5 Times Fashion Designers Have Designed Uniforms From museums to their own high schools
We usually think about uniforms only when certain clothes remind us of them. And fashion has never made a secret of being fascinated by these particular types of garments that are both functional and elegant and that, with their (forgive the verbal mess) uniformity, are able to suggest a radically opposite approach to modern dressing, namely that of personal style as the expression of a unique identity. Even though the charm of uniforms and dress codes ultimately still concerns identity, since it may suppress that of the individual but enhances that of a group. In this sense, the uniform is also about belonging.
It’s a pity, however, that today, especially in fashion, the concept of uniform has been greatly diluted: boutiques allow employees to put together a uniform more or less using the same products that are on sale, while online and in various stores uniforms for fashion brand employees are bought and sold as basic clothes but not those entirely unique capsules like those that, in the ’60s and ’70s, fashion brands designed for flight attendants.
But examples of modern uniforms created by brands and designers have certainly not been lacking. Here are the most famous ones.
1. Gucci – Staff of the Castello di Rivoli Museum of Contemporary Art in Turin (2021)
For the exhibition A.B.O. Theatron. Art or Life, dedicated to Achille Bonito Oliva, a friend of Alessandro Michele, the designer, who at the time was at Gucci, created a set of uniforms for the exhibition staff (they would not become, as some believed, permanent uniforms) that attracted some unwanted attention.
With a vintage cut and a sea-green color identical to that of surgical scrubs, the uniforms were associated with those of prison guards or psychiatric hospital nurses. The embroidered phrase Jardiniers du Théatre, very Alessandro Michele-coded, did not help, adding an extra layer of intellectual pretension to the whole effort. Today we look at those uniforms differently: as an occasion when fashion created something for the love of play and not for crude profit. The initiative also cast a huge spotlight on an event that would otherwise have remained quite niche.
2. Loewe – Restoration team of the Prado Museum in Madrid (2026)
Perhaps the best and most recent example on the list, Loewe presented just a few weeks ago technical lab coats for the restorers of the Prado in Madrid. And they are objectively magnificent designs: handmade, cut in a dark fabric to prevent unwanted reflections during delicate work, and above all featuring a double chest pocket lined with two different types of leather in different tones bearing the dual branding of Loewe and the museum.
The uniforms are the next step (and certainly not the last) in a collaboration the brand began in 2023 with the Prado through the Writing the Prado initiative. The best news is that Loewe will continue to supply a new set of lab coats to the restoration team every year. Which means that in about a year we can start looking for them on Vinted just like people do today with old Chanel boutique uniforms.
3. Christian Dior – Staff of the Gallerie dell’Accademia in Venice (2022)
Those by Christian Dior for the Gallerie dell’Accademia were an unjustly forgotten collaboration, notable for being the fourth collaboration between fashion and museums for custom uniforms but the first to be truly appreciated: the first, the one between Christopher Raeburn and the V&A Museum in London, was unfairly hated in 2017; while that of Vivienne Westwood for the Leonardo Da Vinci Museum in Milan was rightly criticized, as it was indeed terrible; and the third was Gucci’s for the Bonito Oliva exhibition, also not very well received as mentioned above.
But for the Venetian galleries, Dior created a series of tailored suits in lightweight blue wool with white shirts and a caban with ties for men and scarves for women. The collaboration was interesting not so much for its originality (it is a blue suit, after all) but because it arrived at the end of the lockdown and, for the museum, represented “a new sign of the reopening of the Gallerie,” but, on a broader level, it can be read as evidence of the systematic openness that fashion would develop toward culture in order to cultivate synergies beneficial to its image.
4. Anrealage – Staff of the Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation Pavilion (Osaka, 2025)
Uniforms with jacket and trousers are easy, but try making a set with an integrated ventilation system. That’s what Anrealage produced for last year’s Osaka Expo, for the staff of the Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation pavilion. Founder Kunihiko Morinaga, whose shows in Paris are always among the most anticipated, created five pieces united by an “optical” pattern of dots in different shades of blue applied mainly on the tops. The dots represented “connect-the-dots” used to expand human potential.
They were all excellent pieces (perhaps less so the polos, but certainly the trousers and accessories), but the design that earned headlines and that in a few years will become an interesting niche grail to hunt down is the windbreaker jacket with a circular silhouette equipped, at the hips, with two electric fans that cool the interior and inflate the jacket, creating an absolutely avant-garde volume. Simply incredible.
5. Off-White & Nike - Boylan Catholic High School Football Kits (2018)
Let’s go back in time to 2018, practically a lifetime ago. Virgil Abloh, who at the time was at the peak of his professional glory, decided to provide full kits to the senior football team of his old high school, Boylan Catholic High School, which were taken from the Off-White and Nike collaboration that had not yet been released.
The gesture was very beautiful and very much in line with Virgil Abloh, a designer who had made the idea of community, paying tribute to his roots, as well as innovation and sportiness, key elements of his style. It was also a pleasant break from the usual dynamics of fashion, as the collaboration was highly anticipated and the first to receive and see it were high school students rather than top football celebrities (who received it shortly after anyway), reminding us that fashion can have an impact when it steps outside its own bubble.
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