Vicky Richardson
My name’s Vicky Richardson, I’m Editor at Blueprint Magazine. Welcome to this first of the breakout sessions in the culture thread. I notice that we’re in the smallest room and I wonder whether that reflects the kind of interests of the audience here. But I don’t think so, I think it’s just that we’re probably at the cutting edge of thinking at this conference.
So this session is focussed around fashions, fashion connections and I’m really delighted at the panel that we’ve got here and I think it’s going to provoke a very interesting discussion. So we’re going to kick off with some kind of short speeches by our panel here, just to kind of get the ideas flowing, but we’re going to open it up for discussion as soon as we can so that we can hear what you’ve got to say on the subject. So the subject in question is really something that it’s quite hard to get away from these days which is fashion and the influence of the fashion industry on all sorts of different sectors of design now. And also I’d argue the kind, the reverse process that the changes going on within the fashion industry in response perhaps to a broader culture. Perhaps a more fast moving culture, I don’t know. I think that some of the reasons why these changes are happening are something we can grapple with afterwards.
So this is a truly interdisciplinary session. All approaches are admissible, and I don’t want just people from the fashion industry feeling that they can stand up and talk about this subject. But first of all I’ll introduce the panel. So on my far right is Sarah Maynard who’s started out as a fashion and textiles designer but is now working right across the board. She was telling me she’s designing the interior of her own house. She’s been responsible for designing something very fascinating here which is right at the bottom of her biog which is the crystal starter button in the current Aston Martin. Personally that’s just intriguing to me and hopefully you will be able to hear a bit more about that. But she runs her own company called Maynard Bespoke which as I said is working in all sorts of different sectors. On my immediate right is Ignacio Germade. He’s Design Director of Consumer Experience Design at Motorola UK, Bangalore and Singapore design centres. He’s originally from Spain although probably a kind of global animal now from the sounds of things…
Ignacio Germade
More animal than global, but yeah.
Vicky Richardson
with multiple perspectives. So that’s Ignacio. And then on my left is Tom Savigar who works at the Future Laboratory and has worked there since 2005. And really in the last two years I suppose the Future Laboratory has really kind of taken off and publishes a magazine called Viewpoint which you’re probably familiar with. But does a while load of other kinds of research and reports as well with a very wide range of clients. So we’ve got very different perspectives there. And I’m going to let our speakers just introduce their ideas on the subject and then we can discuss it. Sarah, do you want to start?
Sarah Maynard
Okay. Just on a brief kind of overview on how I see the question, I’ll just read out a couple of notes. Basically, in the last few years I think there’s been much in the press re. fashion extending in other disciplines and vice versa. I don’t think it’s a new phenomenon however, it is definitely a lot easier and more accepted than say, ten years ago to cross disciplines. In fact I’d go as far as to say it is now perceived as almost a necessary attribute for companies in order to get a competitive edge. This multi cultural, multi discipline design language that has now emerged encourages designers to talk more openly which is really positive to each other and invites them to question each other’s approaches and interpretations. The danger however is that design can get caught up in the marketing ethos and believe in their own importance. But just touching on the periphery of a discipline that they’re masters of all and victim of image over content and realisation and thus not realise the skills needed as a designer to implement the creations into production and thus, the marketplace. Without this skill, mock ups and show pieces will become at worse, a spectacle of unfeasible pieces, but at best disillusioning the public for whom it is intended. Or at worse watered down ideas by flooding cross-markets with similar products.
However, in a nut shell, fashion I don’t think has ever been led by fashion designers, I’d say, well, more in the UK at least since the 1960’s, it’s been led and influenced by youth culture. Britain has traditionally led the way in a need to challenge the status quo. A need to be innovative, a need to be different. This need has brought an individualism and a creative melting pot that is eagerly watched, copied and repackaged, albeit slightly watered down to the rest of the world to feed the commercial industries that thrive on new ideas that then ironically become the norm.
Vicky Richardson
Right, thanks Sarah. Ignacio.
Ignacio Germade
Oh, okay. Sorry, I thought we were going to talk a little bit about this. Okay, so I guess that it’s interesting because all my life, for the last more than 20 years I’ve been always like moving from one discipline to another discipline from you know, from graphics to media to interaction with IDEO to product design and so on. And I think that I always have been kind of like, you know, very scared of fashion as a discipline. It’s always been something that was really, really hard for me as kind of more of a traditional designer to handle.
I think that lately obviously you get more and more involved with the fashion world and you establish then in that there are two different things to fashion. Obviously the type of objects, the products that you produce and in a way kind of like the clothes and that’s one thing that can actually be extremely beautiful, extremely fantastic. And I remember seeing some of the Galliano stuff that he did for Dior last year in person in Paris and it’s absolutely amazing. It’s really one of the most beautiful objects, iridescent object that I have seen in a long time. But if you actually don’t look at fashion from that perspective, not just so much about the type of things that you create, but you look at fashion as more as an approach to design rather than exactly what it is that you design, then you can actually take a lot of things from the fashion world and you can incorporate them into whether it’s product design, interaction design or space or environments or whatever it is. And I think that that’s the kind of the really exciting part for me about fashion. And I still don’t dare to try to design clothes but I do believe that I’m producing now some of this fashion attitude towards the kind of things that I design. And again, this attitude is all about how people feel about stuff, anything that, you know, interaction designers, we spend a lot of time talking about user centred design and you know, designing for the user from the perspective of how someone is going to use something. And I think that we tend to forget sometimes about the sentient, the person that feels and how someone feels about something and how you can actually influence the way someone feels about themselves through products like clothes or through products like, in my case, telephones.
So my focus is try to not on everything that we do because there is a space for everything but there is a range of products that we are creating where the main focus is the idea of self expression on how you use design, this approach to really focus on the emotional relationship that people build with this product and how people are going to feel when they’re using, when they’re owning these products so I guess that that’s kind of how in my world fashion and design can like intersect.
Vicky Richardson
Thank you. Tom.
Tom Savigar
I’ve prepared some thoughts but I was thinking while you were both speaking and for me, from the perspective of where the future like comes from, thinking about the consumer and thinking about the market, I’d say that fundamentally you’re dealing with a consumer, especially in Northern Europe that is expecting far more of a brand, or far more from a fashion brand. And what I mean by that is the fact that the essence or the signature of a brand has to run through cross disciplines, it can’t just be within clothing, it can’t just be within beauty or within cosmetics or jewellery. And the notion of some of the big designers that are coming through that design a porter as opposed to the kind of prêt a porter that we’ve been looking at. And looking at the big signature for star architects like Zaha Hadid all the way through to Mark Newson who’s kind of going ridiculous things, but some of the things he is doing the same, you know, selling off those recliners for the kind of money he’s doing but they’re purely prototyped.
I think the point is that the consumer is quite confused about where his or where her big signposts are for what is design, mainly because of the different accessibility they have. You’re dealing with a situation whereby the kind of the art makers of the world are overtaking the fashion weakness of the world. The new destinations for them that were once trend shows are now places for them to be cultural tourists. The changing nature of again those sorts of cross genres means that the fashion designer of today from a sort of education perspective is sitting there as a student of 22 going, “What is the market? I can’t just be a fashion brand anymore. I have to understand how to make furniture or at least appreciate how to do other disciplines.” Eindhoven is a great example of one of those colleges that just keep on getting better and better and better because of the way their approach to what you were saying about looking at the body in different way or the man in different ways.
The kind of collaborative culture, again the nature of brands, that fact that they’ve got this open gate now towards consumers. The internet has helped that definitely but I think one of the main things it meant is that designers become democratised in many way so that you’re seeing design go from a very much a sort of middle market approach whereby most designers now in the fashion market are worrying about the kind of the effect of the High Street, the effect of the over ubiquitous brand. All the way up to the rarity agenda whereby you’re dealing with brands like Louis Vuitton who want us to think about libraries and art talks and dinner parties, but forget about the monogram bag. So why is it that some of these brands are moving into different fields? Why is it that Paul Smith opens up a curiosity shop? Because he knows he can buy his socks in any airport. So he sets up something which is purely about curation and purely about experience.
So all these kind of, I think indicate the fact that the consumer is sitting there as maybe an affluent consumer or just an average day consumer, walking down the high street, shopping online, visiting galleries, visiting exhibitions and understanding that they can tap into anything with a credit card. So when you come to actually designing something, what is the value? What is the meaning behind that? And as Daniel Pink said is in his book, ‘A Whole New Mind’, we are entering this new era where meaning is the currency and you have to use some of those things that you’ve designed with meaning, not just purely functionality. It has to have some emotional content. So I hope that answers the question.
Vicky Richardson
Yeah, that’s great.
Tom Savigar
There’s lots of things, I think it’s interesting now you see Slimane running into different fields, Bulgari running into hospitality. You now, it’s an interesting mix.
Vicky Richardson
Yeah, I mean there doesn’t seem to be any limit now to where fashion will go. I think part of the challenge is finding new areas to almost kind of surprise the market. But that’s talking about it from the perspective of fashion houses and sort of going into other areas, but I mean, you were talking about it from the perspective of a product company looking at fashion. So there’s this sort of dual process going on it seems. And I think later on we can come onto sort of the good and the negative consequences of all of those, perhaps towards the end of the discussion, but I think for now before saying whether this is good or bad for design we should look at perhaps why this is happening as Tom says. I mean, are these parallel processes – is one stronger than the other? I mean, is the desire for a company like Motorola to look at issues like self expression. I mean, what do you think is driving that? Is that just broader changes in society or is there a commercial drive to that?
Ignacio Germade
It’s a combination of different things. I mean, if in one hand you have the industry, our industry is actually maturing. So we have gone from technology thing where it was all about the technology to almost getting into consumer products and becoming a little bit more conscious of what people want to actually get it now into more emotional type of thing. It’s not enough just to have the technology. It’s not enough just to have an average consumer product. You want to actually provide something else. You want to provide this type of like deeper type of more meaningful relationships. And then basically you’d change, you’d have like this trade off where you change the emphasis and you go more towards kind of like getting more focussed onto these things. So I think that that’s one thing that is happening. And you need to do it in order to differentiate yourself. And you have to do it in order to respond to market demand as well. But you know, no one is going to buy a phone just because it makes a phone call anymore. I mean, you know, okay, if you go to some places in India, it’s different, right. But here people are looking for something else so you have to give them a little bit more when you do. It’s a kind of chicken and egg thing as well because I think as we’re doing more we become more consumer products and people expect these things to be more consumer and you have to take it to the next level, you have to make it more emotional and people expect things to be more emotional as well. And so it just kind of like make sense.
Tom Savigar
It’s interesting that point when you think about younger consumers compared to older consumers and how the younger consumer has that Rollerdex attitude to culture whereby they’ll use design and culture like a Rollerdex and pick what they want, hence the whole explosion and personalisation continuing. But if you think 20 years from now and you’ve got a 15 year old now who’s 35, he’s going to be very different from a 35 year old now. He’s still thinking very pragmatically about, as long as I can make a phone call it’s okay. As long as it works and it looks nice. But a younger generation who are going to fuse the whole design, form, function thing together and it has to be a fickle design. It has to move, it has to reconfigure itself aesthetically just as much as the kind of, I suppose the approach of what’s actually in the phone in terms of the software.
Ignacio Germade
I think it’s we have an acceptance today as you say our generation too, because you know, for us it’s okay. If it makes a phone call, it makes a phone call, right. But no one will accept you know just, well, it’s a sweater, it’s a sweater, right. You want something that really reflects your personality and it’s because we have grown up with that assumption. So you’re absolutely right, I mean, the new generations will basically demand this idea of self expression from everything that they own, you know, unless it’s kind of like yet another type of innovation that is new for them and then maybe they will be willing to put up with those things, you know.
Sarah Maynard
It’s not necessarily just the new generation as well when you’re getting the demographics and looking at people getting a lot older. They’re the ones with maybe more disposable income. They’re the ones who are going to have more voice as it were with, “Hey, you know, we want this technology.” Maybe it’s kind of like overloaded on technology and want to simplify again, so it’s almost kind of like turning round where you kind of feed something so much and there’s so much technology going, it’s like, how can you make that in a way simpler as well.
Vicky Richardson
Sarah, I mean, you spoke about fashion as this certainly not being a new phenomenon within the fashion industry itself, that for a while it’s been dominated by youth culture. But what’s the role of the designer in all of this? I’m kind of interested in the way you’re talking now because it almost makes it sound like you’re a sort of social anthropologist kind of looking around at different kind of social groups and identities and society and to see how you can map those onto different products. And Sarah, you were saying perhaps the fashion houses have been led by youth culture but there’s certainly a process by which they kind of look at what’s out there and then they somehow re-reflect it to us. I mean, I think the designer still has a role in this but I wonder how that role is changing and how it maps itself onto product design?
Sarah Maynard
Well, I think a lot of, which is brilliant, which was spearheaded in the fashion is you know, you have that cycle, you go to those trend shows. You have a whole group of people deciphering what’s been, what is, what is current, what is going to be. And that was very much kick-started in the fashion industry of going to those trend shows finding out what new colours, what’s happening within film industry, what’s happening in the rest of the world and looking at all of those cultures and I think that was very forward thinking far, you know. You look at it say like the motor industry, they’re only just beginning to catch up. And look at those kind of whole sectors and realising that there are different sectors in there want it, having different needs. You know you’ve got to be multi cultural, you can’t just look at Northern Europe, you’ve got to look at China, you’ve got to look at, you know, other developing communities. So in that respect I think it’s been very, very positive influence.
Tom Savigar
Also the role as a fashion designer from experience of working at Marks & Spencer’s in ladieswear and asking the stupid question which was, do we know who our customer is, which you shouldn’t ask M&S ten years ago. But the point was I noticed something very, very early on which was the fact that, yes, they could get the elder groups and they could get the kind of colour ways and go, “That’s what we’re going to do.” As a designer, we’re now getting briefs in the business where the designers are going, “We are interpreters and interrogators, we’re not designers. We have to be out there and be consumers. We have to go out and get pissed on the weekend like our 25 year old consumer does, or we won’t understand them.” And it’s kind of, if that is a brief from a company like Gap who isn’t fashion but they are thinking, we need to get out there and see things as people who sit there every day with a blank canvas every season. The catwalks can tell us only so much but we know that ASOS can interpret in two weeks. So as a designer that’s not designing, that’s just copying.
Sarah Maynard
But as a designer I think you’ve also got to obviously take on board all of these things.
Tom Savigar
Everything, yeah.
Sarah Maynard
And be able to kind of almost out of that melting pot, still have integrity and honesty and actual guts sometimes to follow you own instincts. Which I think may be a lot of that is harder now to do because there are so many influences all around to actually say, “I have a vision. This is what I want to do.”
Ignacio Germade
I think that actually in the traditional, you know product world, I think that we’re like so process driven and it’s all about kind of like scientific data driven kind of analysis of consumers. Let’s go to the pub and drink because that’s what our consumers do. And I think that the beauty of the fashion world and the thing that I think we can learn quite a lot is that it’s much more intuitive. I mean, it’s two completely different worlds. The speaker was saying that Sarah takes like something from a catwalk from someone else to the market in like two weeks or however many weeks. And it takes us like a year and a half actually to take from one sketch to a product that someone…
Sarah Maynard
And an automotive, it can take four years.
Ignacio Germade
Yeah, exactly so - but I think that what is really, really hard is actually to – you know that emotion actually that you put on the original sketch, the original design to actually make sure that you are able to maintain that throughout like a year and a half of development to actually get to something out there. So I think that things like improving our processes to actually allow us to go much faster, but also kind of like believing much more in our intuition and I think that again is. I mean does really Prada, you know, gone round to the pub and check on what people really, really like. I mean, I don’t think so. It’s more about inspiration about Northern Italy, what’s happening or what happened a thousand years ago and using that to create a collection and then pushing forward. And I think that it doesn’t have to be like that extreme but I think that this approach can help us quite a lot to simplify our lives to tell you the truth.
Tom Savigar
Sorry, just one more point. The lovely thing is that as designers if you are thinking about the signature and the essence of the brand you work for and the embodiment of that in clothing or in any product which is what we’re seeing and what we’ve already said, it is about that confidence. It’s about saying authenticity is confidence and being an authentic brand and designing an authentic product is about having that innate belief of what the brand is. As opposed to an identikit approach which has what has been the mainstay of the last five years, and that’s why the consumer is going, “I’ve got a value debate in my head here. Why would I pay three times as much for something that is designer, when I don’t feel like it’s been crafted for me as a customer.”
Sarah Maynard
But do you also think with designers as well that perhaps as you know, some of the organisations or design organisations getting bigger and bigger that actually that’s a far harder process for the designer to work in because they’ve got so much red tape, they’ve got this email technology that they can’t do a design or do any idea or say anything without their boss wanting an email and everything written down, and wanting to take responsibility for anything.
Vicky Richardson
I think this kind of climate of risk or awareness of failure is something to my mind anyway that’s kind of driving a direction towards fashion within other areas, because of what you were saying about perhaps at the lowest end of the scale and prescriptive approach within fashion that says, you know, this season it’s brown…
Sarah Maynard
But do you think that some of the bigger companies from your Prada’s to your Saatchi’s to whatever are actually realising that as you were saying, the globalisation, the whole thing of it, trying to make it smaller. Having smaller lines which are more individual which people can have more of a…
Tom Savigar
Rarity.
Sarah Maynard
Yeah. Rarity and simplicity I think is where everything is kind of like pushing…
Vicky Richardson
I think this is a good point to bring in some questions and points from you. I can see hands going up. Yes. Do you want to say your name and where you’re from?
Audience member 1
I’m Claire Johnston. I’d just like to ask the panel just very quickly, what’s their feeling abut the current interest in fashion being quite strongly influence now in certain areas towards the more ethical way of producing fashion and environmentally aware fashion. What’s your sort of take on that? Do you feel it’s a passing phase or do you feel it’s something that’s going to be embedded?
Sarah Maynard
I don’t know. When you think about it, almost 10, 15 years ago, it was always looked at as you know, the kind of frumpy almost…
Tom Savigar
I think hemp comes from there.
Sarah Maynard
Hemp and open sandals and, you know, just things which weren’t cool. Whereas now I think you just can’t get away from it. You know, you’re looking at the global warming, you’re looking at everybody, actually it’s not becoming cooler, you know, it’s an actual responsibility that you have to take note of.
Tom Savigar
We’ve just had the results back from our bi-annual brand personality register and the whole labelling of this whole debate, putting ethical, organic, Fair Trade on your brand is waning and that consumers don’t trust that overtness, that squeaky clean approach. Yeah. Which is when you think about it, it’s like an M&S campaign. The words don’t make sense. And it’s kind of – what’s lovely about that is the fact that consumers are going, I just want to know that you’re a clean brand. Are you clean? Can I actually look through your side door if you have one and see that you’re not making kids work for you or getting reports in the paper about it, about people dying. It’s kind of, all of a sudden all that trust goes away. And I think consumers aren’t stupid anymore. I’m not saying they were stupid, I’m saying that I think a lot of brands thought they were. They could look down on consumers. Consumers have got a level playing field with brands, they can look them straight in the eye now thanks to the internet. And that kind of civic, clean attitude, if a brand has that attitude and it does what it says on the tin, consumers will trust it. They don’t need to call it some name, like ethical.
The other bit that’s really important is about the back story. You know, luxury I think out of all this debate, luxury has to have a better back story. Hotels, car, watches, diamonds, they need to be doing things that don’t necessarily give that person who’s a luxury consumer brand, bad brand cache with their friends because we know that when you get into high network individuals, philanthropy and having a clean conscience, all that money is really important. So there’s almost helping you help you customers if you’re in a luxury custodian. Be custodians of being clean by being clean yourself.
Ignacio Germade
Yeah, to give the viewers, in that well you see quite a lot these days and a lot of mistakes as well. Just the whole idea of like philanthropy as a way of, you know, going for luxury and like giving and like showing how much you’re giving away and things like that. It’s a kind of combination of those two things. You are still kind of like showing off, you know, how much you give back, it’s about giving back and so on.
Tom Savigar
I think ethical is a very fashion thing. It’s a faddish thing and it’s – I’ll never forget when the President of Lamborghini said to me, “We’re 90 per cent ethical but the last 10 per cent all goes a bit wrong. And that’s when the customer puts petrol in the car.” And he said, “But we’re doing what we can.” But the lovely quote is when one of the drivers that we interviewed in New York said, “I offset my Lamborghini with my Prius.” And I just thought that was just so lovely the fact that his mates were in America all being neo-conservative going, “Oh, you’ve got a Lamborghini”, he goes, “Buy a Prius then”, and he’s like, “Oh, wonderful”, like this, and it was just such a...
Vicky Richardson
Yeah, I mean, it does strike me that a lot of kind of eco ethics is an alternative form of consumerism. The whole interest in farmer’s markets and even you know, the bag phenomenon. Now it’s kind of, it’s not acceptable to carry a plastic bag anymore but you’ve got kind of – you know, you keep going out to buy more expensive calico bags. So it seems like as soon as you know, we get interested in something it seems to spiral off into this kind of new branch of consumption, but I don’t know whether that’s too cynical?
Sarah Maynard
But to see that as consumption is almost is that, you know, that’s changing in itself that you have go in a way trend for more localised consumption actually and also looking, again bring that simplicity looking at craftsmanship again I think is actually quite important. And actually recognising that you know, if we’re not careful we’re going to lose some of these skills which you know, we’ve had for years and years because we’re used to wanting something at a ridiculously cheap price and all the consequences that goes with, you know, that cheap price. I mean you look at some Chanel, they bought up I think in 2002, some of their last remaining ateliers, the little crafts places, knowing – which was quite clever in both ways: A. preserving their skills and knowing that no one else would have those skills.
Tom Savigar
Exactly yeah. And if the consumer knows that the consumer will become an advocate, an ambassador and word of mouth would just be brilliant for a brand because they go, “Look what they’ve done. Let me tell you the whole story.” Instead of it being on ITV in an ad break. It’s clever advertising.
Vicky Richardson
Can I bring more audience?
Audience member 2
[Muffled question]
Tom Savigar
I think from something like ceramics and furniture designers had the fashion effect on it. For instance, our studio job, they are celebrities now, they are the Alexander McQueen’s of this year and last year. Barnaby Barford again, he’s the new McCartney. They’re getting that kind of special effect that is a fashion show every six months and Apple acting like a fashion company doing the macs are models and Steve Jobs is the Galliano. He’s going up there telling you all about it with his clicker. And it’s a method of getting that consumer excited on a regular basis. You feel like they’ve been a new collection by Apple.
Vicky Richardson
Am I right in thinking you were asking also about a specific course that’s…?
Fashion Promotion. How many fashion promotion courses are there in the UK?
Audience member 2
[Muffled response]
Vicky Richardson
But I mean I suppose one test is whether companies like Motorola would look to hiring graduates from a fashion promotion course. I mean, what do you - from your point of view.
Ignacio Germade
Yeah, absolutely. And I think that we are incorporating more people that normally come from some specific disciplines or enter companies from specific disciplines like trends and colour rep and finishes and things like that. That’s the easy way in. But I think again, if you look at it from a different perspective not coming from, almost from the bottom but coming really from the top. And I think that that’s - from the top, I mean from a perspective on how to actually influence a whole brand, you know, it’s specific kind of like solutions and implementation level and so on. And I think that you see it in the interior design industry you know, much more than in the product design, you know, in this companies, industries. I think that we’re starting to get there. We’re still really, really far from being where we need to be. And you see like, you know, you see like Dolce & Gabbana doing a restaurant in Milan, which it is fashion. That place is fashion, physical but it’s fashion. And it’s all about being able to get there. I read an article in a magazine talking about the must have table, rather than the must have, you know, bag. That’s not happening in product design yet. I think it’s still kind of like the creation layer on the outside is becoming a little bit more fashionable, whether we’ve started using textiles, you know. But it’s kind of like a whole idea of how it’s going to influence the brand. And then being able to allow you to do what a lot a fashion houses do which like, Armani, they can do from obviously ten different ranges of clothes to hotels or interior design to flowers to food to anything. To telephones these days as well, because they have the power on the brand which is all about kind of how to appeal to emotions for the consumers. Once you do that then you’re free to do whatever you want to do and that’s a really powerful position to be in.
Sarah Maynard
Do you think that’s almost because they’ve got – it’s just their actual – they’re freer on their thinking in a way and they’ve got that backup that it seems to be that you get that in fashion that they can then go into all of these other industries. It seems much harder and more stuck in their way.
Ignacio Germade
I think that there is a culture within the fashion houses which is very, very different from the culture that you get in Motorola as you can imagine. And you know, the main goals are really, really well defined. You know you always have like a Galliano and Armani and you know, all these people are – mostly kind of the creative director for the company and one of the main drivers for a company. You know, in our case we’re kind of like an organisation within a corporation. You know, it’s a completely different level field, if that’s the right word to say in English. So it’s much harder for us to change…
Sarah Maynard
Because sometimes when there’s bigger corporations, I know from past experience that you’ve got – you know, it is a very different approach, you know, fashion, you know, they give importance to those ideas and they’re almost like the superstars as it were. Whereas if you’re looking in other disciplines then you know, sometimes they’re led by, you know, marketing or they’re led by engineering.
Ignacio Germade
Yeah, absolutely.
Sarah Maynard
And actually design comes bottom of the pile so it’s very difficult because budgets have been set, you know, ideas that have almost already been implanted which may be a few years retrospect.
Vicky Richardson
Let’s bring in some more points. Yeah.
Audience member 3
My name’s [muffled] Mitchell from [muffled] Design in Glasgow. We work in product design. And almost to pick up exactly on the thread you were doing down there. I don’t know what the panel think of this but I kind of see a new design approach emerging through product design which has sort of traditionally been a sort of design process that as you said it influenced by technology, by industry, by brand. And then almost as a result of one of those things develops a product and this is given to a consumer. A consumer is getting that technology, it’s getting that brand, whether he wants it or not. And I feel that the fashion industry is more about taking inspiration, developing that inspiration and then putting it out there to people and you know, they are almost part of the process if you like. And I feel that design is going down that same road. I don’t know whether you guys agree with that. I mean I think user-centred design is the start of that process and the consumer’s getting a lot more to say, hence these industries can collaborate.
Vicky Richardson
Before we address that I’m just going to take a couple more questions and then we can come back. Right at the back.
Audience member 4
I was going to address a very similar issue: the boundaries between consumer and designer. And we’ve heard discussions about famous actors and about co creations this morning and I’m just interested in finding out what the fashion industry and you people as fashion designers your perspective on that.
Vicky Richardson
Right. Thank you. And there was another hand here. Yeah.
Audience member 5
Well, it’s again working with this. The fact that Sarah’s talking about this idea of risk and red tape in a large company. Design within fashion is always bound to have to bad boys almost and you’re allowed to be badly behaved. And if you can put this like smoking clubs in Berlin or – there’s that sense of anarchy and I think that a designer product it’s sort of taken that in a sissy way, watered down way but still keeping the impact and having it as a catalyst. And allowing the essence of the philosophy or the movement to come through. So I think part of the role of the designer of a product that’s working with fashion and through fashion is actually interpreting and sort of reassessing the roots and grabbing them. Whether it’s a sort of rough rugged catalyst or taking a little tiny bit and taking that journey through.
Vicky Richardson
I think you raise an interesting point where you mentioned the designer as the bad boy or the badly behaved person. And I mean, another way of expressing that is the designer is the creative person really. And I think personally speaking it seems that that often gets lost in the discussion about co-creation and consumers as designers, that you know, designers do go to college and study for a reason. It’s not all purely intuition and personal expression. There is actually discipline to be learnt and to be practised. And I wonder where that comes into the discussion about co-creation and what the balance is to be drawn there.
Ignacio Germade
I think that there is an interesting point here like when Tim was talking before about kind of like design thinking and how can a design help influence corporations and how they think about problems and innovation and stuff like that. And that’s kind of like one way to go about it. And then I think almost the opposite way to go about it is kind of like Lagerfeld and Chanel. It’s like I am God, I do what I want. And it’s whether you try to invent yourself as like God, be friends with the sea. Oh, you’re the fricking sea. And there’s a huge difference because then you’re free to do what you want to do and you know, it’s through natural selection, right, and you know, the right designers in the right place to make the right decisions, you know, and then you can have fantastic products that people kind of like really want to go for because it becomes an inspiration for a lot of different people. So you know, I think that different problems need different approaches and different type of attitudes. But these brought up two very different ones and sometimes I think that we are trying – you know we’re designers, we start as designers in designer school and we’re all so happy. And then over the years we become design manager and become kind of - and eventually you become a business person and knows a hell of a lot about design. And on the other side is like if you’re a designer and if you keep going, going, going, going you’re a super kick ass designer. And you know, for me I would much rather be on this side than the other side, even if I do understand, you know business strategy, innovation, branding and all these things. But I don’t want to lose that sense of creation of like making something physical for people to interact and to enjoy. I mean to me, that’s extremely, extremely important.
Sarah Maynard
But is that maybe almost going in a way more old fashioned and you’re looking a lot of other industries and their structure and how they’re actually you know, looking a the whole of the structure? Is there a different way that you could do it? You know, if you’ve got a really good designer, why are they having to do, you know – it would be better to have, you know, a shit hot business person with the designer, with the engineer. You could all go and clash together and you know, because the best creativity comes out of discourse. You know, it’s kind of like – and then coming to that middle ground and then actually creating.
Tom Savigar
It depends on what you’re trying to make, but yeah. I think if you look at something like cars, Rebecca Beck was hired because she had ten years working in trend research. She had a background in fashion textiles but she was hired when you would have thought her CV wouldn’t get her the job. And from talking to her, she has this kind of – and there are people here who remember when she was on stage talking about it. And there was a refreshing sense of like, thank god, you know, you actually know what you’re trying to do here as a brand, what is your product all about. And I remember writing her quote as, what she said, she wants to design products that make her boyfriend jealous because the girl would buy the clothes for her, the guy would buy the clothes for him but then the girl would borrow the clothes that the man bought. And the point being that it was about social interaction and relationships. And it was about girlfriend, boyfriend, it was about wardrobes and it was about blurring of – so all these kind of things coming into the kind of mix as a design manager, I suppose or a design director, but she wasn’t thinking, fit, form, materialisation, detail, colour. That just came from the essence of what…
Sarah Maynard
But it’s also about emotion.
Tom Savigar
Exactly.
Sarah Maynard
I think the main thing, you know, and looking and going forward, I mean for me when I was at Aston it was very much about looking at a very male kind of environment, looking at a very different perspective, you know, and actually thinking, okay, you know, what is it? You know, it wasn’t until I actually got in the car, drove it, I went blooming heck, you know, that’s why I couldn’t get really excited, you know. You get that feeling, that buzz and you hear it start up you just go, “Whoa.” And it’s all these little things, you know, looking at guys in cars, always fascinated by their watches. They’re always having the latest magazine on watches and talking about it and becoming total anoraks and you’re like, but then why are half the dials when you look in cars are absolutely, you know, cardboard with you know pad printing on it? Why? And that’s when I was looking on the dials and looking at watches and doing the whole development on that. And then coming back to them and they’re like going, “Whoa, never thought of that.” You know, never thought of that way round. And again with the – when I said the starter button, again it was emotional. You know, when I first pressed that button on the Vanquish I was like, “Whoa, sounds amazing.” But it’s like a red plastic button you get on like a kid’s Early Learning Centre thing. And I’m just like, how can you have that when you’ve got such an amazing engineering and powerful car? And that’s when I started talking to my friend who was a jewellery designer who did you know all the stuff for Vivienne Westwood and everything else and we had a good old hoot about it. And he was like, “Okay right, so what is it emotion wise that - which would want something which is not too feminine which is also masculine” which is I why I came up with crystal, it’s longevity, time and everything. But also it was emotional because you’re in that half of the car and it’s cold to touch and then it warms up as the car does. You know, you’re looking at lighting.
Tom Savigar
You are trying to engineer that, the calculations…
Sarah Maynard
They just thought I’d lost the plot, you know, and then I went off and did it myself and they didn’t do the prototype. They saw it actually worked and they went, oh, okay then.
Vicky Richardson
In a way that’s really interesting because it has nothing to do with trend. I mean, the influence of fashion there is really… I mean, I would say in the most positive sense rather than the kind of picking out the season’s colour kind of approach. But it also brings us onto the subject of luxury which I find very fascinating at the moment, partly because we’ve just come out of the London Design Festival where I’m from, it seems a long way away now, and the influence of the art market there was just all powering really. I think that a lot of designers are thinking about luxury. I’ve heard that somewhere somebody is setting up an MA in luxury design in some American university. Not quite sure where yet but I think that’s an interesting development. No, I personally find some of the kind of products that are being developed by designers quite repugnant simply because of their kind of elitism and the fact that they’re so out of reach. But, I think we have to face that fact that this is quite a large kind of area that designers are being employed in and perhaps some good can come out of it. I wonder what people think about luxury design, whether it’s just a flash in the pan or is it his kind of interesting area to look at?
Well, actually there is a hand in the audience.
Audience member 5
It’s another very interesting point from a product design perspective because product design can actually be accused of, you know the rubbish pile creation. If you buy it you use it, you throw it away. What luxury, and maybe going slightly further forward from luxury to say good sustainable designs, something that can evolve and has high quality. You buy a product that is high quality possibly in the luxury market, you might spend a lot more money on it but it will last a lot longer. It will evolve with you. There’s an emotional attachment and I think that’s something that’s sustainable.
Vicky Richardson
I mean, it’s always been in Dieter Ram’s argument as well.
Tom Savigar
Just on that point, on the way up here I was reading copy for a report one of my guys had written and it was about Tesco’s clothing. One of the panel asked one of the individuals to be called Mr and Mrs Henry Jones as in the advert, but the new Mr and Mrs Jones. But the point was they were saying we want premium and luxury but we’re not going to pay through the nose for it.
Audience member 5
Isn’t that, in a sense, that whole luxury thing, you know, which might stick in your craw a bit you did say fashion has been doing that for years on the catwalk, and with any client to feel the design process or design products it’s a human process that goes on, it’s to diffuse it down to a level of [muffled] Whether it’s true for mankind or not, so what, you might say. But, I mean, this is the conversation I’ve had, if I cast my mind back to the 70s and early 80s and the fact that magnificent generalist concept which is not trained particularly well was much more apparent in those days. You know there was a lot more transferability of the design in the 70s and 80s, some of them were doing exploitation mercilessly in Japan and other places, but there was some good things going on as well. But, are we missing the point a little bit, should we be moving back as educators? We need to try a more generalist approach and transferability, not necessarily innovation through working with engineers, as good as that is, but actually being able to look at the technology, the new product coming to you from the component suppliers to the various industries and being able to understand the general style and tweak it.
Sarah Maynard
I think that’s a good point, I think it’s invaluable and I think in education if you’re going to go forward I think it’s really important that you do get also the cross disciplines, you get other departments talking to other departments. I know from, you know, they’ve got a teacher there from Dundee but that’s where I did my, I moved from fashion and I went up to Scotland and I thought it was really interesting how you could actually take other subsidiaries and go into other sections because although I was doing the fashion textiles I’d often wander into sculpture and, you know, actually do some sculptures. I loved it. And it’s the point that you can actually cross over and talk to other students, I think that’s quite invaluable as a student to learn that, it’s not just a foundation course, it’s nice to actually be able to talk and not be in the fashion, not only on one fashion table or, you know, at lunch time or is there something that you can really kind of cross over.
Tom Savigar
You ask any print designer in university and they’re borderline fine artists and graphic designer. That foundation process makes you choose one. If you’re into sculpture you then end up doing weaving. It’s all about 3D versus 2D. In many ways it’s about saying a lot of those models, if you look at Brighton University, you know, sitting there lecturing you’ve got SCP, WMCP, all these different disciplines, 3D fashion textiles, graphic design, al sitting there with the same content, the same information, the same learnings. They’re all then talking to each other in the break going, what’s vacuum moulding, well I’m doing this kind of textile, etc, etc. And yes some of the creations will be out there because you’re about fusing this together but it is about understanding yet again what is the consumer, if you’re going to think in a business way, like you said about bringing in the business people, what is there going to be that is the end product. Because it could be a horrible mess or it could be genius and it’s kind of understanding how far do you go with cross discipline design so that it doesn’t become something that the consumer goes, I don’t want a shoulder pad out there that is a watch. I like the fact that I’m getting cross disciplines here but there is an element of what fashion is, it’s clothing to make you feel sexy and help you pull, so you can walk into a meeting and win the deal or to relax in. You know, whatever the different contexts are of what you’re wearing clothing for.
Sarah Maynard
See, I’m on kind of a slightly different tangent but you’ve got the fashion, you’re looking at the fabrics, you’re looking at body form and all those things, almost to say like on your product why do you not think maybe, you know, out-of-the-box with regards to rather than just having a computer drawing whatever, why aren’t you contacting the likes up Dupont, the likes of all of the big chemical companies, speaking to that chemist or that doctor who is in a corner, mad cap ideas and crazy, and actually ‘I’ve produced this substance, I don’t know what the hell I’m going to do with it,’ and then actually create almost, you know, having the designers around if you’re doing futuristics on products so that they can go, ‘Right okay, we could do this, we could do a marketing campaign on that’ and then actually create different products.
Tom Savigar
Yeah. I loved it when I was watching the little short clip on Steve Jobs launching the new iMac and there was something he said which was the fact that they’ve gone away from the frosted to the glass because the glass seemed more popular. He could have continued explaining it but basically hit the nail on the head when he said the consumers loved the aesthetic wow factor of the glass screens. It’s when the iPod came out that sort of Giaconda smile, how the hell did they design something that I am now going to fall in love with and influence all my peers with and then all my older generations and younger generations. And it’s that kind of appreciation of that wow kind of personality factor in design that fashion does so well and product is doing even more of. That’s why product design is getting all the headlines more and more, it’s because consumers are turning their heads and going, Jesus Christ that’s like, there’s a wow factor there, there is a personality in that design and enfant terrible, wow, you know, I kind of get the relevancy of this now in the same way as walking in and buying a Chanel bag and going, oh, £4000, you know… There’s a feeling there.
Vicky Richardson
We’re going to need to start sort of wrapping this up in a second but I mean I just wanted to finally kind of bring it back to the question somebody had from the audience where we talked about the life span of products. Because I think that one thing inherent to fashion is its cycle and its, you know, that’s what makes it exciting, the fact that it moves on and it’s so close to the sense of change. But is that really compatible in an era where we’re looking to hold onto things for longer, where we need to think about the life cycle of a product and how we can hang onto it? I mean, Tom’s point about falling in love with an iPod, I mean, I think that’s true but people fall out of love with products as well and perhaps the higher the high, the lower the low, if you see what I mean. The more you’re in love with something when it comes out doesn’t that mean you’re going to be falling in love next week with something else? Anyway, that’s my closing but I’m going to get the speakers to come back in now to sum up. Sorry we haven’t had time for everybody’s points, but I’m getting kind of waved at from the back of the room. So, if we start with you, Tom.
Tom Savigar
Your point about sustainability, I think I’ll just wrap up on that in terms of that’s a very interesting point because I love the fact that we’re having this austere phase of fashion, especially in Northern Europe. Other parts of the world, we can talk globally if you want but we’ve only got 45 minutes so let’s talk about where we are now. I love the fact that we’re going through this phase where you’ve got consumers questioning the value of the £2 chicken and going, it can’t actually cost that much, it can’t cost that much? Three for £5? It really can’t cost that much. And yet having the same debate about clothing and having the same debate about product going, will this last longer than a year? Is there a value versus values conundrum I need to work out? What is the value of buying something? Because price is relevant but also it is kind of saying, yes I’m comparing that to other products but the value of buying it and the value of buying into a brand is really important and if that brand wrap around is something like an Apple whereby even though iPods break and the iPhone will break, people forgive it. In the same way as they forgive Chanel for their button falling off their jacket. They don’t take it back going, I want it back. They go, I’ll sew it on again. Or they’ll go to the service centre and get it fixed. The point is that people have that connection with general product now and not just fashion, in the same way as you love that jumper even though it’s got holes in it. You love products because they do age with you, they do get better with time and there’s an element of the cross discipline conclusion being in the fact that design is about longevity and I think fashion has to wake up and realise that it can play both scales. It can have the H&M effect where you’re a blank canvas and it can be a proper cashmere jumper that lasts you for five years.
Vicky Richardson
Okay thank you. Ignacio.
Igancio Germade
Okay, I wanted to touch on your point, I think it was interesting this idea of you can justify luxury because things last longer. I don’t know, I think maybe like 50 or 100 years ago you could justify the watch is going to be really, really expensive but it’s got to last forever, it’s got to be very, very precise. Today you get that technology and it’s got to be extremely precise for like $5. All watches are actually exactly the same thing with different decorations outside. So I think that you’re really paying for that fact that it’s more expensive for the fact that it’s more exclusive and you can justify it, intellectually you can say, well no look at this, I can go 200 metres under water and stuff like that, but is the emotional value even of actually paying a lot of money that basically that when you feel that it is telling people about you that it is interesting. A lot of people, in my company for example, whenever they think about luxury they start using watch examples and I am always disappointed by it. Because to me it can have the whole, again, Dior, Chanel, fashion houses is a much, much more interesting approach to luxury. It’s about, again, through emotions and in a way something that people can connect much more to rather than just kind of like guys with really expensive watches. I think that the idea of Chanel and Dior is something that we all can connect to and I think that’s the power and if you combine fashion with the luxury thing you can see something much more interesting.
Sarah Maynard
I think it’s quite interesting saying about connectivity and just looking at the whole spectrum of looking at going forwards, the beauty almost of simplicity, of honesty, of materials, of pieces and just looking at things… The point that there’s almost like going backwards, in a way, of having something precious, of something beautiful, that you can pass on to perhaps your children, that there’s more even on looking through advertising and everything else, that actually hitting consumers with nostalgia of memories and actually looking at even just on films the trend of more kind of fables and storytelling, there’s something quite precious about that. Just looking at the kind of turntable of how the whole thing all goes together, you see that as perhaps something to look forward to.
Vicky Richardson
Okay, well great. Thank you very much to our speakers and thank you for your comments as well. Hopefully we’ll have a chance to carry this discussion on in other forms and part two of the culture thread is at the same time tomorrow and we’re going to be talking about design art which I think, you know, a lot of the similar kind of themes will crop up there as well, so thank you.