Memphis Design Is Coming For Your Watches

December 07, 2021

In the design world, trends never really die. They come and go, swept up in the wave of taste and cultural relevance before burning out for a period only to resurface, years later, slightly revised but mostly the same. Over the past decade, few trends have held on as tightly as Memphis, a school of design known for its bright colors, confetti-esque graphic patterns, elementary shapes, and an almost exaggerated two-dimensionality. The style has cycled in and out of popularity across fashion, interiors, and home goods since an eccentric group of designers from Milan, Italy, first introduced the world to Memphis design in the early 1980s. Ettore Sottsass Founded by the designer Ettore Sottsass in 1981, the Memphis aesthetic is known for its ostentatiousness. Its that quintessential 80s look C zany patterns, wonky proportions, cheap-feeling materials C that you may love-hate. But behind its over-the-top appearances was revolutionary design thinking from Sottsass, who for example, devised his famed Bacterio pattern for laminate maker Abet Laminati by studying the forms of Buddhist temples and then abstracting their lines into the movements signature static-like pattern. Put another way, Memphis might look gauche, but its not gauche for gauches sake. During the past decade, in particular, the style has reached a fever pitch of saturation. In an almost satirical manifestation of the consumer hype cycle, Nathalie Du Pasquier, a founding member of the Memphis Group, collaborated on a line of clothing with American Apparel in 2014. In 2017, after David Bowies death, his estate auctioned off his vast collection of Memphis designs, bringing a whole new level of attention. At the same time, Memphis style has seeped into nearly every corner of the home goods market: There have been Memphis-inspired towels, pillows, bookends, lamps, and mirrors. The styles ubiquity has led to plenty of heralding and, inevitably, lots of backlash. Throughout Memphis resurgence, it has been wished dead and declared resurrected. And right now? Memphis is having its horological moment. By all accounts, 2021 was the year of the Memphis watch. Brands including Tissot, Zodiac, and Shinola have translated the Memphis Groups elementary aesthetic to the restrained canvas of a watch. Tissot, for example, reissued a 1988 watch designed by Memphis founder, Ettore Sottsass. Meanwhile, timepieces like Zodiacs Super Seawolf and Shinolas Detrola Silly Putty harnessed the general sense of nostalgia attached to the 1980s design movement with contrasting saturated color palettes and geometric details. So what is it about the Memphis Groups style that is so intriguing to the watch world right now? You could blame it on a convenient news peg (Memphis turned 40 this year). But I like to think it goes deeper than that. The Memphis aesthetic, with its unapologetic playfulness, is a way for the buttoned-up watch world to let its hair down within the constraints of a pre-approved, historical design aesthetic. Its an opportunity for watchmakers to show they can be fun, while still having taste. Its all about the freedom to experiment, says Ryan White, creative director of Zodiac. This past spring the brand launched a new style of its Super Seawolf in a collaboration with Worn & Wound. The watch features a textured, gridded dial, speckled bezel, and a palette of brash, contrasting colors. Its the horological equivalent of a Trapper Keeper. White says the Memphis reference wasnt intentional C the original inspiration for the watch was outdoor gear and sneakers C but he admits that theres an undeniable connection to the 1980s design movement that can be seen most clearly in the watchs unconventional colorway. We were like, lets make it as ugly as possible because thats going to be cooler than anything else. That particular attitude C ugly as cool, or at least ugly as interesting C was foundational to Memphis perspective. The movement was born out of a desire to push against what came before it. In this case, Modernism and its stark rationality, efficiency, and apparent permanence as standard bearer of good design. Throughout the 1960s and 70s, Sottsass had been part of the Anti-design movement, in which Italian designers embraced bold colors, unconventional materials and disproportionate shapes. Sottsass early designs were a precursor to the work that would come out of the Memphis Group after its founding in 1981. Like other examples of Postmodern design (the movement during which architects like Michael Graves, Robert Venturi, and Denise Scott Brown shaped the built environment), Memphis toed the line between charmingly obnoxious and smartly contrarian. It obliterated expectations of what constituted good design and questioned what it meant for design to be lasting. In a quote from 1966, more than a decade before he founded the Memphis Group, Sottsass posed a provocation that could today be seen as shortsighted. I dont understand why enduring design is better than disappearing design, he said. Of course, Sottsass couldnt have known that in creating a design language built around fleeting expressivity and contrarian views, he was establishing a lingering aesthetic that would come to be embraced by some of the biggest design conglomerates on the planet. Robert Venturi Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego That is often the way design works, says Brandon Little, vice president of design at Shinola, which has also gotten into the game. The way that things influence creatives is either they mirror what is happening around them or contrast what is happening around them right now, he says. In the case of Memphis, the watch world was long overdue for an injection of fun. Expression, Little explains, often came in the form of handcraft C ornate dials emblazoned with custom artwork and special materiality. Its taken the watch market a long time, especially the luxury watch market, to catch up to the idea of having fun, he says. You could argue that the luxury market has yet to fully embrace fun in the same way that fashion-focused brands like Tissot, Zodiac, and Shinola can. The Pateks and Rolexes of the world havent come out with a full-on Memphis-style watch (though yesterday's 5711 is in the neighborhood), and perhaps they never will. The luxury market isnt opposed to aesthetic hyper-specificity, of course (see any novelty watch ever created); its just that Memphis, in particular, might lean too pop-culture to be luxury-approved. This attitude conveniently aligns with the Memphis Groups original ethos. Though celebrities have embraced the groups aesthetics, Memphis wasnt conceived of as haute design; in fact, it actively railed against the notion of exclusivity and hierarchy. Earlier this year, Shinola released a special edition of its Detrola watch for Silly Puttys 71st birthday. The watch features the lines signature rounded case and thin lugs, but its colorway cherry red, sherbert orange, and aquamarine is rooted in the zany styling of the 80s. Little says that its unsurprising that the watch world, including Shinola, would gravitate towards the Memphis style. Watches have a big industrial-design component, he says. The things that watchmakers are typically draw to play in that world. Sottsass himself dabbled in watchmaking during and after Memphis heyday. In 1988, he designed the recently released watch for Tissot, whose dial showcases a graphical black-and-white layout. And in the early 1990s, he partnered with Seiko on a series of glass-cased watches that achieved a 3D effect by laminating three glass panels together. The watches were so unconventional they could only be manufactured in small batches. In the book, A Journey in Time, The Remarkable Story of Seiko, writer John Goodall recounted the stress Sottsass vision caused for Seikos craftspeople: The Seiko technicians who had the task of translating his ideas into practical products that they could manufacture buried their heads in their hands. They asked, How can we make something out of this? If he had given us the design in the form of plans, like Giugiaro, we could have developed a way of interpreting them, but this ! According to Mr. Hirabayashi, Seikos solution to the problem was to laminate together three layers of glass to achieve a sense of transparency, while preserving the most attractive features of the design. As full-scale production was beginning there were real problems in positioning the various layers of glass. Some people were saying, Can this really be offered as a product? Although the production problems associated with the Sottsass watch drove Seikos production team to their wits end, the product was quite well-received. The lesson learned from Sotsass collaboration with Seiko probably explains why the Memphis aesthetic still feels relevant today. Theres something thrilling about creating a piece that shouldnt exist. One that pushes at the edges of what is considered good taste and feasible industrial design. Memphis moment in the watch world will surely fade in time, as all stylistic preferences do. But heres hoping that the spirit behind it will manifest in other forms, over and over again, for many trend cycles to come. Liz Stinson is the executive editor of Eye on Design, published by AIGA. Her writing on design has also appeared in Wired, Curbed, Gizmodo, Architectural Digest, and The Wall Street Journal Magazine. To read her complete HODINKEE archive, click here. Shop this story The HODINKEE shop is an authorized dealer of Seiko, Tissot, and Zodiac watches.