Totem - Memphis

The Lyon-Milan Axis in the French Design-Identity during the 1980s

Abstract

In September of 1981 the young furniture makers of the Lyon-based group Totem Studio, crossed the Alps for the first time, to go to Milan for the Salone del Mobile, where they encountered Memphis. This meeting is a revelation that definitively ties Totem's story with the culture of Italian design.
This paper follows the relationship between Totem and Memphis during the 1980s, through the concept of cultural transfers coined by Michel Espagne and Michael Werner. The phenomena of hybridization and appropriation are of interest to us in studying how Memphis nourished the Totem Studio and how Totem contributed to post-modern design in France. The case of Totem-Memphis tests the validity of a national paradigm. It demonstrates the role of the Italian model, between fantasy and reality, adhesion and refusal, in the voluntary construction of a French design identity in the 1980s.