On June 1st, we participated in a guided tour at the Vespa museum, where we heard about the development of the Vespa and why it went through all of the changes over the years. The first prototype was developed in 1941 and looked very much like a small motorcycle of that time period.Then, Piaggio, the owner of the company, asked lead engineer, Corradino D’Ascanio, to redesign it. He made the seat more chair-like for comfort, moved the engine to the back and attached the front wheel indirectly (like a plane’s landing gear) for easy maintenance. When Piaggio saw it, he exclaimed, “It looks like a wasp” because of the skinny middle and big butt. Hence, the name Vespa was born (Vespa means wasp in Italian).
What I want to talk about though is colour. Vespa essentially created the colour seafoam, which a very popular colour in 2011. In the 50s, Vespa decided that they wanted to make the most affordable Vespa possible so that everyone had the chance to own one. They did a number of things to cut costs and thus lower the price. One cost saving change was the paint. Instead of using new paint, they mixed the old paints they had lying around, like blue, white and army fatigue green. Thus, seafoam green was born. It become a very popular colour and is still very popular and iconic today.
How does this affect contemporary, "Made in Italy" design? Seafoam green is back! It’s used on modern cars, in fashion, on personal electronics, jewellery and so on. And it has spread to North America. It’s a great example of how fashion trends really do repeat themselves.
Another example of how Italian design involves fashion and colour trend comes from the porcelain manufacture Richard Ginori, who we also visited on June 1st. There we heard from Stephano Rocha (Marketing and Product Development Director) about this year’s up and coming shape, colour and pattern trends. He told us that, after extensive research, they have concluded that coral, or an orange red, is the colour of 2012. This makes perfect sense to me since I’m starting to see said colour pop up everywhere in fashion. It’s used in clothing, jewellery and cakes and will certainly spread into the product sector soon enough.
By Anne Charbonneau, Amanda Cox and Laura Van Staveren
Keywords: Design History, Innovation, Business Strategy, Style, Society
Heyo! Super detailed! Awesome report! :) If anyone would like more information on Vespa. The museum website has photographs with descriptions of almost every Vespa in the collection.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.museopiaggio.it/en/museum.html