The Fashion Quadrilateral in Milan and the places of Design

Milan’s marriage of fashion and design

In the Lombard capital, Fashion meets Design, a union visible in the path of our guided tour that winds its way from the streets of Milan’s Fashion Quadrilateral to Castello Sforzesco and beyond, in the green spaces of the Palazzo dell’Arte, designed by architect Giovanni Muzio . Here, in the historic headquarters of the Triennale, is now home to the new Museum of Design, which offers visitors an extraordinary collection in terms of variety of objects and languages: design, architecture, visual, scenic and performing arts. A short distance away, in Piazza Castello, is also the splendid Studio Museo Achille Castiglioni, the first studio of a designer, in Italy, open to the public. A place where-through drawings, photographs and other materials-you can breathe in the fervid creativity of one of the most famous exponents of Italian Design, Achille Castiglioni, who saw in the city of Milan the highest expression of design and production. Around the places of Italian Design, space will finally be given to a network of showrooms, artists’ studios and centers of cultural production that, branched throughout the city, reflect the new frontiers of graphic arts and communication, according to homogeneous and coordinated guidelines.

A tour through the streets of the fashion quadrilateral

But the starting point of our guided tour will first of all be the elegant shop windows of the famous Quadrilatero della moda, the district of Milan that runs between via Monte Napoleone, corso Venezia, via della Spiga and via Manzoni. There are many places that tell the story of Milanese fashion and its constant evolution in the direction of other languages: the Spazio Armani on Via Manzoni, a worldwide luxury icon; Fondazione Trussardi, which has grown as a contemporary art institution; and La Rinascente, a symbol of the taste of a city up to date with the trends of European metropolises. Perhaps not everyone will know that it was the inspiration of Gabriele D’Annunzio, an undisputed icon of early 20th-century aestheticism, who coined the name Rinascente for the first Italian department store, which opened to the public in the city of Milan itself. Strolling among boutiques and ateliers, we will discover thanks to our guides how the department stores became part of the city’s milaese fabric, soon becoming a new space of sociability and a mirror of the customs and times that were changing with new speed: thus we will tell of the advent of shop windows, which changed the way goods were displayed, or of the skilful interweaving of Art Nouveau and Rationalism, architectural figures that gave the Rinascente and so many corners of downtown Milan the appearance that still fascinates us today.