A conversation between Ennio Capasa and Fabio Novembre about fashion and design

The cross-contaminations of fashion, design and the web: how do they influence each other, how do they evolve and how are markets and brand positions changing? How do you emerge in the internet age, what different kinds of training and backgrounds are best these days and what new scenarios does the net offer? All these topics and more came under the spotlight at the Faculty of Letters and Philosophy in Rimini, Italy (part of Bologna University) in the company of top stylist Ennio Capasa and designer Fabio Novembre. Both were guests of fashion journalist Gianluca Lo Vetro. The two creatives spoke a lot about a new phenomenon known as Mod-esign – the juxtaposition of two quite similar worlds notwithstanding decidedly different time-scales: fashionwear gets planned fast and evolves rapidly as it changes direction every six months while design is made to last years.

So are designers and fashion stylists so different? According to Capasa a creative works to breathe life into an icon making it a strongidentifiable viewpoint imbued with sign and language.
And this holds good whether the medium is fashiondesign architecture or interior decoration. So Stark’s lemon squeezer Chanel’s clothes and the Costume National style maintain the same intensity and force year after year.
Instead the real difference is in seduction.
“Design has a less violent and erotic form of seduction than fashion which by definition has to go out and shake people as it touches an almost hormonal part of us. That’s also why
people continue to buy it” says Capasa.

However if design is thought of as being non-sensual we need to be careful
not to over-generalise.
In this sense Novembre’s works open up an interesting debate.
Often called the most erotic of designers by the presshe declares: “Creating is a process
that starts from nudity through to dressing with the designer enjoying each
phase in a kind of strip-tease. Probably till today products have not been particularly evocative because the designers interpreting them weren’t sexy enough! I feed off eroticism and my way of designing is drenched in it!”

One main theme of the debate is the relationship fashion and design have
with the web. Ennio Capasa is a leading beacon in the fashion world – also because of his relationship with the web.
He explains that thanks to the internet it’s increasingly the final user rather than the journalist who is responsible for giving the final judgement on a fashion product – even if the system is still excessively drugged by advertising investments for this statement to be completely true.
“Today we’re in a new era in which the economy is evolving to the detriment of general products and to the benefit of true ideas and experiments.
There’s a yearning for newinnovative products with soul and identity”.
 
 

Costume National indeed has to thank the internet for overtaking a colussus such as Chanel in the number of i-phone application downloads (CN is now positioned third in the segment for world fashion) and for winning second place in the New York Webby Awards – the Internet Oscars – with its cnc-costumenational.com website.

There’s an analogous process is the world of design which is seeking informationnews and inspiration from the net and above all from blogs: the real source of information today in which everyone can make their own voice heard.

There are opposing views when it comes to the subject of teaching and the distinction between subjects and disciplines. Novembre who has a more liberal approach to teaching and training says today’s universities are useless and that their true power is found in the opportunity they give young people to compare and confront themselves with others – impossible to do with facebook! He says he prefers people to have a single direction in his own field: “If you work as a designer you have to go on doing that to have the same force of ideas and communication.” Capasa sees it differently. He says university is more important than ever for raising the population’s general level of culture. He ends by imparting some words of advice to all students: “Be sure to favour an interdisciplinary approach over American-style hyper-specialization – in other words feel free to move and create between fashiondesigngraphics and architecture so that you can again take possession of that special characteristic of Italian genius that coloured the Renaissance.”