Kawakubo.Calculation

“The only thing important to me is making clothes,”^[1] Rei Kawakubo once said. For more than four decades, she has continually upset the industry apple cart by challenging accepted standards of beauty. Among the many tipping points in her career was the bulbous, padded Dress Meets Body, Body Meets Dress collection of 1996: “Critics denounced the designs as ‘tumor’ dresses,” Vogue later observed, “but Kawakubo weathered the outrage, and her larger achievement—her avant-garde triumph—was that she gave people a chance to feel passionately about fashion.”^[2]

The designer—who told The New Yorker in 2005 that she “never intended to start a revolution”^[3]—galvanized the international fashion world when her label, Comme des Garçons, made its Paris debut in April 1981. (She was already so famous in Japan that her black-clad followers were nicknamed “crows.”)^[4] Her stated intention from the start was to show “what I thought was strong and beautiful. It just so happened that my notion was different from everybody else’s.”^[5] Indeed, during the 1980s, Kawakubo’s inky, seemingly formless, garments stood in direct opposition to the bright, body-conscious clothing championed by the likes of Thierry Mugler and Claude Montana. Throwing political correctness to the wind, Montana once labeled Kawakubo’s controversial look “post-atomic.” Another put-down then commonly tossed in her direction was “ragpicker”; and, in 1983, The Christian Science Monitor suggested that “Comme des Garçons (Like the Boys) might more aptly be titled Comme des Clochards (Like the Tramps).”^[6]

Kawakubo later said that the aggressiveness of the early showings was “a little game to put ourselves on the map,”^[7] yet, many years on, she continues to wage war against conformity. There is hardly a designer who does not respect Kawakubo, and many observers consider her contribution to fashion to be as great as that of Balenciaga, or perhaps even Chanel. Her influence extends beyond garments to innovations in fragrance and retailing. “Comme des Garçons,” Kawakubo told Vogue in 1995, “is a gift to oneself, not something to appeal or attract the opposite sex.”^[8]

In 1987, Vogue predicted that this designer of one-step-further fashion would be recognized “as the woman who will lead fashion into the twenty-first century.”^[9] And so she has.

Source: http://www.vogue.com/voguepedia/Rei_Kawakubo

As I have mentioned before, I very much respect the philosophies and attitudes that Kawakubo and Yamamoto hold toward design. In particular, Kawakubo's quote:

"Creation cannot be calculated"

This really resonates with my process and with what I was discussing earlier in relation to my imperfect working process. I feel in a way that creation seems to be too calculated. In fashion in particular, as it is such a fast moving mecca of creation. Are we forcing creation into a calculated routine through constantly maintaining a rigid and strict timeline in which to churn out creations for the market? In some ways I wish fashion could slow down so that we may see a more genuine and lengthy progression of creative calculation.

As a singular design entity, I very much feel the need for a loose time structure. I work best when I creatively feel inclined to do so, but I can work also outside of this. Perhaps I feel that the outcomes are better when I feel creative because I am enjoying the outflow of thought and the creation process more.

The long and short of it however, is that I essentially agree with this philosophy, but at the same time, I note the difficulties of its definition when placed in the context of timelines in the fashion industry.

e.tailing

Reading through the Ragtrader site, a lot of the predominant news issues outline companies plans to launch digital stores. Etailing is not a new concept really, but it appears to be something that the industry is utilising as the next step in business.

Fashion e-tail boom

06 Mar 2012

Australian consumers spent nearly $16 billion online in 2011, with fashion among the top three categories making up to 73 per cent of online revenue.

Analyst house Telsyte claims Australians spent $15.9 billion on online shopping throughout the year, representing a 64 per cent increase from 2010.

The figure is expected to increase to $30 billion by 2016. The study found between 8 per cent and 40 per cent of the money spent by Australian consumers was going to overseas retailers.

According to the analyst company, discounts and deals are fueling growth of the Australian digital retail industry.

Telsyte senior research manager Sam Yip said technological advances and economic conditions have led to e-commerce retailers embracing the concept of discount online shopping.

“Retailers have spent the past few years trying to find the best way to drive their online strategy, and it is now evident that offering discounts is the main lever to get Australians to spend.

“We've seen the home pages of retailers shift from focusing on product range to discount specials, either through a dedicated clearance page, daily deals section, factory second lists, or pre-owned goods.”

The study discovered the top digital retail categories were travel, groceries and fashion, with the three making up to 73 per cent of revenue.

This story originally appeared on Ragtrader sister site AdNews.

SOURCE: http://www.ragtrader.com.au/news/fashion-e-tail-boom

Ideas in relation to e-tailing came up at the LMFF business seminar. It was terrifying to hear the potential processes that could be employed by a store utilising technological capabilities to sell to a customer. Such as, and not limited to, analysing what the customer bought previously, their size, delivering straight to work or office etc.

The crux of this concept however, I feel is a good one, in that digital forms of communication and sales should be utilised in combination with the things you already do, not as a singular effort to boost sales. I suppose this integrates into my interest in social changes, in the sense that even though technology appears to be one of the major niches in the industry now, its still not something that can be shoved at someone to stand alone. First it is necessary to understand people, which in a sense was the underlying point of the scenario outlined. If you don't know who you're designing for; who you are responsible to for what you create, then there is little to no use in using technology to push it further.

I have been working with L U I H O N on projects that revolve around online presence, the label has recently released an app on the app store, which looks beautiful. I think its interesting to contemplate these sorts of spheres of communication, but I suppose it has to be done the right way first for it to be useful!

Not.Quite.Right

“ Perfection is the devil ”

-Yohji Yamamoto

This quite I feel really correlates to how I work. In my first post I noted that I like to work holistically. Ever since I touched pencil to paper in my pattern making class, something was a little bit out. I find that when I work, no matter how precise I intend to be, it always comes out not quite right.

I warred with myself over this for a long time before coming to terms with the fact that my essence is a creative one. If I simply relax and allow the garment or process to form as it wills, then the end result will be one that reflects my hand in making.

source: http://www.vogue.com/voguepedia/Yohji_Yamamoto

Singing.Ringing.Tree

singing ringing tree | tonkin liu from tonkin liu on Vimeo.

I like the unexpected, having a sense of wonder with the world, seeing narrative, hearing stories, feeling thought.

Maling.People.Participation

Following on from Florida's writing, I am drawn back to part of the reason why I am so fascinated by society and the worlds we create.

Its not so much the manner in which society fuels change and design, but the very core of this which is the creative minds of the people who exist within it. Participatory design is a fascinating thing, there is no end to the current of information to draw from when you simply look at people, let alone have them participate in your design process. Take for example, a few snippets of my strange habit of observing people's exterior appearance on public transport (and furtively punching them into my notes application on my phone):

"A withered man's jowls hang sweetly. He sits with his knees together and looks furtively at me from behind his salty moustache. He is gone now."

"There's a little yellow duck plugged into her iPhone. Her jumper is navy knit with red hearts distorted at their edges into pixel-like blocks. An overstuffed, crumpled paper bag swings from the hand clutching the pink cased phone. A female tram driver barks the words "collins street" and the speakers crackle and sputter against her voice, static and warping"

"A crudely carved wooden heart rests against a milky collarbone. Short hair cropped into a bob as a fine liner is drawn out from a bag. Scrawls something onto hand's surface. Lucas pawpaw ointment, bright red against faded blue bag. Eggplant cardigan, thick fringe and stockings. More words scrawled in a tiny moleskin notebook"

All these deliciously random snippets of information are drawn simply by being aware, which parallels my constant need to look at things and their different facets, to quest for a knowledge that I do not yet have.

Maybe the underlying thought here is that I love to think, observe, and respond in a way that brings these things into tangible forms.

This desire to know, and the knowledge of the participatory process was

given to me by artist Jason Maling. I booked an appointment in his last participatory art project "The Vorticist", and still have my negative drawing from the experience. I remember coming away filled with this sense of awe at what I had read from previous appointments in the first compendium.

Check here for details on the project itself:

http://www.thevorticist.com/

http://www.jasonmaling.com/fuguestate/index.php

He is currently taking appointments for his next project, which I will be on board for. I suppose this means that this is a lasting resonance, and that I'll never tire of trying to recognise the many facets of the human identity.

http://www.fuguestate.info/

People.Polhemus

I have been musing over Karen's first lecture still,and one thing that overarched my thoughts was her expression of the two potential roles design can have. I found I Identify with the second one most:

'You can analyse the cultural and social settings in which your designs will exist and predict and determine how this will evolve and consequently lead the direction.'

To be honest, which I simply must be if I am expressing my thoughts, I don't feel that I am forcing my design into being something that is 'leading the way'. This could be because of the environment I am in, that of the indulged design student that can choose to create what she wants. However is this really true?

My mentor, Liam, said that in a way you sometimes have to recreate in order to innovate. I think that this recreation could well relate to perceiving the current cultural and social climate and then recreating this in a manner that is new within the confines of a garment. I feel that design is always held accountable for at least one person in the world, and this is why I am so fascinated by society and culture itself. If I always consider things from different angles, and from a perspective that takes into account the very beings that design is responsible for, I feel that what I create will be relevant.

Source: http://static.vogue.com/voguepedia/images/9/96/Yohji-Yamamoto-hero.jpg

To quote Yohji (a designer that seems to pop up whenever people talk to me about my work, which is all of twice. Yes, I also stole this from Karen)

"If fashion is a way of looking at our daily lives then it is very important indeed.” "

So here begins my first foray into expressing (or in this case recognising) where I sit in the scheme of things. When I mentioned my interest in people, Leah directed me to the writings of Richard Florida:

This so far is a good read, if I am to use blatantly simplistic adjectives. This also came up in a research lecture in the context of people who observe trends/cultures/ philosophies to dictate and extrapolate potential future sociocultural changes (which also ties cleanly in with what Karen stated with regards to the roles of design). I have always been interested in people I suppose, how we affect the polarity of design systems simply through existing.

I have since just noticed that there is an expansion on this book called 'the flight of the creative class' which is more recent (if you can call 2006 recent) than this book, which I believe was published in 2002.

This commercial recalled me to 'the rise of the creative class' in the respect that it parallels this idea of the older generation operating on a mathematical, logical, practically led plane and the younger taking an idea and fuelling it with a creative response. The predominant contention in florida's book is that there is an entirely new subset of class which is identified as 'the creative class'. This term coins a growing subset individuals who utilise creative processes or need to harness creative attributes in various fields of work and lifestyle. Its an interesting notion that I suppose could be applied to social norms today.

Names.Labels

Its quite complicated for me to think of what I should be articulating here, so I suppose I'll just start by putting my mind into this digital sphere.

I suppose a lot of the time I am expressing things in order to fill a certain hole in the context of what I do (that is, to blatantly express I am a particular way in order to fit myself into designland). But if I am to be perfectly honest with myself, there certainly are things that collate and create who I am as a designer. If I can call myself that at all, as I am really only a student.

Thinking about that though, brings me to recalling a conversation I had not long ago. My friend is a Graphic Design graduate. I was recently debating with him over whether he considered himself to be an artist or designer. He replied "Well, I'm really neither, because I haven't achieved work in either field". He paused a second and finished with "I suppose I'm a forklift driver".

This was both amusing and disconcerting, and brought me to the perspective that as long as you still do things, for paid work or otherwise, you can still align yourself with that skill. I will always feel as though I am a Designer, whether I work in that field or whether I have thrown my dreams to the wind and sit bumbling behind a desk somewhere, gnawing pen lids as I enter data absentmindedly into a whirring computer monitor.**

The same thing applies to having a vested interest in current issues in fashion itself and other spheres. You seem to be able to convince yourself that you don't really have a stance on something because you simply hadn't considered it in your practice, however you cannot accept that you don't have a stance at all once you know.

I suppose I am trying to express my newfound understanding of truly having ones own ethos, because a philosophy appears to be an intangible constant in design; unwavering yet adaptable.

Nice piece of verbose waffle that was, but at least I'm warming up a little.

**Please, should you ever find me in that position, bludgeon me to death with a stapler or other blunt instrument readily to hand!!