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Dressing is easy

Archizoom

The architect's new clothes.


The Italian group of architects Archizoom (Andrea Branzi, Dario Bartolini, Lucia Bartolini, Gilberto Corretti, Paolo Deganello, Massimo Morozzi) became well known for their iconic project "No-Stop City" (1968-1971): an endless and featureless city modelled after the concept of the factory and the supermarket. A generic habitat in which humans would live a nomad life surrounding themselves in ready-made industrial products. "No-Stop City"'s architectural blankness could allow everything, from the most extreme consumerism to the total emancipation of the individual. Within this artificial environment, clothing too needed to be rethought. In 1971 Archizoom started experimenting with fashion with Dressing Design: Nearest Habitat System. Dressing Design expressed the freedom of dressing within the "No-Stop City" by ironically breaking with conventional clothing: leotards wore over jumpsuits and shirts, hairy stockings, funky patterns.

In 1973 Archizoom approached fashion design as an architecture project on the scale of the body with "Dressing is Easy". This project, illustrated in the video, was an essential and gender-neutral way of dressing, based on a piece of fabric and a “domestic assembly case” containing an instruction manual, scissors, needles and thread. Following certain diagrams to fold and sew fabrics, one could create and self-produce their own clothing. "Dressing is Easy" was never commercially produced (even though an advertisement was realised by Fiorucci), but it circulated through press: in 1973 it was presented on the architecture magazine Casabella. On the same year, Dressing is Easy was also presented as a stop-motion animation at the XV Milan Triennale in the Mostra Internazionale dell'Industrial Design, curated by Ettore Sottsass jr. with the collaboration of Andrea Branzi.

The complete archive of Archizoom’s works was donated to the Centro Studi e Archivio della Comunicazione (CSAC), were it is now available for consultation and research.

(Story by Federica Buzzi, The Architecture Player)

Credits

Architect: Archizoom Associati
Mentioned project: Dressing is easy
Animation: Archizoom Associati
Photography: Enzo Oddone
Directors: Franco Gaieni, Ludovico Moro
Production: Politecne Cinematografia
Sponsor: Abet Print
Courtesy of: Dario Bartolini and CSAC

Italy 1973
Duration: 15'32"