In late 2022, on Josie Robertson Square outside the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York, an installation titled "Your Voices" stood out at night. The installation consists of 700 light-emitting ropes connected in an arc-shaped structure, symbolizing the more than 700 languages spoken in the city of New York. While the device glows, different languages are played as background sounds. Viewers can enter and exit it at will, surrounded by lights and sounds. It was created by renowned British artist and stage designer Es Devlin, who once again demonstrates her ability to use different media such as light, sculptural form, and sound, and hopes that the viewer's perspective will be attracted by the ever-changing rope of light, thus evoking the way people experience the linguistic structure and identity of others by changing their perspective.
In April 2023, the Gucci Cosmos exhibition "Global Gucci", which also invited Devlin to design the space, opened at the West Bund Art Center in Shanghai. Curated by Italian fashion theorist and critic Maria Luisa Frisa, it features a selection of the brand's classics housed in the Gucci Archive in Palazzo Settimanni in Florence, as well as many precious unreleased fashion creations. Classic handbags, dresses, accessories and other pieces highlight the exhibition, illustrating the brand's diverse creative vision. Through eight exhibition areas, the Global Gucci Collection will bring together cutting-edge audiovisual experiences that have been passed down from generation to generation. Wallpaper* interviews Devlin, who takes us through this unique exhibition.
Born in London in 1971, Devlin studied literature from an early age, completed English literature at the University of Bristol, then studied fine arts at Central Saint Martins, and decided to become a stage designer on the advice of his mentor, integrating his passion for words, music and aesthetics into the visual environment. So Devlin started with the 80-seat Bush Theatre, whether it's Shakespeare's classic Othello: The Moor of Venice or Mozart's Don Juan, whose astonishing creativity quickly gained attention. Devlin has staged concerts for international stars such as Beyoncé, Lady Gaga, Adele, Rihanna, Katy Perry, Miley Cyrus and more. In 2012, her design for the London Olympics was another milestone.
Since 2014, she has been designing runways for many fashion brands across disciplines, and she is good at using mirrors, light and shadow to create spatial transformations.
As Devlin explains, "My practice began with designing for theatre in theatre. In the ecosystem of the theater, the central figure of the stage designer is to deal with the relationship with the stage director and playwright, whether living or dead", and the starting point of her creation may be a chord, a line of text or music, the way a coat or skirt swings, etc. Because of this, Devlin's work presents an extraordinary richness. Before conceiving the exhibition for the Gucci Collection, she traveled to the Gucci Collection House in Palazzo Setimani in Florence, where the costumes and accessories on display convinced her that objects themselves can be the protagonists and tellers of a living story.
The Global Gucci collection is divided into eight parts, and from a bird's-eye view of the planar relationship, the layout of the exhibition is composed of many rings, similar to a map of the solar system, or it can be seen as a more mechanical industrial picture of gears and wheels. Devlin tells us that this is both a response to the West Bund Arts Center's origins as an aircraft manufacturing plant and a visual expression of the fashion brand as a multiple, layered creative and commercial institution.
The narrative of the exhibition begins at The Savoy in London. In 1899, 18-year-old Guccio Gucci worked here for a while, and the most luxurious red elevator of the Savoy Hotel, known for its huge and slow movement, took a full 7 minutes to reach the top floor, but gave the Italian teenager enough time to examine the attire of the rich and the luggage of different guests, and rekindled his interest in his father's craft. The first room, the teleportation station, does not literally render the hotel, but outlines a cylindrical psychological space, using revolving doors and conveyor belts to represent the world of the young bellman, surrounded by a constant flow of luggage, people, place names and time.
The next two relatively smaller rooms, also cylindrical, were named Zoetrope and Eden. In "Galloping Ground", visitors are surrounded by the sounds of galloping horses and videos of horses in motion. This section details Guccio Gucci's fascination with English country life and equestrianism. Saddles were the first items to be made and sold when his first handmade luggage workshop opened in 1921, and successive generations of designers have added equestrian elements to Gucci's designs.
In "Garden of Eden", visitors will enter the world of Vittorio Accornero de Testa, a talented illustrator, set designer and artist who designed more than 80 silk scarves for Gucci between 1960 and 1981, among which his Flora floral silk scarf was specially commissioned by Guccio's son Rodolfo Gucci in 1966 for Princess Grace Kelly of Monaco. In a mirrored setting that references the architectural elements of Palazzo Settimani, the set of the exhibition recreates Accornero's enlarged ceramic lacquered resin model of plants and insects intertwined with the delicate detail of naturalists, including lilies, ivy, poppies, cornflowers, daffodils, small peonies, anemones, tulips and iris, as well as a variety of insects, including butterflies, dragonflies, bees, butterflies, beetles and grasshoppers. The sound scene evokes the sounds of the 37 vibrant colors used by Accornero's brushes in Flora's floral pattern design.
Stepping out of a series of semi-enclosed cylindrical spaces, visitors are greeted with a pair of towering statues dressed in different suits from the era of Tom Ford, Frida Giannini and Alessandro Michele, who also make up the fourth part of the exhibition, "Two".
Behind them, a double-layered circular space gradually brings the exhibition to a climax: Archivio, a circular space located on the periphery, surrounds the exhibition space "Cabinet of Wonders". "Archives" is a response to Gucci's philosophy that "archives are living organisms, not mausoleums or icy clinical spaces where the brand's history is frozen and mummified". The pale blue labyrinthine space reminds Devlin of his first experience of entering the archives at Palazzo Settimani, where the glow and promise of frosted glass cases in the lights reveal the shadow of the closely guarded treasures inside. It's an unusually rational, laboratory-like space that wraps around a central living organism like a pale blue eggshell. As visitors approach the center of the ice-blue maze, they can hear the heartbeat of the central crimson rotating curiosity cabinet.
The "House of Curiosities" is one of the most important parts of the exhibition: it is a rotating crimson cube that slowly opens and closes as it turns, revealing and hiding an array of delicate handmade objects and clothing. It's a kind of visualization of the designer's ideation process: memory accompanies breathing, combined with oxygen drawn from the surrounding cultural, socio-political, geographical, and natural environment. The red lacquered box is once again reminiscent of the "red elevator" of the Savoy Hotel, which was first referenced in the first room, "The Teleportation Station": called "a rising room" by hotel owner Richard D'Oyly Carte, it was London's first electric elevator and arguably the first room where the Gucci brand was conceived by Guccio Gucci. It can be said that it carries an exceptionally rich connotation, it is not only a cabinet full of treasures, but also a beating red heart, and the red elevator where the legend began.
Carousel is the penultimate area: amid the sounds of sewing machines, irons, steam engines, and the music and energy of the designer's fitting room, a cascade of model looks are superimposed on continuous projections drawn by a series of illustrators, borrowing from a surrealist game, Exquisite cadaver, an image version resembling the word solitaire, in which each participant takes turns drawing on a piece of paper. After one participant finishes drawing, he folds the paper to hide his work, revealing only a very small part and passing it on to the next player to continue drawing. Each painting is a continuation of the last, expressing the uninterrupted continuity between one creative director and the next in the history of the brand.
The finale of the exhibition is "The Hall of the Firmament" (Duomo). Florence's magnificent Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore dome is reproduced in a huge model and mirrored upside down to form a huge egg that splits up and down, filling the height of the entire space. Visitors are invited to climb a hidden staircase, walk across a bridge and stand between the two hemispheres of this cosmic egg. The Duomo and Dante refer specifically to the story of the origin of the Gucci brand in Florence, while the World Egg or Cosmic Egg is a mythological theme found in the cosmic origin of many cultures, present in Proto-Indo-European culture and other cultures and civilizations. Usually, the world egg is some kind of beginning, the universe or some primordial being exists by "hatching" from the egg. The installation also evokes the concept of "cathedral thinking": a philosophy of cooperation over time. Construction of the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore began in 1296 according to the design of Arnolfo di Cambio, the dome was designed by Filippo Brunelleschi in 1420, and the structure was completed by 1436: this great work could only be realized through the collaboration of generations of architects and engineers across time and space. For Devlin, "cathedral thinking" is both a metaphor for the continuation of Gucci's successive generations of designers and a revelation for all of us, and it is the participation in the multi-generational relay work to generate ambitious shifts in perception and perspective that will be necessary to create a new world egg, a new myth that tells the story of new choices and leads us to the continuous continuity of collaboration and creation myth.
Gucci Cosmos explores how Gucci's enduring principles and ethos have endured for more than a century in its most iconic designs, and how these epoch-making classics have been passed on through the creativity and reinterpretation of generations of designers. This journey through Gucci's past, present and future will take visitors on a journey through eight exhibition "worlds". In Devlin's view, every individual can write their own myths, whether it's a youth or a fashion house, and she hopes that visitors of all ages will leave wanting to start writing myths about their own lives.
Marco Bizzarri, President and CEO of Gucci, said: "In July 2021, we established the Gucci Archives in Florence to celebrate the brand's centennial. At that time, we immediately decided that the first stop of this historic exhibition that vividly shows the brand's heritage will be in China. That's why I'm delighted to be here for the opening event in Shanghai, the first stop on the Gucci Global Tour of Gucci Cosmos. Conceived by visionary artist Devlin, this Gucci World Tour presents an artistic celebration that looks back at Gucci's past, reflects the present and looks to the future. Walking through the exhibition, I realized more clearly: the essence of the brand story is revealed through our outstanding designers and craftsmen. They defined the brand's first century of craftsmanship and creativity, and ushered in the next century. The Global Gucci Collection is a tribute to them. ”
W*: What are the similarities and differences between stage design for a concert and a runway or exhibition design for a fashion brand?
ED: Part of my practice focuses on turning ideas into material form. The starting point could be a chord, a line of text or music, the way a coat or skirt swings, or a series of designer-conceived figures and the history of their luggage and clothing.
At the specific implementation level, the scale ranges from small stages a few meters wide to public Expo buildings 20 meters high. The conditions for contact with collaborators are also different, but the essence of shared curiosity remains the same: when I'm doing home-created art installations, the process is like working with musicians or fashion designers: we find overlapping parts of our respective clues—it's like working in the overlapping center of everyone's curiosity and love Venntu.
W*: When working with a brand, how do you showcase the brand identity while maintaining your own style? How do you see your role in the whole job?
ED: My practice began with designing for theatre in theatre. In the theater ecosystem, where the central figure of a stage designer is dealing with relationships with stage directors and playwrights (both living and dead), I tend to look for a close collaborator on every project. In this context, I began to visit the Gucci Collection House in Palazzo Settimani in Florence, and the objects and the order in which they appeared became my collaborators in this work. The Gucci Collection House used these objects to tell the brand's story in a series of episodes, which was the starting point for this collaboration. Over the years, I've become more convinced that objects can also be the protagonists and good storytellers of stories.
W*: What do you think of the Gucci brand? What makes it a special being?
ED: Every individual can write their own myths, whether it's a youth or a fashion brand. Everyone can take the time to observe and document patterns formed in their own history, no matter how long or short. It is through mythology that we recognize our identity, value it enough to try to preserve it, to interweave it in the natural systems that support it, and to protect it and them from passing.
W*: Are you satisfied with the results of the exhibition? Can you share with us some interesting or inspiring episodes from the entire design process?
ED: The production team in China executed these ideas with amazing energy and skill. Their attention to every detail during the realization process is exceptional.
W*: As the first stop of the exhibition, what kind of impression do you want to leave on the local audience through this exhibition?
ED: I hope visitors leave with more knowledge about Gucci's mythology and the multiple other myths that are entangled in its blood. I hope visitors of all ages leave wanting to write myths about their own lives, long or short.
Wallpaper* will present two thematic forums at the West Bund Art Center during the Gucci Cosmos Collection.
Indicate "dialogue session + name + mobile phone number" in the message pushed in this article, you can make an appointment to participate, get the opportunity to visit the exhibition and enjoy the special guide.
2023.5.4
"Italian design, from past to present"
18:00—19:00 Guest Dialogue
19:00—20:00 Special Tour
2023.5.18
"The Warmth of Fashion"
18:00—19:00 Guest Dialogue
19:00—20:00 Special Tour
Written by: Zhang Linmiao
Edited by Roman
Design: Yuyuweiwen
Image: Empty mirror image of the exhibition and portrait of Es Devlin courtesy of Gucci