From the catwalk to your interior
They like to say: Clothes make the man. And also: show me how you live and I'll tell you who you are. Whether fashion or furniture - all the things we surround ourselves with are a statement of our personality and an expression of our individuality.
Text: Silke Bender | Styles: mytheresa
The way we live and how we live has become as emotionally charged and significant as our style of dress. On Instagram, the digital business card of our time, people post about interiors almost as often as they do about fashion topics. The home is the extended showroom of the self. Those who dress sophisticatedly also place just as much value on their interiors.
Many trends are born in fashion and are also reflected in our homes. And vice versa. Whether in design, style, colours and above all the trendy materials - fashion and furniture inspire each other. We took a look around the catwalks of Paris, Milan, New York and the Pitti Uomo in Florence and brought back plenty to talk about.
Corduroy
1 GAIA chair with armrests by KFF
2 Corduroy velvet fabric collection LISBOA by KFF
3 Women's flared trousers by SAINT LAURENT | © mytheresa
4 Men's corduroy jacket by Tom Ford | © mytheresa
Long relegated to the fashion mothballs, corduroy is now shedding its grandpa image. This cotton fabric, which originated in Manchester, was once worn by the English nobility for hunting, and from the 19th century onwards it was also valued as guild and work clothing because of its high resistance to wear. Manchester trousers became the distinctive mark of the working class - which is why the so-called caviar left, the well-off but left-thinking intellectual scene from Paris to Frankfurt to New York made them their protest fabric in the late 1960s and 1970s. The existentialists around Jean-Paul Sartre liked to sit on the bistro chairs in the Café de Flore in Paris in corduroy suits. Corduroy fashion also set interior trends: sofas, armchairs and chairs made of corduroy were permanent guests in our homes in the 1970s until the yuppies made smooth leather the new fetish material in the 1980s.
Whether in fashion or interiors: now corduroy is back and showing its most colourful side. There is hardly a designer who does not currently have corduroy in his collection. In bold red, as in the high-waisted women's flared trousers by Saint Laurent, or in classic brown as a men's corduroy jacket by Tom Ford.
Bouclé
No fashion house is as synonymous with this refined material as Chanel. Since 1954, no collection of the house can be imagined without bouclé. At that time, the already 71-year-old Coco Chanel wrote fashion history once again when she invented the "Petite Veste Noire": a short, black, collarless bouclé jacket with patch double pockets and piping in which the modern woman should be dressed elegantly, effortlessly and comfortably in every situation in life. Incidentally, the world's most famous luxury jacket was inspired by service personnel: on a trip to Salzburg, Karl Lagerfeld recounted, Mademoiselle was completely enraptured by the uniforms of the bellboys at the Hotel Sacher, which was then still called the Österreichischer Hof. The cut of their jackets inspired her to create the "Petite Veste Noire," and she chose the material bouclé for both aesthetic and practical reasons.
1 LUNAR chair by KFF
2 Bouclé fabric collection ASCOT by KFF
3 Men's blazer by Bottega Veneta | © mytheresa
4 Oversize shirt jacket by ACNE STUDIOS | © mytheresa
The word bouclé means knot or loop in French. It is woven from irregularly processed yarns, which gives the impression that it is made of intertwined loops and often contains thickenings that look like knots. The result is a lively textured surface. Bouclé is also supple, cozy, warm and does not wrinkle.
Thanks to its excellent wearing properties, of course, many other designers have it in their range today: Bottega Veneta, for example, with an elegant brown and black mottled men's blazer, or Acne Studios with a casual oversize shirt jacket for women in brick color.
Velvet
Few fabrics are as synonymous with glamor and glitz as velvet. For a long time, this noble and intricately woven fabric was reserved for royalty and church dignitaries, who used it not only in their ceremonial robes but also lavishly in their interiors: As curtains or upholstery. It was woven primarily in Italy from the 15th century onward. Velvet was considered the epitome of luxury. While silk was used in the past, today more robust cotton, viscose or synthetic fibers are also used for velvet fabrics.
1 GAIA high-back easy chair by KFF
2 Velvet fabric Collection SEVEN by KFF
3 Evening tunic by Prada | © mytheresa
The charming glossy effects have made velvet popular in festive evening wear in the modern era. Until the 1990s, velvet was the glamour fabric par excellence: unforgettable was the red velvet suit by Gucci worn by Gwyneth Paltrow at the MTV Awards in 1996, now reissued by Alessandro Michele for Gucci's 100th anniversary collection.
In the 2000s, the fabric ended up in mothballs, both in fashion and interiors. Now the dignified fabric is back everywhere - and with it its aesthetic qualities: Depending on the type of velvet, the cloth has an iridescent surface. Due to its special pile, it has a line direction, which makes it sometimes more, sometimes less shiny, but always provides elegant effects. Prada has just rediscovered it with a bottle green evening tunic.
Leather
Tanned animal skins are among the oldest useful materials in the world. As early as the Stone Age, people made clothing, blankets and shoes from the skins of hunted animals. But it first came into fashion in interiors: the Bauhaus appreciated the breathable, water-repellent, durable and resistant material and created the furniture classics with chrome and black leather that are still with us today: Think of the Wassily chair or the Barcelona chair.
1 D-LIGHT bench by KFF
2 Leather collection MILANO by KFF
3 Leather collection RAWHIDE by KFF
4 Cargo pants by Rick Owens | © mytheresa
5 Leather shirt jacket by Dries van Noten | © mytheresa
As a clothing material, leather has been with us only since the Second World War: the biker leather jacket, as worn by James Dean or Marlon Brando, became a statement of freedom and masculinity, leather pants a symbol of sex, drugs & rock'n roll. Today, it is impossible to imagine the catwalks of the fashion capitals without leather. Hermès in particular has chosen it as its number one fetish material. Its origins, by the way, lead to the German town of Krefeld - this is where Thierry Hermès was born and learned the saddler's trade before founding what is today probably the most renowned leather house in the world in Paris in 1837. Almost all designer collections feature leather in various guises: thanks to modern, diverse tanning processes, today it can vary from silky soft and smooth to structured and grained to very firm and extremely resistant.
In the »Bauhaus« collection by Rick Owens, leather is the dominant material, as for example in the extremely softly falling cargo pants made of olive green nappa leather. Dries van Noten shows leather jackets in 70s retro style: as a robust shirt jacket in a reddish merlot brown.
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