I am extremely grateful to artist and designer Paul Walters for his gift of dozens of issues of Design magazine dating to the dawn of the 1970s.
These are being catalogued and added to the collection I already have of the title; some were donated by Paul’s fellow artist and designer Steve Thomas a few years ago.
Design was founded in the mid-60s by the Design Council precursor the Council of Industrial Design, and back issues are a goldmine of visuals and text about most aspects of the design world, from interiors, posters and packaging to product innovation, architecture and popular culture.
I’m going to post a selection of stories that have caught my eye over the coming months, starting with the image at the top of the post: a rarely seen view inside Elio Fiorucci’s first boutique, which he opened in Milan’s Galleria Passerella in late 1972.
Fiorucci was much inspired, to put it politely, by Trevor Myles and Tommy Roberts’ pop-art fashion outlet Mr Freedom – which had gone out of business in the spring of 1972 – and commissioned artist Stan Peskett, who had produced murals for Roberts, to create a space which engaged customers with a similar energy: the yellow and red colour scheme was extended to the exposed piping and venting with insignia of sunrays emanating from fluffy clouds hovering over the clothing racks. Stan, who I interviewed a couple of years ago for my Malcolm McLaren biography, has described his interior for Fiorucci as ‘an installation’.
Coincidentally, an ad in the same issue of Design featured an image of a model in Mr Freedom clothes which had appeared in Nova magazine the previous year. The advert was for the architecture and interiors publication Abitare, which continues to this day – see here.
