What is Memphis Design Style and Why It Is Back

What is Memphis Design Style? The Memphis Design Style, created by the Memphis Group, is one of the most instantly recognizable design styles. It blends Art Deco with pop art.

The Memphis Design Style, created by the Memphis Group, is one of the most instantly recognizable design styles. It blends Art Deco with pop art. Whether you love it or hate it, the Memphis Design movement initiated by the Memphis Milano group is still relevant in today’s design scene. It is making a comeback among influencers and tastemakers.

In the 1980s, a team of Italian architects and designers led by Ettore Sottsass, known as Memphis Milano, developed the retro design aesthetic known as Memphis Design. Because of their mutual dislike of the minimalist design style of the 1960s and 1970s modernism, the group of creatives set out to make postmodern furniture, fabric, patterns,  ceramics, and other decorative objects inspired by art deco and pop art, bonding streamlined geometry and electric colors.

What is Memphis Design Style?

After some introduction, the question still remains: What is the Memphis Design Style? The Memphis Design Style is a design movement born in the living room of architect and designer Ettore Sottsass on December 11, 1980. Sottsass invited a group of 22 Italian architects and designers to discuss the future of design. In common, they disliked modernism’s simplicity, its use of modest lines, bland shapes, and neutral colors.

After the initial meeting, the Memphis Group gathered again three months later, in 1981, to share hundreds of furniture, patterns, textiles, and objects clashed with modernism’s balanced proportions. Therefore, the Memphis Design movement outlined the postmodernist aesthetic.

Memphis Design Style Characteristics

The Memphis Design style is a retro aesthetic that opposes brutalism and post-war architecture, interiors, and product design. In this manner, the Memphis Design style lends the streamlined geometry of Art Deco design and the electric colors of day-to-day objects. Memphis Milano is often described as kitschy and tacky because bright colors, geometric shapes, strong patterns, stripes, clashing hues, abstract designs, and plastic laminate characterize it.

The initial critical reaction to the Memphis Group’s designs was not the best. The group’s use of conventionally ‘bad-taste’ plastic laminate and clashing colors challenged the widely accepted design standards of the time. However, we can now look back on the designs created by the Memphis Group and recognize that they were ground-breaking. They marked a complete separation from the dark, overly tasteful, and serious design styles of the 1970s.

Ettore Sottsass left the Memphis Milano group in 1985. The collective of post-modernist architects and designers disbanded in 1987 because it became challenging to parallel their designs’ initial commercial success. Fast-forward, the Memphis Design style is back.

Over the decades, Memphis Milano’s bold aesthetic has gained numerous influential supporters, including figures from the fashion world. Karl Lagerfeld was so captivated by the style that he filled his summer residence in Monte Carlo with Memphis furniture. Singer David Bowie was also a dedicated collector of Memphis pieces. After passing in 2016, his Memphis furniture and decor collection fetched over £1 million at a Sotheby’s auction.

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Why Is Memphis Design Style Back?

Memphis design began to reemerge in 2005 in Los Angeles. A year before Ettore Sottsass’s death, LACMA (Los Angeles County Museum of Art) exhibited a survey of Sottsass’s designs. Right after this, interest in Memphis Design style began to grow. It influenced high fashion houses like Missoni, Karl Lagerfeld, and Christian Dior, and the latter’s 2011 collection helped kick-start the movement.

Fast-forward to 2014, and Nathalie Du Pasquier, a founding Memphis Milano group member, designed a pattern collection for the fast-fashion giant American Apparel. Following these steps, in 2016, the brand Supreme released a series of skate decks and clothing designed by Alessandro Mendini, who participated in the first Memphis Design exhibit ever. A year later, the big box retailer West Elm joined the Memphis Design movement with a Du Pasquier-inspired collection designed by Brooklyn-based artist Dusen Dusen.

At the 2022 Triennale Milano, the Memphis Milano Collective showcased more than 200 objects and pieces of furniture designed and produced from 1981 to 1986 in a Memphis Again exhibition. Christoph Radl curated the exhibition, highlighting that the Memphis Design style remains an iconic concept today. 

Furthermore, the Memphis Design style became a predominant aesthetic in furniture and product design, graphic design, and interior design. Patricia Urquiola, Charles Zana, and Bells + Whistles are top architects and interior designers who design Memphis Design interiors. Almost 40 years since its influential debut, this design movement is back in vogue with its “Less is Bore” vibes.

At its core, Memphis design style is about breaking rules. It mixes high and low culture, chaos and order, seriousness and absurdity. Even today, decades later, its influence can still be felt in fashion, interior design, graphic design, and pop culture.

Now that you know what is Memphis Design Style and why it is back, embrace the trend. Discover 5 Memphis Milano projects to inspire your journey through the style.