Obvs, I will let you know what I think. Feel free to read it, too, then we can start an online book club!!
Ok, back to business.
Risky business. Risky business is leaving one industry to enter another one. I am in no way saying its a bad risk, just saying it is a risk. So is staying in a job you're unhappy with - you run the risk of finding yourself on your death bed bitterly regretting the 2/3 or whatever time of your life you spent working on tasks that were not meaningful or satisfying enough to you. (More on that here http://tinyurl.com/2abbsby)
However, it is, in my humble opinion, a bad risk to enter a new field, job, industry, scenario, relationship with your mind made up about what the problem is and what you will do to fix it, holding the perfect, ideal, obvious solution ready in your head. Kind of like those consultants who'll come to you with the solution before they've identified the problem...
The reason i am thinking about this, is because I bumped into an acquaintance today who happens to be leaving his job as a management consultant and plans to enter the fashion industry.
In his opinion, the problems many businesses at the luxury end of the fashion industry face, are due to the fact that a lot of creatives have no brain for business (agreed) and that it would be so easy to make fashion houses more profitable by cutting costs on extravagant materials and brand building.
An example he gave was that that he would have used materials that were 50% cheaper than those used in the construction of a certain luxury house's architectural retail temple, or that he would have just changed the spelling of a certain label's name, which used a multi-million dollar cash injection to buy out someone who was using their name and register the trademark instead of expanding their operations.
He used phrases like "the fashion industry is all about illusion" and seemed to think that building a brand equals creating hype and that the obsession with the product is just a result of the hype.
And YES! Everyone who works in fashion will agree, there is a lot of hype. A lot of "illusion".
However, the consumer is no idiot. People work hard to earn their money, and if they choose to spend it on luxury products they will have a reason.
The designer is no idiot. If Alexander McQueen chose to change half his collection on the day of the show, then he usually had a reason.
Fashion, Art, Design, they are about Zeitgeist, about feeling, mood, expression - intangible, inexplicable results of artistic and craft-based processes, they are monuments to humanity, memorials to time and there is a reason people will pay hundreds, thousands, millions for certain pieces of art, furniture, couture.
As a certain Coco Chanel is said to have stated “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.”
Since the beginning of time, men and women have adorned themselves and looked for means of expressing their moods, values, as well as more worldly motivations like signifying their social status.
Look at any old cave, any roman archeological site, any tribal dresses and you will find evidence for this statement. As such a fundamental need, surely this quest for expression must not be disqualified!
Creating a brand is one thing, and creating innovative, well-made products from quality materials is another.
Both, are fundamentally imperative to this industry, and, as I hope to have explained above, to the consumer.
Without the brand, the consumer does not have an emotional connection with a company and will not come back to it, over and over, to discover new products.
Without innovative products, brands don't stay exciting and on peoples' minds, i.e. they start to lose interest in it and will not seek out their new products.
Not only is it not very humble to assume that the problems our industry faces are easily solved without having taken a proper look - if it were so easy, surely somebody would have implemented the solution already - and more importantly, if there is one thing I have learnt in this industry, it is that there is no one-step solution, no rules you can apply to different scenarios. Yes, you can have processes of working and problem-solving, of enabling improved performance and product through feedback, but this is an industry that relies on so many different ingredients, sourced from so many different parts of the world, all of which must at the pivotal time of presentation come together to move the audience to spend their hard-earned $ on the latest luxury product.
I don't know if this post makes sense, but this was really on my mind and I wanted to articulate and hold on to it.
I'm all for planning, for product-ranges, for close ties between commercial and design, for strategy, for cost-cutting, for stream-lining and for making this industry less hysterical, less superficial, less based on hype, celebrity, status. Yet it needs to be acknowledged that fashion fulfills a fundamental need in us, it is foolish to dismiss it is as mere vanity or superficiality, to label the search for an emotional reassurance of a product's heritage, its production processes and materials as falling for the "hype".
After all, this is not finance, we are not talking about derivatives. The aim is to be financially profitable while creating functional pieces of beauty, the best of which will hopefully be preserved in closets, handed down from generation to generation. Some even displayed in museums in years to come, as aesthetic mirrors of the contemporary social and psychological state and milestones in designers' oeuvres.
Fashion Victim?
Xx
*UPDATE*
Turns out, WIRED has just published a story on this topic: "Why We care About Luxury Brands" http://tinyurl.com/235j9u6
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