Gianfranco Ferré Foundation, Milano, Italy
The Gianfranco Ferré Foundation (Italian: Fondazione Gianfranco Ferré), located in Milan at Via Tortona 37, was established in February 2008, primarily with the aim of preserving, organizing and making available to the public – first and foremost in digital archive form – the patrimony of materials that document the designer’s professional activity. It also has the goal of promoting, pursuing and carrying out projects that relate to the Gianfranco Ferré philosophy and culture of design, to the maestro’s unique idea of fashion and exquisite aesthetic sensitivity.
The Tortona area in Milan is a world-class hub where design, fashion and culture meet and merge: it became a pole of attraction for leading Italian and international brands, ad agencies, idea incubators, prominent designers and promising young talents which turned it in the three last decades into a real “creative district”.
The Gianfranco Ferré Foundation headquarters “Tortona 37” is a mixed-use architectural complex consisting of five buildings set around a tree-centered courtyard, designed by Matteo Thun. It is part of a process of significant reuse of the territory, with the restoration of dismantled industrial areas as well as the construction of new buildings that reflect the structure of the old working-living compounds. Many things infuse the place with the Gianfranco Ferré style and above all with the designer’s rich and complex personality.
The interior décor is the work of Architect Franco Raggi, university classmate and close friend of Gianfranco Ferré. He is the same architect who cooperated with Ferré in designing other of the fashion designer’s offices, the headquarters on Via Pontaccio in particular.
One of the Foundation’s main activity is the creation of an archive that houses everything saved and kept during the span of Gianfranco Ferré’s work: photographs, sketches and drawings, film and video footage, press reviews, magazines, press releases, as well as the designer’s own writings lectures and notes. All go into the data base for an easy access both on site and via web.
The database, which is continually being updated, presently contains more than 70,000 items. They are organized on the basis of a well articulated, yet easily usable system, specifically in terms of both subject matter and chronological.
In the Gianfranco Ferré Foundation a multifunctional space hosts lectures, conferences, presentations, workshops, fully reflecting the style that connotes the entire headquarters.
In parallel with the activities related to the virtual database, the Foundation is responsible for the care and management of the vestimentary archive, which includes about 3,000 pieces of clothing and accessories from the Gianfranco Ferré Women’s, Men’s and Alta Moda collections.
Gianfranco Ferré
Gianfranco Ferré (Legnano, 15 August 1944 – Milan, 17 June 2007) was an Italian fashion designer, exponent of Made in Italy and founder of Gianfranco Ferré Spa.
He showed his talent when he was very young, when he won, not yet seventeen years old, the national painting competition organized in 1960 by the “Famiglia Legnanese” cultural association, with an oil painting. After a degree in Architecture at the Polytechnic of Milan in 1969, Ferré entered the fashion industry in the seventies, obtaining feedback as a creator of costume jewelry and accessories. He began working with Walter Albini and Christane Baily ever since.
Followed the trip to India, where he lived and worked for several years, with research, design and production of the “Ketch” collection, the birth of women’s prêt-à-porter and the foundation of the company that bears his name, the launch of men’s clothing and the creation of a range of accessories and products made under license in 1989 for the women’s line of Haute Couture, prêt-à-porter and Fourrure and the creation of the female “FORMA O BY GFF” line.
Gianfranco Ferré believe today’s man and woman. Equal as to sense of freedom, independence of character, autonomy in expressing personal tastes. The so-called solid middle-class values – sense of duty, measure, discretion, discipline – have, I feel, been the best starting point, the best ‘springboard’ I could have hoped for. exclusive creations, conceived in an aura of exceptionality to satisfy demands and needs at the same time special and absolutely real for a surely privileged woman.
From material fashion derives its own substance and even its physical and tangible existence. Technological experimentation offers unheard-of possibilities for the utilization of materials, optimizes their qualities and potentialities, makes possible unprecedented mixes, combinations and treat
The drawing is the first concrete expression of an idea. A first point of arrival in the dimension of reality and a point of departure for a creation. It is a necessity, as well as a passion. It serves to fix impressions and give them a hint of substance”
Dressing a woman or a man thus means reasoning in terms of lines, volumes, proportions. Just like in ‘dressing’ a physical space.
The essential difference lies in the fact that for a fashion designer the primary reference is the human body, i.e. an entity in motion to be considered as such right from the preliminary sketch.
Accessories have always catalyzed people’s emblematic interest in what makes for a special detail and/or particular nuance. In addition to serving as a complement to the outfit, the accessory plays a fundamental role in terms of its expressive value, its function as a distinctive element or identifying feature.
Creating fashion is certainly an operation of the imagination, an expression of sensitivity and intuition, but indispensable to it is the contribution of method, an aptitude for design that is founded on the conception of the garment as the result of a planned and conscious intervention in forms. It was a huge help to discover an entire series of deep affinities between my way of understanding and interpreting elegance. In the perception of the female figure, in the use of the materials, in the formal intervention on the designs.