Lisbon is preparing itself to become a major design destination. Its Santos Design District is slowly becoming an attractive neighborhood for the design-savvy, the ExperimentaDesign biennial returns later this year, and today it’s opening its Design and Fashion Museum. Referred to as MUDE, the museum is an expanded reincarnation of a design museum that opened in the city in 1999 but that closed in 2006 to make space for the Berardo Museum of modern and contemporary art. It’s reopening in a building formerly used as a bank’s headquarters in the city’s main pedestrian street downtown, and although the entire collection won’t be shown until next year, a major exhibition appropriately titled “Preview” will already be on display on the ground floor from now until October of this year.

This first exhibition presents innovative 20th century design and fashion pieces, with fashion being especially highlighted as it’s the first time that the collection is publicly displayed. It was assembled by Portuguese businessman Francisco Capelo, and wasn’t part of the previous design museum, forcing the addition of fashion to the museum’s name. So you’ll also see works by Droog Design, Russel Wright, Le Corbusier, and Charles & Ray Eames together with those of Vivienne Westwood, Yves Saint Laurent, and John Galliano among the 170 pieces that make up this inaugural exhibition in a space purposely left unrenovated. The interior still has an industrial/building site look, making the design and fashion pieces truly stand out. Later this year the upper floor will show more works, and there will be two other thematic exhibitions (the remaining five floors will be opening throughout 2010). Right now everything is displayed chronologically, showing the evolution of design innovation from the 1930s to the present, with the design and fashion pieces placed together to emphasize the relation between them.
Among the highlights is a strapless Jean-Paul Gaultier dress made of denim and ostrich feathers, and videos showing some of the displayed objects in use such as Hans Wegner’s 1949 classic chair in the Kennedy-Nixon presidential debate.
During this first month admission will be free, and the second exhibition opens already in June, showing political posters from around the world to highlight the importance of their design in building an image for Lenin, Che, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Barack Obama among others.

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