Fashion forward

Design has a decidely uneasy relationship with fashion. They are members of the same family, of course, but fashion is the flighty, flirty, slightly irresponsible younger brother to design’s older, more pragmatic sister.

Where fashion is transient, fast-moving and ever-changing, design is more permanent. Fashion is whimsical; design is dependable. Design is, in theory at least, free from fads. It is a long-term solution to a very real, very human need. It has a longer life span and, arguably, a more lasting impact on its users.

Interior designers are always slightly wary when you ask them to talk about their ‘style’, or the recent ‘trends’ impacting their work. These are words too closely linked to fashion, and too fleeting in their nature, to sit comfortably with most serious designers.

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Philippe Starck perhaps best summed it up when he launched his clothing line last year, but steadfastly refused to refer to it as ‘fashion’. “I will never be idiotic enough to do fashion,” he was reported as saying. “Fashion has a very high speed of turnover. It produces energy, materials, waste, and gives birth to a system of consumption and over-consumption that has no future.”

Yes, the relationship between fashion and design is decidely uneasy… but that doesn’t mean that the two are not irreversibly interlinked. These seemingly opposing entities are constantly meeting and merging. The fact that Starck was designing clothes at all is testament to how far the lines between fashion and interiors have been blurred.

If anyone needed further evidence of how irrevocably intertwined these two worlds have become, the new Armani Hotel Dubai is a larger-than-life example. We take a look inside the new hotel (page 26) to see what happens when fashion and interiors finally decide to put their differences aside.

Correction: On page 27 of the May issue of Commercial Interior Design, we stated that LW Design was responsible for the design of the Emirates Towers Hotel. In fact, Lars Waldenstrom and Morten Hansen were the principal designers, working on the project for Design Division, prior to setting up LW Design Group.
 

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