied by an installation by Brian Eno (who designed for that event sound-emitting luminous ziguratts).
In this case the luminous elements on the suit were to be interpreted as a wearable landing strip lighting system: they futuristically traced a silhouette in the space surrounding the wearer, maybe signalling to alien entities a human presence ready to welcome potential extraterrestrial visitors, or more simply sending light messages to attract the attention of other fellow human beings in a fun and quirky way.
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