Groves, Andrew 2023. Palliative Prototypes or Therapeutic Functionality? Examining C.P. Company’s Urban Protection Collection. in: Woolley, D., Johnstone, F., Sampson, E. and Chambers, P. (ed.) Wearable Objects and Curative Things: Materialist Approaches to the Intersections of Fashion, Art, Health and Medicine. Palgrave Macmillan.
| Chapter title | Palliative Prototypes or Therapeutic Functionality? Examining C.P. Company’s Urban Protection Collection |
|---|---|
| Authors | Groves, Andrew |
| Editors | Woolley, D., Johnstone, F., Sampson, E. and Chambers, P. |
| Abstract | Towards the end of the 1990s, a reoccurring theme within contemporary fashion was of the body in trauma, decaying, degraded or ill at ease. Simultaneously, as anxiety over the physical and psychological threats of ecological, environmental, and digital catastrophe intensified, a potential panacea was being proposed by the augmentation of technology within hybrid garments to alleviate these harms. The Urban Protection range developed by Moreno Ferrari for the Italian brand C.P. Company between 1997 and 2001 was a pivotal moment within menswear design, proposing a series of garments that performed as synthesises, acting as multifunctional protective barriers between the wearer and a hostile urban environment. Incorporating complex, mostly hidden technology into each garment, the specific restorative or enhanced functionality contained within these clothes acknowledged the complexities of the physical, environmental, and spiritual issues facing mankind at the end of the twentieth century. A jacket detected pollutants in the air and alerted the wearer via an LED screen; a trench coat was enhanced with hidden electronics to release soothing music; a parka featured an integrated anti-smog filtration mask; and another jacket was equipped with a personal safety device that emitted a loud, piercing scream. Yet, while these vestments possessed modern iterations of digital functionality, their accompanying textural descriptions alluded to ancient notions of protection, by referencing the womb, inner silence, the soul, and the creation of a shell for consciousness. This chapter uses object-based analysis to examine Ferrari's augmentation of the body through the creation of a system of technologically complex garments, situating it within the history of fashion's utopian temporalities. It interrogates Ferrari's use of text and its correlation to contemporary art practice, as a strategy for repositioning the augmented body within a metaphysical heterotopia. |
| Keywords | wearable technology |
| utopian fashion | |
| futurist fashion | |
| football casuals | |
| moreno ferrari | |
| menswear | |
| fashion temporality | |
| Book title | Wearable Objects and Curative Things: Materialist Approaches to the Intersections of Fashion, Art, Health and Medicine. |
| Year | 2023 |
| Publisher | Palgrave Macmillan |
| Publication dates | |
| Published | 21 Dec 2023 |
| ISBN | 303140016X |
| 9783031400162 | |
| 9783031400179 | |
| 9783031400193 |