Giving a wooden clog its own dress, in Como silk
Daniele Orlandi contributed a piece to "UPGRADE — I legni della nostra infanzia" ("The Woods of Our Childhood"), a collective design exhibition at Palazzo delle Stelline in Milan, curated by Cristina Toscanini. Sixty designers and artists were each given an unused wooden clog base — leftover stock from Toscanini's own 1970s clog production, once selling up to 500,000 pairs a season — and invited to reinterpret it. Orlandi's response: dressing the clog in silk from his own city, Como.
About the piece and the exhibition
In his own words, in the catalogue essay "Un singolo sogno si mischia con altri" ("A single dream mixes with others"):
"As a fashion designer, I've always worked with clothing, and the world of footwear was largely unfamiliar to me. In my imagination, clogs had almost a negative connotation — but when I received a pair for this project, I was struck by their shape, their sinuous lines, the grain of the wood; I immediately thought there was something beautiful and current about them. I live and work in Como, a historic silk district, and for this project I used a remarkable silk made by a Como excellence, the product of great tradition and know-how. I tried to give the clog a garment of its own, joining two great traditions and giving it concreteness, authenticity — in the conviction that only by knowing and valuing our past can we project ourselves into a great future."
The finished piece pairs the natural wood heel with a draped upper in luxury pink silk, trimmed in white.
UPGRADE ran from 13 to 16 October 2016, opening on 14 October, as part of that year's Festival della Crescita — a Milan-wide event on innovation and growth curated by Future Concept Lab, with Cristina Toscanini's exhibition presented in collaboration with ADI (Associazione per il Disegno Industriale), Lombardy delegation. Among the other 59 contributors were designers and artists including Lorenzo Palmeri — who also created a sound piece, "Il suono degli zoccoli," for the opening — Letizia Cariello, Enrica Borghi, Alberto Fraser and the Adriano Design studio. The catalogue's introduction was written by Francesco Morace, founder of Future Concept Lab. In a video made for the exhibition, Toscanini traces the project back to her own childhood among the wooden clog bases in the family workshop, and to the unfinished stock that years later seemed to her to be asking for a second life.
Source
"UPGRADE — I legni della nostra infanzia" catalogue, ed. Cristina Toscanini, graphic design by Antonella Andriani, printed by Arti Grafiche Maspero Fontana — essay "Un singolo sogno si mischia con altri" by Daniele Orlandi, p. 36. Palazzo delle Stelline, Milan, 13-16 October 2016.
ADI’s coverage of the event · Toscanini
The exhibition is also documented in a video, "CTw — UPGRADE I legni della nostra infanzia", in which Cristina Toscanini recounts the project's origins in her own words; the participating designers, Orlandi among them, are listed on screen from 7:48. Watch the video