How Patrick Schumacher Is Redefining Fashion & Architecture | Zaha Hadid’s Untold Influence

Well, fashion and architectural design, as well as interior, product, furniture design, etc., even graphic design, they're all design disciplines. All the designers share an agenda, discourse, even if they express their professional expertise in different parts of life. It's always about visually articulating various aspects of our phenomenal world, of our life. And we are all supported by respective engineers for the technical functionality aspects, but as designers we are in charge of the social functionality aspects, and that has a lot to do with expressing the situation and expressing identities. When you are a host and inviting guests into a space, you want to bring them into a certain atmosphere and distinguish them from other situations and atmospheres. And when you dress up or when you go to a shop to buy a new outfit, you're also thinking about self-expression and expressing yourself for particular situations. So there are parallels. It's for me it's all about signaling and communicating who you are and what the situation is, and that's where these disciplines converge. And we as Zaha Hadid Architects have been designing in all design disciplines, all the way from urban design through architecture, interior, fashion, furniture. When it comes to fashion, that's more rare that architects get into it. We all know that architects do furniture and products perhaps, but Zaha was always also interested not only in jewelry, which is closer maybe to products, but fashion. So she designed a number of her own dresses. I've done the same with some of my suits and jackets. And then we also designed a very nice collection for Odlo, a sport dress and skiing dress, a Swiss brand. So yeah, we love fashion design. And now when it comes to the metaverse, we also are showing in Metropa, showing fashion designers. Actually, I'm teaching at the moment co-teaching a course at the Central Academy of Fine Arts, the fashion department in Beijing, on metaverse fashion.

Well, inspirations could be manifold, but you can characterize the task as being very much similar or the same in parallel. It's the framing of communicative interaction and social situations, and you do that when you design a space where you invite various participants into an ambiance, into an atmosphere, which indicates also, of course, how you might, what's the tone and purpose of the interaction. And similarly, when you dress up, you characterize yourself in distinction of many other people, but you also dress up for a particular situation: an elegant evening out, a sports event, a casual gathering, or a professional environment. So there's also the articulation and communication of the situation, and you kind of fit in, and people know how to approach you. So this communicating of social situations and of characters and of identities is what these disciplines all share. You can do that also with products; some people pay a lot of attention to their car, what kind of car they purchase. But of course there's a utilitarian aspect as well, where your clothes have to keep you warm in winter, etc. Similarly with architecture, but the larger part where the designers are really required rather than an engineer is this expressive element, this communicative element. I also talk about the semiological element. That is what is shared. So you can also see parallels in style and sensibility. If you want to be always at the forefront and want to express a kind of contemporaneousness or modern sensibility, or even a future-oriented sensibility, versus a more nostalgic and traditional sensibility, you can do that in design, you can do that in architecture, you can do that in fashion design. You do that in the individual choices as somebody who is a consumer of both architecture and fashion.

Actually, I'm not sure that would be quite interesting. Well, what certainly is the case that at the Bauhaus you had many disciplines and they did textile design. I don't know so much about fashion design, but the modern movement, this kind of white modernism we know about, the early 20s was paralleled by the reform dress movement, which is also going all white and simple and lack of ornament. And it's oftentimes been the wives of the architects who have been protagonists in this kind of white modernism with respect to fashion. There were similar themes: hygiene, getting rid of the riffraff of history, and being practical and sporty. You see these were dresses where you can ride a bicycle with, etc. That's the spirit of modernism. These were actually the women of, sometimes connected or wives of architects. We can literally say that fashion and architecture are married.