The origin of the '80s aesthetic

If we had to make a moodboard for each decade... It would probably look something like this, right? Even if we weren't living through the 50's, 60's and 70's... We can pretty much agree on the aspect that defined the era. This is my favorite: the 80s. And minus the questionable hairstyles... the 80s set the trend for bright colors, graphic patterns and geometric shapes. Which made me wonder who created the 80's look? Is it even possible to pinpoint a specific person or moment in time? Well, in this case we can. GLENN: I think it would be difficult for us to think of any other design phenomenon that could be specifically located in one group of people...

The Memphis Group dominated the design world in the 1980s. The collective led by Italian architect Ettore Sottsass was formed in 1981. They had a great impact on the postmodern designs of the decade. GLENN: Memphis is probably the most influential design group that has ever existed. And they

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ated much of that visual vocabulary. So I certainly give them a lot of the credit for the '80s look. Although most were Italian, the group included architects and designers from all over the world. Japan, France, Great Britain, Austria, the United States... And unlike the name, the group was not from Tennessee.

They were actually based in Milan, Italy. The name Memphis comes from a Bob Dylan song that was played during a meeting. “...mobile with the Memphis blues again” The first thing to know about Memphis is that it emerged from a long tradition of radical design in Italy in the 1960s. Radical design was a movement formed by architects as a reaction to the minimal and practical

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s of modernism. “Modernism was put in a kind of box. We gave a lot of rules, and I think a lot of people felt trapped within those rules.” Radical design allowed designers to express distortion and irony, moving away from the functionality of the design.

Sottsass was a great supporter of the movement. According to The Guardian, he tried to stay away from the modernist way of designing "like a well-educated schoolboy." He didn't follow the rules, which made the Memphis Group's work unpredictable. PETER: We wanted to be excited. We wanted to be anxious. We wanted to get excited. This is Peter Shire, one of the two Americans who were part of the Memphis Group. PETER: We did it mechanically, because we didn't have computers. They existed; We were seeing signs of it. And you look at that kind of overlap. Look at Memphis: you know, pattern after pattern with things flying.

In 1981, the group showed their work for the first time at the Milan design fair. The entire collection is named after luxury hotels. GLENN: The Carlton... the Belair chair that Peter Shire made... The Plaza dresser that Michael Graves made. Which is kind of a joke, right? Taking plastic laminates and putting them on cheap composite wood, and naming them after luxury hotels... it's all part of this falsely elegant thing that they were interested in. The New York Times wrote that the spectacle “horrified some and amused others, but it put all who attended the fair in a state of great excitement.” GLENN: Sottsass and one of the other designers were on their way to the opening in a taxi and thought a terrorist bomb had gone off in the center of Milan.

Little by little they realized that the chaos and crowding were actually due to their own exposure. They got out and walked, and it was like a crowd scene. His work spread quickly through design magazines that were popular at the time. And soon his influence was seen everywhere. GLENN: I always think it's important that it happened almost simultaneously with MTV, which also launched in 1981. And if you think about the MTV logo with all those colors and patterns and the kind of striped graphics. It clearly relates very closely to some of the graphic design ideas that came out of Italy and that were the context in which Memphis emerged.

But, despite the impact the group had, its furniture never made it into people's homes. GLENN: It was very, very unusual to decorate with Memphis at that time. There is only one Memphis piece of furniture that was ever mass produced and that is the First Chair. I think about 3,000 of those were made. With a circular disc on the backrest and two black orbs to rest the arms on, the design was unlike any other chair on the market in 1983. PETER: It was a brilliant idea and a terrible chair. But the problem is that they always fell backwards. And that was pretty fun.

A few years later, Sottsass left the group to build his own studio, and the Memphis Group played its last show in 1987. GLENN: Whenever people asked me what the end of the postmodern period would be, I said roughly it's around 1987. Because there's a recession at the time, that takes some of the wind out of the art market, and it's like a real turning point. The life of the Memphis Group was short-lived, 6 years to be exact. And while their designs didn't serve a purpose in people's homes... they left a colorful mark on history and inspired many future designers.

Like this first Apple Watch that was created in 1995. They were given free to anyone who bought the Mac system. Or this Dior couture show from 2011, which was an ode to Memphis design. Karl Lagerfeld was one of the few who collected his pieces. And auction house Sotheby's sold David Bowie's Memphis collection last year, which also included Peter's work. The designs have a distinctive look that keeps appearing again and again... And that's how the design works sometimes, it often spreads around the world without the names of the designers attached. So even if you recognize this style as being from the '80s, most people have probably never heard of Memphis.

PETER: I should ask someone. You should ask a man on the street. Most people would say "...What?"