"In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love; they had five hundred years of democracy and peace and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock." – Orson Welles

 

When driving from Milan towards the lakes, one can see the Alps from afar. Whether or not this is the reason why the capital of Lombardia has become one of the world's most respected design capital, one cannot say with certainty. Although its strategic location between the mountains and the sea is by all means enviable, it also relies on its heritage as the centre of a region with a strong industrial base and significant craftsmanship abilities, both of which led to an accumulation of capital relatively unrivalled in the rest of the country.

 

Milan's contemporary reputation as a bastion of conservatism – prime minister Berlusconi's recent results at the Milanese polls show a strong popular preference for centre-right to far-right policies – can also be seen by some as a sign that the region is a safe haven for long-term investment, where individual effort – and connections – are duly retributed. In the global competition for media attention, the branding of Milan has surpassed that of most other Italian cities, second perhaps only to Rome (who happens to be the national political centre and host to a number of international organizations – as well as the former "centre of the world" under Catholic rule).

 

Nonetheless, Milan remains the Italian reference in terms of fashion and furniture design. Celebrated names such as Prada and Artemide have developed on the city's dense creative tissue to become world-renowned brands of fame and luxury. Although the city's urbanism is indeed quite chaotic and its sidewalks somewhat filthy by European standards, it is precisely this clash between a highly conservative establishment made of secular, quasi-aristocratic families who strive on tradition and capital, and the effervescence of a generation of beautiful, educated but poorly paid "street" creators (from designers to craftspeople) that produces the effervescence of the city. A combination of hard cash and industrious craftsmanship has created the conditions for the emergence of respectable global brands that continue to push the boundaries of aesthetics and functionality.

 

First, thanks to its laborious industrial past, Northern Italy has been able to put accumulated capital to good use by funding both investments in creation and consumption of luxury goods, turning it into a design powerhouse to the world. In doing so [or rather, to do so], it has drawn the creators and the buyers from a vast basin of smaller, less-creative cities (some of them city-museums, such as Firenze (Florence)) in order to become the largest Italian metropolitan area. This dual input of investment and purchasing power has fed the beasts of incessant renewal necessary for fashion to strive : fed sufficiently to provide the city with a strong brand-name and consequently draw the worlds' most envious aspiring designers, models and purchasers to elect Milan as their Mecca.

 

It is also thanks to its [decentralized] industrial past that Northern Italy has maintained its ability to provide the world with incessant novelty. Indeed, whereas most industrialized, design-oriented countries have adopted social hierarchies of production that rationalize the creation of novelty through elaborated systems of social interaction (through schools and guild-like associations), Italy benefits from an heterarchic system of local prototyping and innovation it has inherited from its late development as an industrial nation. Its countryside and sub-urban regions are populated by highly-skilled producers of textiles and innovative metals, producers who compete in an ecology of creation that can hardly be reproduced in the formal, policy-driven clusters of today. One may fear that the gradual urbanization of Italy's youth will affect its creative model significantly, and that the centralization and formalization of its design industry through the growth of its flagship corporations might only bring about more-of-the-same marginal adaptation, rather than the constant innovation we have witnessed during the last century.

 

The contradiction between the high-level snobbism of houses such as Armani and Zegna – where splendid twenty year-olds saleswomen stare at you sideways with their endless eyelashes and twelve centimetre heels – and a laborious industry of delocalized craftspeople living a "simple life", is what makes the specificity of Italy's Northern capital region. Like two solitudes, reconciled only through their shared passion for colour, material and shape, these local factors have contributed to Milan's international success, drawing herds of visitors and expats who brought with them the generic products of internationalism: Starbuckses, illegal immigrants and plastic toys. Whether cities that are slowly turned into giant supermarkets are able to maintain their aura of creativity remains to be seen. Our guess is that, as long as it can keep alive its inherent contradictions, it will remain a city of creation, somewhere between the mountain, and the sea.

 

This article was written with the help of Brooke Rutherford.

 

Thanks to David Rinaldi and Lorenzo Sterzi for their comments and advice.