A shawl that converts into a curtain — so that we can cloak ourselves with our home comforts only to become a greenhouse or even a portable privy where we can pause from the world for a moment; a jacket that inflates into a chair; a raincoat that morphs into a kite so we can all be children once more. Fantasy? Science-fiction? No, just some of Moreno Ferrari's latest creations. 50-year-old Ferrari is a fashion and interior designer from La Spezia in Liguria who spent his youth amidst swatches of fabric and material, followed by a professional career marked by his studies in philosophy as well as his love of cinema and literature. Carlo Rivetti of the textile group GFT and C.P. Company, saw the designer's work and recognised his potential, allowing him to experiment and create some of his trademark pieces.
Ferrari deconstructs his clothes and redesigns them as versatile and transformable objects. He reinvents our concepts of home and housing in the light of a society which increasingly demands flexibility and change and privileges those who can mould and adapt themselves to continual evolutions. His clothes are like a shell, a light, manageable and flexible structure which is an integral part of the person wearing it - a protection - like the armadillo's carapace - that insulates the wearer against all instability, fear or turmoil.
In his search for a permanent centre of gravity Ferrari discovers that the centre of things lies in its very absence and the resulting attempts to locate and relocate objects, places and meanings in the quest for even partial answers. This is one of the reasons why the designer speaks of his creations as "fragile, light and supple architecture (…) which correspond to a metaphysically precarious condition."

Urban uniforms
For the Ligurian designer reality is variform and can be morphed and changed at will. Let's take a practical example. Ferrari used the uniforms of the recent G8 at Genoa - the white overalls, black hoods, rainbow banners, bikers helmets, ski masks and police uniforms - and made them his own. Ferrari was stimulated by the contrast between the energy and flexibility of the anti-globalisation movement and the necessary rigidity of the uniforms. Another example of his work is his research into environment-friendly clothing solutions based on a close observation of our environment and its needs. He has come up with new ways of recycling and working with plastic to create "spatial extensions of our bodies and all subjective space". Ferrari has borrowed the survival strategies used by the modern inhabitants of our cities' substructures - the refugees, travellers and homeless - to create jackets with built-in notebooks and clothes that become mobile homes.

What can we expect next?
A suitcase-cum- wardrobe in which we can our possessions eternally to hand. Ferrari struck on the idea in Romagna where he came across some old cases belonging to long-gone actors. Then browsing through wildlife books he happened on our friend the armadillo, with that flexible body inside its hard protective casing, which is adaptable enough to allow it to roll into a ball - "the most mobile and fun shape on earth".