Post by Sabine Skayem

From Communist Party Lines to Runway Designs By Sabine Skayem In 2014, newly graduated, I found myself standing before a structure imagined by Oscar Niemeyer-drawn to spaces that carried something beyond their form. A building where politics once shaped space as much as concrete did. The headquarters of the French Communist Party rises in quiet contradiction: a sensual white curve emerging from a rigid glass grid. Soft and strict. Idealistic and controlled. That evening, seated among the audience, I watched the space transform as it hosted a runway show by Jean Paul Gaultier (Autumn/Winter 2014). A futuristic, almost cinematic setting: metallic tones, sharp silhouettes, a fusion of punk and space-age aesthetics. Bodies moved where ideology once resonated. And yet, nothing felt entirely disconnected. Because design is never neutral. We like to believe design is pure expression. But every line we draw belongs to a language shaped before us. Political, economic, and cultural systems quietly define what we call “good,” “modern,” or “desirable.” Movements like Bauhaus weren’t just aesthetic; they proposed ways of living. Even minimalism carries values: control, reduction, discipline. Over tie, what was once ideological becomes aesthetic. A fashion show inside a political landmark is not a contradiction—it’s absorption. Design doesn’t resist systems as much as it translates them. This is especially true in furniture and product design. A chair is never just a chair. It defines posture, hierarchy, interaction. Modularity suggests freedom, yet often reflects efficiency. Standardization offers access, yet implies uniformity. Objects silently carry the systems that shaped them. Standing there, between Niemeyer’s curves and the rhythm of the façade, I realized: We don’t design outside of systems. We design through them. And even when we think we’re breaking away, we’re often just translating. Maybe design doesn’t escape politics. Maybe it simply learns how to dress it. Today, echoes of these structured, utilitarian languages reappear on the runway. Designers like KARL LAGERFELD, STARCK, and JONATHAN ANDERSON reinterpret aesthetics of uniformity and austerity; detached from their origins, yet still carrying their weight. On the surface, it reads as reference; sometimes nostalgia, sometimes irony. But something more subtle is at play. Because fashion much like furniture , does not simply dress bodies or occupy space; it constructs identity within a system. When these visual codes resurface on the runway, they no longer belong to ideology, yet they are not entirely free from it either. Not quite critique. Not quite homage. But a translation. A lamguage once tied to structure and control, reinterpreted within a culture of choice, image, and consumption. Has design escaped the systems that shaped it; or is it still their most elegant disguise? #design #furniture #fashion #brands #edits