MEMPHIS MANIA...

"It is no coincidence that the people who work for Memphis don’t pursue a metaphysic aesthetic idea or an absolute of any kind, much less eternity,"...observed Sottsass. "Today everything one does is consumed. It is dedicated to life, not to eternity."

• Film Memphis design video.

The Memphis Group was an Italian design and architectural group, founded in Milan by Ettore Sottsass in 1981, formed as a reaction against minimalists. The group who took his name after the Bob Dylan song "Stuck Inside a Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again", it was inspired by Pop Art and Art Deco including styles as the 1950s Kitsch and Futuristic themes. 

• Memphis Designs.

The group that designed a kind of  Post Modern furniture, fabrics, ceramics, glass and metal objects from 1981 to 1987, and who loved experiment with unconventional materials, historical forms, Kitsch motif and Gaudy colors, and challenged previous conception of decoration, today it is the strongest inspiration for different fashion designers like Christian Dior, Roger Vivier,  among others.

• Designer Peter Shire sitting on his own creation, chair designed in 1982 while he was part of the Memphis group.

The Memphis Mania on fashion is back, but  started in 2011 at the Christian Dior’s Fall-Winter Haute Couture Collection, when this house shows first Haute Couture collection since John Galliano sacking, and since then many established and emerging designers have been inspired in the Memphis Group to design fabrics, clothes and accessories.

• Christian Dior.

Then in 2012, footwear brand Sergio Rossi launched with a special event on the 10 Corso Como, in Milan, his Spring/Summer 2013 collection entirely inspired by the Memphis Milano movement.

• Sergio Rossi's  Memphis Collection.

In 2014, emerging designers like Calla Haynes, at New York Fashion week, Margaux Dereume's, on her graduate project and third Capsule collection, and David Delfin, on his F/W 2014-15 collections during the Mercedes Fashion Week in Madrid, were thinking simultaneously about the Memphis Group, whose postmodern aesthetic informed the graphic quality of the prints en, their collections.

• Calla Fall 2014 at New York Fahion week.

• David Delfin catwalk.

•  Margaux Dereume design.

• Abstrac Form from the Memphis Group.

At the London Fashion week autumn/winter 2014, the Memphis inspiration were present too, with Bold Geometric Structures, Abstract Forms, and Colour Blocking Effects at the Pilotto collection.

• At London fashion week autumn/winter 2014, Geometric and nature prints at Peter Pilotto.

• Color blocking and dynamic and angular shapes, were taken up for prints, silhouettes and accessories today.

• Roger Vivier's Envelope Etoile clutch, witch has similar color blocking to the Bel air armchair, designed in 1981 by Peter Shire for the Milan -based Memphis desin group. Photo via: T-The New York Times Style Magazine.

Visit the MEMPHIS MILANO web, to see the pictures gallery, story and contact this original group that have a strong influence in fashion today.