Memphis Group

But it, I love the idea that there's too much good taste, 'cause I think that there is, like, tyrannical amount of amazing taste.

But in our interviews for this episode, we just met so many collectors, and there's, you go into their spaces, there's this kind of juxtaposition of incredible, beautiful, but also some just sort of, like, almost wantonly garish from Memphis, or just paired with things that are absolutely minimalist.

And I think Milan is a place of contrast, and you see that on the catwalk as well.

You see it in the shows and in the methodology of some of the designers.

It was incredible, and I love, I think she really owns who she was and who she is.

I loved hearing about her earlier career in her 20s, being kind of like part of the It Girls, traveling the world, representing Missoni, and then evolving into a designer for M Missoni, and now doing her own brand.

And I think that sense of confidence really comes out, but also the stories of her with her mom and her grandmother, waking up and going to antique flea markets, visiting museums, and looking at, like, the Memphis furniture that kind of she grew up.

Again, she was telling us about growing up in the '80s and, and observing this design movement.

This collision of the so-called highbrow ancient history and lower pop culture captured the exact mood the group wanted to celebrate.

In September of 1981, the Memphis Group had their debut exhibition at the Ark 74 showroom in Milan.

They expected a modest crowd, maybe some curious friends, but when they arrived, they found more than 2,000 people packed into the street clamoring to get inside.

The gallery was filled with clashing neon colors, asymmetrical furniture, zebra striped laminates, and squiggly cartoonish light fixtures.

One critic famously joked that it looked like, quote, "An unholy alliance between Bauhaus and Fisher-Price." End quote.

But the younger generation, along with boundary pushing collectors, uh, fell in love with its unapologetic embrace of joy and wit.

Sottsass stayed with the Memphis Group for just a few years.

In 1985, he stepped down as he felt the movement had achieved its goal.

But here, Elle gets to pick her own style and figure out who she is.

And she chooses this particular style called the Memphis design aesthetic as a way to represent that.

So I went down a rabbit hole.

The Memphis design was created in 1981 as a direct contrast against the minimalist aesthetic of the 70s.

Emphasizing bright pops of color, strong geometric patterns, and clashing hues, Memphis Design took inspiration from art deco, pop art, cubism, and more.

Artandcontext.org says among the list of products that they designed and manufactured were Memphis-style furniture, ceramics, patterns, lights, and fabrics.

They considered each piece to be a rebellious statement and in no sense timeless, but rather a political statement as a protest of the functional and neutral modernism period.

They stood for everything that modernism was against form instead of function, evoking emotion instead of contentment, contrasting nature instead of integrating it.