The Skin I Live In: Correspondences and Influences between Fashion and Architecture at the End of the Nineteenth Century
What are the origins of contamination and correspondences between Fashion and Architecture? Habitus and Habitat are not just coatings or filters between us and the outside world, but they are masks with which we show and send information to the others. Following the socioeconomic upheavals arising from the Industrial Revolution, any covering “bears the imprint of its occupant” (Benjamin). The definitive hybridization between different artistic disciplines is realized with the Art Nouveau, under the reforms of the Chicago School in America and William Morris in Europe. Morris, in particular, was able to combine for the first time the figurative quality of the handcraft production with the advantages of the industrial production. Inhabit the body, inhabit the place, inhabit the world find in the Art Nouveau a common aesthetic expression with many variants and names: Catalan Modernism in Spain, Liberty in Italy, Jugendstil in Germany, Sezessionstil in Austria.