From fashion to light: the timelessness of pleated art
The art of pleating, originally rooted in fashion, has elegantly transitioned to lighting with lampshades in classic styles. Renowned for its elegance and refinement, the sculptural quality of traditional pleating is experiencing a revival with innovative restyling and new materials, presenting a three-dimensional effect in contemporary lighting designs.
The crossover between fashion and lighting design is exemplified by the Fortuny lamp from Pallucco. First created in 1907, this lamp remains a modern and timeless icon.
Mariano Fortuny, a legendary Spanish designer, revolutionized lighting with his pleated lamp inspired by ancient Greek styles. Known for his eclectic taste, he developed the Fortuny floor lamp, which introduced an innovative system of indirect lighting for theatre stages. The lamp's design includes a tripod base with an adjustable central leg and an upturned, pleated fabric shade that directs the light.
Pleating is the defining feature of the Le Klint lamp collection, born by the practical need to diffuse light while keeping the paper away from the incandescent bulb and inspired by Japanese origami. Starting in the early 1900s, the Klint family devoted themselves to perfecting the pleated paper lampshade, creating a legacy of timelessly elegant lighting designs that span generations.
The Nebra collection by New Works strikes the perfect balance between tradition and innovation, blending classic beauty with functionality to adapt to contemporary living. This collection features a series of fabric lamps with a versatile design that subtly alters its shape to create a poetic symphony of lights.
Lukas Bazle's Plié Plissé lamp for Moooi emphasizes the pleated lampshade as both a functional and aesthetic element, allowing users to adjust light intensity and direction. This lamp transitions from providing a soft, diffuse glow to a focused, intense light ideal for reading, drawing inspiration from natural kinetic movements and designed to support various daily activities.
The pleating of the Firmamento Milano's collection showcases a textured surface, where each fold is sculpted to perfection. The Plissé lamp combines painted aluminum and blown glass, drawing inspiration from the grand, pleated skirts of the past, reimagined through modern colors and materials.
Designed by Inga Sempé for Hay, the Matin collection offers a fresh, contemporary take on the classic pleated lampshade.
The traditional lampshade evolves into a triangular form crafted from densely folded fabric. With a wide palette of vibrant colors and a new collaboration with Liberty, this collection brings a poetic and ultra-modern aesthetic to diverse interior spaces and continuously grows with new variants.
In Kartell's designs, the traditional pleated lampshade is reimagined in plastic, crafted masterfully to match the timeless aesthetics of its fabric predecessors. The Angelo Stone collection showcases this effect through a single green polycarbonate mold that uniformly disperses light. This innovation, designed by Philippe Starck, features a unique lighting system where the LED source is positioned on the stem rather than above, illuminating the shade and diffusing light through high-tech lenses.
Ferruccio Laviani's Bourgie lamp blends classical forms with innovative design, translating the Baroque style's ornate features and the pleated look of fabric lampshades into modern plastic material. This design not only captures the essence of tradition but also creates a dazzling interplay of countless reflections.
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