Design Line: 8 – 14 April
It’s a week for movers and shakers in this edition ofDesign Line. Guillermo Andrade makes history as creative advisor to a football tournament, Rossana Hu is announced as chair of the University of Pennsylvania Stuart Weitzman School of Design, and Tom Dixon takes on a mentorship role at Istituto Marangoni. Raw Color prepares for a retrospective, and the fashion world says goodbye to Mary Quant.
Pitch perfect fashion
Football merch is about to get a serious upgrade with the news this week that Guillermo Andrade has been appointed to the position of creative advisor for the Leagues Cup. Andrade, the co-founder and head of design for LA streetwear store 424, is also a keen player and fan. “There are people who are very religious. There are people who have hobbies. And most of those times, this thing captures your spirit,” he told Hypebeast. “For me, it is football.” The Leagues Cup is an annual tournament that combines US Major League Soccer and Liga MX, Mexico’s top professional football division. The appointment is particularly meaningful for Andrade as a Hispanic immigrant to America; born in Guatemala, he emigrated through the Mexican border aged 9 years old. When he was 22, he was detained by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), a traumatic experience he recounted in a 2021 interview. “I was at home, opened my door and there are ICE agents ready to arrest me. They put me in zip ties and threw me in a van. It felt like they were collecting undocumented people like it was a sport. It’s very disgusting.” As creative advisor, Andrade will oversee content and collaborations for the Leagues Cup that speaks to his immigrant story, as well as designing a line of fan merchandise. There are no details about the range thus far, but we are sure it will be more tasteful than the extremely kitschy Converse x Liverpool FC collection that debuted this week.
Mary Quant has died aged 93 (image: Mirrorpix/Robert Young via the V&A).
Mary Quant (1930 - 2023)
Fashion designer Mary Quant, regarded as the pioneer of miniskirts, hotpants and PVC, has died at the age of 93. In a statement to PA, her family eulogised her as the “most internationally recognised fashion designers of the 20th century and an outstanding innovator of the Swinging Sixties”. With her instantly recognisable shiny bowl cut hairstyle – courtesy of hair designer Vidal Sassoon – and her scandalous tiny skirts she embodied the 1960s “Youthquake” – a generation’s wholesale rejection of their parents’ fusty fashion and embracement of a more radical mode of dressing. Born in London in 1930, she recalled in her memoir that she began shortening her skirts and filed away miniskirt inspiration from dance class uniforms. After studying illustration at Goldsmiths and apprenticing with milliner Erik of Brook Street she opened her store Bazaar on the Kings Road with her husband. A talented entrepreneur, she disrupted the traditional seasonal fashion retail model by constantly refreshing her stock, ploughing Bazaar’s daily profits into buying the fabric for the next day’s designs. The Black Daisy, a bold black-and-white flower, was based on the doodles she made while sketching designs and became the logo for a fashion empire that included makeup, skincare and tights. Remembering her on Instagram, 1960s model Twiggy summed up Quant’s reign: “She revolutionised fashion and was a brilliant female entrepreneur. The 1960s would have never been the same without her.”
Neri Hu is the next chair of the University of Pennsylvania Stuart Weitzman School of Design (image: Thierry Coulon courtesy of Neri&Hu).
Hu’s that chair
This week it was announced that Rossana Hu has been appointed chair of the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn) Stuart Weitzman School of Design. Hu is both the co-founder of Neri&Hu Design and of the Shanghai-based architecture firm Research Office, as well as a professor and chair of the Department of Architecture in the College of Architecture & Urban Planning at Tongji University. She’ll assume the role at Penn on January 1 2024, taking over from current chair Winka Dubbeldam to become the third woman to lead the department – a strong showing from UPenn considering the notoriously male-dominated industry that is architecture. Alongside being credited with overhauling the Shanghai design scene, Neri&Hu Design has gained a reputation for its sensitive adaptive reuse projects – something Hu hopes to bring to her new post. “We see ourselves as mediators: between past and present, individual and collective, public and private, rural and urban,” said Hu. “It’s clear that the faculty and students at Penn are equally committed to this vision.” Exciting times for the architects of the future.
Who let the dogs out
When not terrorising the rats of New York (see ‘Rat Wars’ in Disegno #35) mayor Eric Adams is striking fear into the hearts of his city’s citizens with new robots bought for the New York Police Department (NYPD). Digidogs – the robotic quadrupeds from Boston Dynamics – are back in the arsenal despite the controversy in 2021 when they were first trialled by the cops but roundly condemned as aggressively dystopian. “Digidog is out of the pound,” said Adams, who claims the robo-pooches will be only be deployed at bomb threats and other scenarios that would pose a threat to the life of human actors. The city has acquired two Digidogs at the eye-watering sum of $750,000, reports the New York Times, funded by proceeds from criminal activity seized by the state. Disegno readers may remember that a Digidog, nicknamed Spot by Boston Dynamics, was once the star of a MSCHF stunt involving a paint gun (see ‘The Spicy Present’ in Disegno #31). The police department has also been outfitted with a subscription to StarChase for seven of its “less-than-lethal” GPS vehicle tagging devices that can be shot out of a mean-looking handheld cannon at fleeing cars. Wheeled surveillance devices from Knightscop called the K5 Autonomous Security Robot will be on patrol, acting both as deterrents and sending footage back to the NYPD from its four spy cameras. It remains to be seen whether the K5 will fair better on the streets of New York than its deployment in San Francisco back in 2017, when locals fought back against its deployment to deter homeless people by smearing it with barbecue sauce and pushing it over.
Tom Dixon will mentor students at Istituto Marangoni (image: courtesy Tom Dixon Studio).
Climb every (chair) mountain
Designer Tom Dixon has partnered with Istituto Marangoni, the Milan-based private design school with campuses in Florence, London, Miami, Mumbai, Paris, Shanghai and Shenzhen. Notable alumni include Franco Moschino, founder of his eponymous fashion label, and Domenico Dolce of Dolce and Gabbana – although the latter famously dropped out before graduating. Dixon will be a mentor for the Interiors and Interior Design & Lighting undergraduate course in London, supporting the students on their final projects. Dixon appears particularly enthused by the prospect. “There are many pressing and urgent design problems that can only be solved by young, fresh and open-minded creatives,” said Dixon. “I hope my years of experience and knowledge can help turbocharge the students with confidence and enthusiasm to discover their own design voice through innovation, experimentation and enterprise.” The announcement was accompanied by a particularly confident portrait of Dixon conquering a mountain of his own designs, including his Fat Dining Chair for Heals and his Melt Cone Fat Floor Lamp. Students, prepare to be turbocharged!
Raw Color’s retrospective exhibition Multiply will bring the sunshine (image: Raw Color).
Multiply the multi-colours
It’s been a long and gloomy winter here, so bring on the colour-and-serotonin-filled world of Raw Color’s Multiply exhibition at the Cuypershuis in Roermond, the Netherlands. Opening tomorrow on April 15, the retrospective will dive into the work of a Dutch-based design studio who work at the intersection of graphic design, product design and photography, with a focus of how colour can take a front seat. The exhibition’s title refers to the Adobe Illustrator tool that goes by the same name. It’s something that the studio uses a lot and lets you overlay colours and mix them where they overlap. It is also a reference to the fact that Raw Color’s work has multiplied over the years – with projects generating further projects as well as the many disciplines they keep adding to their practice. Raw Color’s founders Daniera her Haar and Christopher Brach and the rest of their team have worked across all aspects of the exhibition, from the graphic and exhibition design to curation. The exhibition is in celebration of, and prize for, their winning of the prestigious Limburg Design Award in 2023 (former winners have included Formafantasma, Sabine Marcelis and Jurgen Bey) and also nicely coincides with 15 years of their practice. Sketches and process videos will be shown alongside final pieces including their scrumptiously balloon-like lamp Globo, their Temperature Textiles – which critically but beautifully present the changing weather patterns as a result of climate change in socks, blankets and knitted garments – and Chromotology, a colour experiment and installation that uses shredders and coloured paper.