Is your clothing in need of some respect? Then it deserves a proper wardrobe
Taken from the Wallpaper* September Style Issue, Hugo Macdonald opines on the beauty of a standalone wardrobe
Our medieval ancestors understood the value of clothes better than we do today. They dedicated a room and a person to treasure and guard their garments, hence we get the French word ‘garderobe’, from which the English ‘wardrobe’ is derived. In the late Middle Ages, as more people acquired more clothes, not everyone needed or could spare an entire walk-in wardrobe; so the room became a piece of furniture and the guard became a lock and key.
Wardrobe: there is an undeniable elegance to the word and object. It sounds – and is – so much more dignified than a fitted closet. The latter brings to mind tricky door tracks and a broken light fixture that’s impossible to replace. The modernist doctrinaire taught us it was swish to save on space by integrating wardrobes into the built fabric of our rooms. Perhaps this holds still in new-build hotels and housing developments, where convenience is prized more than soul. The Lion, the Witch and the Closet just doesn’t have the same ring to it.
‘Wardrobe: there is an undeniable elegance to the word and object. It sounds – and is – so much more dignified than a fitted closet’
Hugo Macdonald
CS Lewis harnessed rather than invented the otherworldly vestiges of the wardrobe, which has always had a sense of magic about it. After all, it’s a portal for transformation. If the mirror tells you who you are, the wardrobe asks you who you want to be, and lets you choose again and again. Like the belt, the wardrobe is also one of life’s gentle reminders not to be greedy. Its structure sets the parameters, dictating when enough is enough and it’s time to shed or vacuum pack a season deeper into storage. The wardrobe’s brazen Gen Z descendant – the rail – will lay your fashion bare for all to see, and implode when it gets too much.
It’s hard to convey just how revolutionary Belgian designer Maarten De Ceulaer’s 2008 graduation project at Design Academy Eindhoven was. His ‘Pile of Suitcases’, stacked to become a wardrobe, offered near-infinite configurative possibilities. It was instantly snapped up by Nina Yashar of Nilufar, but its legacy was to cast a spell over all who saw it. Never again would we disrespect our clothes by stuffing them into a flimsy MDF closet system. All robes deserve proper warding.
A version of this article appears in the September 2026 Style Issue of Wallpaper*, available now in print on newsstands, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today.
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Hugo is a design critic, curator and the co-founder of Bard, a gallery in Edinburgh dedicated to Scottish design and craft. A long-serving member of the Wallpaper* family, he has also been the design editor at Monocle and the brand director at Studioilse, Ilse Crawford's multi-faceted design studio. Today, Hugo wields his pen and opinions for a broad swathe of publications and panels. He has twice curated both the Object section of MIART (the Milan Contemporary Art Fair) and the Harewood House Biennial. He consults as a strategist and writer for clients ranging from Airbnb to Vitra, Ikea to Instagram, Erdem to The Goldsmith's Company. Hugo recently returned to the Wallpaper* fold to cover the parental leave of Rosa Bertoli as global design director, and is now serving as its design critic.