I have always felt dissatisfied with the state of Iran’s fashion scene. I struggle to find my place within it because there is no established framework that allows designers to begin their work. This scene seems to be merely a copy of a copy of something else. Therefore, I am contemplating how design and fashion can be reimagined within this context. In this article, I will focus specifically on the issue of design and the current state of the fashion industry.
In the fashion industry, designers are continually looking for the ‘next’, and this article attempts to illuminate how that ‘next’ might be realized, demonstrating that there is no right or wrong method of working. It seeks to understand the creative design process – how research plays a role in forming the individual design identity and offering a useful window into a fashion designer’s creative thinking.
Within the global fashion education system, design research is a necessary tool. With an investment in ideas at its core, it enables students to build on their knowledge and practice. The actual doing of craft or thinking through of ideas are all valuable and form a personal system of designing within the parameters of modern fashion practice.
Not everyone begins with a sketch; indeed, some don’t sketch at all. Donna Karan, Zandra Rhodes and Isabel Toledo are three examples who prefer to begin with draping, textile or flat pattern methods, proving that no entry point is exactly the same for every designer. When it comes to design, every designer yields different outcomes based on personal philosophy and instinct.
Fashion thinking involves harnessing the vast array of skills at the designer’s disposal, while embracing the chaos of the process itself. This might include upending traditional approaches to unearth new ways of creating and making clothes. There is no ‘right’ way to approach design; there are no ‘wrong’ turns. Everything matters. Perhaps it is best to suggest that design happens in any order that works for you. You alone can dictate how you begin, how you continue and how you resolve that process through to its final conclusion.
It is exactly this diversity of approach to fashion design that this book seeks to capture. By doing so it will highlight a variety of distinctive methods of working versus heralding one traditional approach of ‘sketch-design-cut-sew-make’ as being the only road map for a designer’s journey.
Throughout history across many spheres of influence, iconic change-makers arise to challenge the way things have been done historically or traditionally within their fields. Innovators aren’t swayed by the tide of popular opinion. They don’t follow; they lead. They enter new territory without fear because they have a vision of something yet to be seen by others – simultaneously reflecting and challenging the culture in order to move it forward. This is as true of fashion designers as any other change-maker – they tap into the zeitgeist and influence dress practices and subconscious choices in ways we aren’t even aware of.
Looking back through fashion history, iconic designers challenged the status quo, shaped culture and impacted society. Each decade saw distinct shifts and key influencers responsible for them. Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren with their combined love of fashion and music, were credited with launching the anti-establishment punk movement of the 1970s, and Westwood remains a vocal activist today, leveraging fashion as a platform to speak about climate change amongst other issues.
Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garçons, Martin Margiela, Hussein Chalayan upended traditional techniques within their creative processes, whether exploring deconstructivism, interrogating the boundaries between the body as object in space or embracing technology. These designers radically redefined the genre. In 2013, Kerby Jean-Raymond, in the launch of his label Pyer Moss, spearheaded a movement that incorporated activism into fashion, using his brand as a powerful platform to force us to address compelling societal issues Raymond challenged the narrative around what is considered to be American.
At its inception, fashion education served the needs of the industry for which it was created, but the mandate now is to deliver real change to an industry that by its own admission is broken and needs new strategies. Fashion must reinvent itself beyond its own stereotype. To accomplish this, we need to foster a generation of designers who think differently about the world they inhabit and employ universal design principles such as human-centred and co-design approaches within their methodology and practice.
They need to develop interdisciplinary mindsets to see new possibilities that leverage technology and social media in collaboration with sectors such as healthcare, social justice, government and politics in order to bring new design strategies that will deliver real systemic impact at the human level, as well as the financial bottom line.
The central question to be considered today is ‘What does it mean to be a fashion designer?’ Let’s be clear – we do not need more clothes. We have long since reached an oversaturation point as consumers. So what are we doing training more? The fashion industry is at a critical juncture, with increasing pressure on graduates to offer solutions and imagine a more sustainable, inclusive future. Talent is not enough. Students need to think critically and interrogate the issues facing society in order to envision a future that does not exist currently.
Systems exist everywhere, but some are more apparent than others. The keys on a piano, for example, provide necessary structure, and the limitation elicits a sense of freedom, allowing the musician to create music within these boundaries. Our own central nervous system allows us the luxury to think, act and live freely. Creativity, it could then be argued, can best function or be set free within a system.
New fashion systems arise out of individually developed approaches to the design process itself. New ways of thinking about fashion evolve by upending traditional methodologies inherent in the system itself. Designers approach their process differently based on their personal design philosophy that may be based on a sustainable practice employing a life-cycle approach to design, or the approach may be in response to a particular set of issues they find compelling or the needs of a client or community they seek to serve.
While the design process is fundamental to the way all fashion designers work, each has a unique approach. It is crucial for an emerging designer to develop a system that is authentic and personal in order for the final outcomes to resonate, have authenticity and represent a distinct point of view that addresses an untapped need in the marketplace or provides a solution to an existing problem.
The Merriam-Webster dictionary definition describes ‘idea’ as a personal opinion or belief; thought to be presented as a suggestion; impression or knowledge of something; concept that exists in the mind only; or mental image that reflects reality. An idea is the catalyst that generates a project. The origin of the word comes from late Middle English via Latin from the Greek idea, from the base of idein ‘to see’; therefore, at its very core, it can be described as a way of seeing. In this first stage, designers grapple with their imagination in order to bring their ideas to life.
Finding the right idea is one thing but moving it forward and investigating all the options is also important in order to push yourself into new territory. How you choose to move toward that next step is significant, as this reveals your own way of working and approach to design. This is often intuitive but can be further articulated and refined with self-reflection on your own process throughout each stage.
Design students must approach the unpacking of an idea with the willingness to engage fully in the process of primary (first-hand) research at the onset of a project. This can include first-hand experience (personal memory, life experiences), taking photographs, conducting interviews along with other means of data collection. With the help of the internet, you can amass a wide range of information and imagery in a matter of minutes to support the initial idea, but this approach should be viewed as a secondary or tertiary method and not as the sole means of investigation at this early stage of your process.
Any idea in the right hands can be moved forward into a plausible concept and subsequently a tangible reality when harnessing design thinking. The fashion design team of Rodarte provides us with a good example: [Their] ideation process represents a chaotic mash of conversations and references, taking inspiration from such disparate themes such as: Horror movies, Renaissance Painting and opera. Ideas, half-ideas, fleeting notions are bubbling in their minds constantly. But, in fact, these seemingly random topics of conversation are their memories and their lifeblood, and the very foundation of their work.
Rodarte’s working method reflects an organic process that responds to the environment around them driven by their own set of interests in the world. Their work is instinctual, authentic and uncensored, which is true of any successful artist or designer. An ideation process that is intensely personal produces the best results.
‘Fashion is not something that exists in dresses only. Fashion is in the sky, in the street, fashion has to do with ideas, the way we live, what is happening.’
– Coco Chanel
The Merriam-Webster dictionary definition describes the verb ‘design’ as to create, fashion, execute, or construct according to plan; have as a purpose; devise for a specific function or end; indicate with a distinctive mark; draw, lay out, or prepare a design. As the definition states, this final stage of design is about execution of the plans created previously. Prior research and exploration are synthesized into a fully realized set of outcomes.
Authenticity is paramount, and it is critical for designers to remain open to new ideas, even at this final stage. Radical new departures often occur as ideas take shape into a variety of tangible forms. Epiphanies arise that might require starting over, which is better than settling for mediocrity or compromising final results.
Editing is a critical part of this stage in the process. Students sometimes short-circuit themselves by over-editing, often stripping away the innovative ideas that are the very essence of their authenticity as a designer. At this stage students should avoid the industry practice of ‘merchandising’, as this is the antithesis of producing progressive work that needs to remain uncensored; focusing on what is considered ‘commercially viable’ often compromises the essential vision, and students end up with a diluted, sub-par version of their original concept as a result. This is not to say that editing should not happen, just not at the expense of the core vision.
In the final phase of refining gold, the impurities are burnt off. Similarly, here the designer refines their ideas with the goal of translating their vision into the best possible outcome. As a developing designer, students should seek to establish a unique visual language, code of practice and design vocabulary that reflect their identities and authentic approaches to their work and methodology.
For example, Isabel Toledo’s exploratory process contributed to formulating her design language. She describes the overarching approach to her work as ‘dressing emotion’:
I had taught myself to drape in motion. I recall the freeing feeling, like removing the training wheels of a bike, as I worked out shapes that resembled three-dimensional versions of the flat paper patterns I had first loved when I started sewing. All of this playing around would one day become my language and my complete body of work, I was learning how to communicate emotions visually, because I was always trying to design clothes that captured a feeling.
‘Design is intelligence made visible.’
Alina Wheeler
The key theme of movement inspired by dance was one that literally threw the garments away from the body. Silhouettes were whirling dervishes suspended in space and time, with garments twisting around the body, restricting it in some places, and letting it loose in others. In particular, the oversized garments Janelle performed in, informed many of the silhouettes. For example, a full circle skirt, revealed its entire circle, and a body-devouring men’s shirt, revealed sagging sleeves. The forms were sloppy, distorted and oversized, sitting heavily on top, spinning around, or falling off the body.
The mind-mapping project really helped to solidify my aspirations to design through a multimedia process. It openly accepted the pursuit of parallel arts and opened up a channel to consider the conceptualization and creation of a garment from ulterior initiation points: movement, music, glimpses, and passing thoughts. So much of traditional approaches to design seems to be about looking at empty imagery in order to pull out obvious strings of inspiration.
Pictures can be seamlessly altered, blended and mixed together making anything possible, creating something that does not exist in the lived-in world; that was only imagined before: Fashion and clothing in its dematerialized, artificial form; unreal garments in their representation as something that might be even closer to what we desire – something that is not real in the lived world but represents one’s interest; a “synthetic ideal.
Design for me is a tool to provide functional features that will improve daily lives, creating garments that will serve to empower our bodies and minds. Allowing us to confidently embrace who we are and shape who we want to become through fashion.
As style and fashion have become powerful forces in the cell phone market, handset makers have been pushed to find the balance between the elegance of simplicity and need-it-all complexity. Today, the clamshell design is the most evolved example of hiding functionality until you really need it.
All buttons are sandwiched between the speaker and microphone such that when it is closed it is a simple bar of soap. Many recent designs have gone beyond the clamshell, and employ slide-away or flip-out mechanisms. Such evolutions are driven by a market that demands innovation and is willing to pay for clever ways to hide complexity.
Hiding complexity through ingenious mechanical doors or tiny display screens is an overt form of deception. If the deceit feels less like malevolence, more like magic, then hidden complexities become more of a treat than a nuisance. The ear-catching “click” when opening a Motorola Razr cell phone or the cinematic performance of an on-screen visual in Apple’s Mac OS X creates the satisfaction of owning the power to will complexity from simplicity. Thus complexity becomes a switch that the owner can choose to flip into action on their own terms, and not by their device’s will.
shrink-ing an object lowers expectations, and the hiding of complexities allows the owner to manage the expectations himself. Technology creates the problem of complexity, but also aΩords new materials and methods for the design of our relationship with complexities that shall only continue to multiply. Although instilling “pity” and choosing how to “control” it sound like draconian approaches to simplicity, they can be seen in a positive light for the feelings of enjoyment they create.
embody-ing quality is primarily a business decision, more than one of design or technology. The quality can be actual, as embodied by better materials and craftsmanship; or the quality can be perceived, as portrayed in a thoughtful marketing campaign. Exactly where to invest—real or believed quality—to get maximum return is a question with no single definitive answer.
Concealing the magnitude of clutter, either through spreading it out or hiding it, is an unnuanced approach that is guaranteed to work by the first Law of reduce. There are only two questions to ask in the de-complicating procedure: “What to hide?” and “Where to put it?” Without much thought and enough hands on deck, a messy room becomes free of clutter in no time, and remains so for at least a few days or a week.
However, in the long term an eΩective scheme for organization is necessary to achieve definitive success in taming complexity. In other words, the more challenging question of “What goes with what?” needs to be added to the list. For instance in a closet there can be groupings of like items such as neckties, shirts, slacks, jacket, socks, and shoes. A thousand-piece wardrobe can be organized into six categories, and be dealt with at the aggregate level and achieve greater manageability. Organization makes a system of many appear fewer. Of course this will only hold if the number of groups is significantly less than the number of items to be organized.
Working with fewer objects, concepts, and functions—and fewer corresponding buttons to press—makes life simpler when faced with the alternative of having too many choices. Nevertheless, making the right decisions to achieve integration across disparate elements can be a complex process that easily exceeds the trivial task of organizing one’s closet.
The visual presentation of information is a topic that I’m supposed to know a few things about as it represents a cornerstone of my career. Yet no matter how much I learn about the intricacies of graphic design, I always end up at the same place: the “tab” key. In the days of the typewriter, it was the tab key that could lend the magic possibility of creating order from chaos. The tradition of the tab key still lives on in the age of the word processor, but the satisfying “thunk” sound of the typewriter’s advancing to a tab is unfortunately lost. Most undergraduate students return the quizzical look of “typewriter?”
The relevance of the tab key to the concept of organization is that it is the one key on the keyboard that is designed to make information simpler. Consider the following list of items: red lion cola pepper sapphire blue bear frappe salt diamond green alligator martini msg topaz pink flamingo espresso garlic ruby white giraΩe milk cumin emerald black penguin beer saΩron amethyst gray dog water cinnamon turquoise. As posed, their system of conceptual organization is not clear. Complexity is remedied with a generous sprinkling of tabs, and then the categories come to life—order emerges.
“What program do you use?” is a question I often get about the slides I use to present my work. I have concluded that the proper answer to the question is to counter-suggest the asking of a diΩerent question, “What principle do you use?” The plain, unadorned horizontal and vertical gridding of information lacks sex appeal, but it is the one sure thing in the vocabulary of graphic design. Whenever I get confused, I turn my eye to the furthest left-hand side of the keyboard. The quick path to simplicity is only a pinkie away.
Humans are organization animals. We can’t help but to group and categorize what we see. Is he a poser? Is she a doll? Are they together or traveling separately? Does this top go with this bottom? The principles of Gestalt to seek the most appropriate conceptual “fit” are important not only for survival, but lie at the very heart of the discipline of design. Germany is arguably the country that originated the design field through its legendary Bauhaus school founded in 1919.
Thus it is a little more than coincidence that the German word for design is gestaltung. Traditionally, German companies like BMW, Audi, and Braun have stood for design solutions that aspire to fit perfectly with the mind. Their common goal has been to relentlessly find the most appropriate gestalt that befits a need.
The aesthetics of the blur are common in the history of art, ranging from the Impressionist paintings by Monet and his hazy clouds of tiny brushstrokes, to the stylized images of flowers by artist Georgia O’Keeffe. Soft-edged representations have an allure of mystique, and are thus inviting in nature. Similarly, the third phase of the iPod control is desirable because it blurs all controls into one image of simplicity.
The average person spends at least an hour a day waiting in line. Add to this the uncountable seconds, minutes, and weeks spent waiting for something that might have no line. Some of that waiting is subtle. We wait for water to come out of the faucet when we turn the knob. We wait for water on the stove to boil and start to feel impatient. We wait for the seasons to change. Some of the waiting we do is less subtle, and can often be tense or annoying: waiting for a Web page to load, waiting in bumper-to-bumper traffic, or waiting for the results of a dreaded medical test.
No one likes to suffer the frustration of waiting. Thus, consumers and companies alike, often try to find ways to beat the ticking hand of time. We go out of our way to find the quickest option or any other means to reduce our frustration. When any interaction with products or service providers happens quickly, we attribute this efficiency to the perceived simplicity of experience. Overnight delivery services like FedEx and even the ordering process for a McDonald’s hamburger demonstrate notable speed efficiencies. When forced to wait, life seems unnecessarily complex. Savings in time feel like simplicity. Thankfully, we are loyal when it happens, which is rare.
Then there’s the implicit benefit: reducing the time spent waiting translates into time we can spend on something else. In the end, it’s about choosing how we spend the time we’re given in life. Shaving ten minutes on your commute home translates to ten more minutes with your loved ones. Thus a reduced wait is an invaluable reward not only concerning business, but to life and your well-being. Saving time is really about reducing time, and she as introduced in the first Law can help us. she says that we can realize the perception of reduction through shrinking and hiding, and can also make up for what is lost by embodying what is most important in subtle ways. Let’s see if she is right again.
As a prototypical “busy guy” trying to stay sane, I’m familiar with shrinking time. I’m the guy who unties his shoes and removes his laptop from his bag before he reaches the airport security table, hoping to pass through with the speed of an Olympic downhill skier. Getting home before the kids are asleep is another daily challenge—one to which I apply sophisticated routing algorithms that get me from MIT to my house with the efficiency of a New York City messenger.
In the former case I risk embarrassment while self-exposed in the security line, and in the latter case I up my premiums by swerving through the infamous battlefield of Boston traffic. However, my risks when saving time are small compared to the larger scale at which businesses risk.
Reducing a five-minute task to one minute is the raison d’etre of operations management, the field that has brought us a world that never sleeps and is always on time. Superior operation management techniques played an important role in the rise of Toyota over GM in 2006. Promises of radio-frequency ID (RFID) tag technology that can uniquely identify every single product stocked on shelves will make taking inventory happen every single product stocked on shelves will make taking inventory happen instantly. Businesses take great risks to optimize their processes out of the need for survival. At the individual level, we’re also in the business of survival but we also have certain freedoms that allow us to play a different tune.
Learning occurs best when there is a desire to attain specific knowledge. Sometimes that need is edification, which is itself a noble goal. Although in the majority of cases, having some kind of palpable reward, whether a letter grade or a candy bar, is necessary to motivate most people. Whether there is an intrinsic motivation like pride or an extrinsic motivation like a free cruise to the Caribbean waiting at the very end, the journey one must take to reap the reward is better when made tolerable.
However, reality TV shows like Fear Factor or Survivor—which I admit to having watched—prove that sometimes the reward alone justifies the journey regardless of how uncomfortable it might be. The doctrine of “the carrot or the stick” points to a choice between positive and negative motivation—a reward versus a punishment.
It is said that a massive amount of homework is a kind of reward for the average over-achieving MIT student. But after recently experiencing student life myself, I’ve lost my masochistic attitude in favor of a holistic approach: basics are the beginning. repeat yourself often. avoid creating desperation. inspire with examples. never forget to repeat yourself.
There are two kinds of philosophy. One follows the well-trodden paths of philosophical tradition and its greatest minds, taking up perennial questions such as “What is the mind?,” “Does God exist?,” “What is knowledge?,” and so on. In the other, one strikes off from these established paths into wilder territory, and applies a philosophical approach to some hitherto unexplored topic.
There has, of course, been much design theory, and, “philosophy” being as loose a term as it is, this inquiry is often referred to as “philosophy of design.” But there is an important distinction between theory and philosophy, despite their overlap. Broadly speaking, the difference is that, unlike philosophy, design theory’s primary motivation and focus is the practice of design (Galle 2011).
The questions posed by theory are driven and framed by current practical considerations in a way that those of philosophy are not. This by no means diminishes the importance of theory – indeed, for the practicing designer, theory is apt to be a good deal more useful than philosophy. But it does mean that the current body of theoretical writing on design cannot be called a “philosophy of design,” in the sense that we can speak, for example, of a “philosophy of art.”
A theme throughout my investigation of Design, and the philosophical issues arising from it, has been the Modernist’s attempt to understand the significance of, and the prospects for, the Designer’s project. It will then be appropriate to conclude by taking stock of these efforts, and their significance for our own understanding of Design.
The most salient characteristic of Modernism, as Greenhalgh rightly points out, is its tendency to draw connections between different areas. This tendency allowed it to link Design’s concerns with how things should be made to larger philosophical issues about how society should be organized and how human beings can best live.
Although Modernist thinking brought the key issues of expression, function, aesthetics and consumerism into focus, no philosophy of Design stood ready to take up its analyses in any systematic way. Today, however, we can draw on philosophical theories and analyses from a variety of fields to reconsider the fundamental questions that Modernism raised. While the Modernist’s ideas may not survive in their original form, their investigations, more than any others, provide the point around which a true Philosophy of Design might crystalize.
Beyond this, Modernism leaves a larger legacy in terms of its attempt to understand the role of Design in the practices and institutions that constitute the modern world. We saw that the idea of the Designer, as we know it, was born largely of the systems of rationalization, specialization and division of labor that emerged in the industrial revolution.
And yet, in the Modernist’s eyes, the Designer was also a hopeful anomaly within those systems. Though the child of rationalization and narrow specialization, the Designer would tame those very forces – a Zeus humbling the Titans – guiding them in the creation of beauty, utility, cultural expression and social good.
Although the organic relationship that the craftsperson had with his works, and with his culture, was gone forever, it would be replaced by the organic and synthetic vision of the Designer: the humanist model embodied in the craftsperson’s hands would instead be embodied in the Designer’s mind. At the center of the industrial system of mass production would be not merely a mashing of institutional gears consisting of experts exercising their narrow brands of formalized rationality, but a human being.
But if this humanist vision is to be more than a Romantic reaction to the disruptions of rationalization – another appeal to ineffable “genius” as savior – Modernism owes us an account of how a human being could tackle the problems that, in this conception, fall on the Designer’s shoulders. We have examined how different philosophical strands of Modernist thought try to do this by tracing conceptual connections between notions such as function, beauty, expression and ethics.
Whatever we may say about the success of these attempts, we must note the remarkable way in which the Modernist is under constant pressure to break apart the task of the Designer. Expression, for example, is for the most part handed to the artist, and the resolution of ethical dilemmas is parceled out to a new, and as yet only dimly glimpsed, figure, the ethicist. Herein we see a fundamental tension within Modernism itself, as the cold rationality of Loos pulls against the organic humanism of Gropius.
However, it is probably not desirable, or even possible, to Design in such a way as to completely avoid imposing values. Some complex devices, at least, might well become unusable if the user had to make conscious decisions about every aspect of their operation. Consider our earlier example of the photocopier: a photocopier with no default settings at all would be so time-consuming to use as to be effectively useless. Thus, it doesn’t seem feasible for the Designer to simply dodge the problem in this way.
A second, and related, response to the problem is to endorse some version of the idea of participatory Design. This is the idea that Designers should not create Designs and then make them available to users, but rather that Designers and users co-design, thereby creating an entity that is better adapted to its users.
In an ethical context, participatory Design appears to allow the Designer to avoid the sting of the objection, since the Designer does not impose her personal values in the Design she creates: rather, the Design is as much the product of the community of users and their values as it is the product of the Designer and her values. Participatory Design is thereby seen as inherently democratic.
But while the general idea of participatory Design is certainly important and useful in some contexts, it suffers from many of the same limitations. For instance, it runs the risk of committing the naturalistic fallacy: simply adopting values people actually hold as opposed to engaging in moral analysis. Furthermore, if moral discourse or debate is included in the model, as seems appropriate, then the question of expertise only re-emerges insofar as the qualifications of the public stakeholders are as dubious as those of the Designer herself, if not more so.
An alternative approach would be to say that if the Designer is not, or cannot be, an ethicist, the ethical dimension of her task should be handled by a distinct person, working in conjunction with the Designer.16 This approach is already employed in certain contexts where “qualified ethicists” (usually philosophers) are involved in systems Design, such as in the Design of health-care protocols. If the ethical problems raised by Design are too much for that practice to resolve, then perhaps ultimately it must be relieved of them.
It should not surprise us, in the end, to see the very practice of Design under threat of being torn apart by the forces of rationalization, division of labor, and specialization, for those were the very forces that gave birth to it, even as they destroyed its predecessor, the tradition-based crafts. It is in this context that the efforts of the Modernists continue to command our attention and study.
The fundamental question they confront is whether Design can temper the forces that gave it birth, or whether it is no more than a kind of mirage in the ongoing process of specialization, rationalization and fragmentation that characterize the modern world. And that question is every bit as urgent for us today as it was for the Modernist thinkers of 100 years ago.