As Milan Design Week unfolds, the dialogue between fashion and form reveals a deeper story about intimacy and structure—a conversation long central to lingerie. Bottega Veneta’s collaboration with artist Kwangho Lee, featuring light sculptures woven from leather strips, directly echoes the foundational craft of corsetry, where material is shaped to both reveal and support the body. This isn't merely decoration; it's an exploration of tension and softness, principles that defined undergarments for centuries.
Similarly, Marni’s café takeover, with its custom striped tableware, recalls the playful, public flirtation of the 1950s peignoir set—loungewear designed for semi-private display. Meanwhile, the compressed paper logs in Issey Miyake’s exhibition speak to the ingenuity of material reuse, a practice lingerie houses have long employed, transforming off-cuts into delicate trims.
These installations demonstrate that the current preoccupation with texture, containment, and the body’s relationship to object is not new. It is the very language of lingerie, historically developed in the quiet of the atelier and now writ large on Milan’s stage. The week’s most compelling projects don’t just design for the home; they articulate the enduring human desire to craft a second skin, whether in leather, silk, or light.
Originally reported by WWD