An algorithm for creating an outfit.

Purchasing clothing, particularly a suit, is not an everyday issue for people, and therefor it becomes the role of the retailer to facilitate, inform and guide people through the process. The retailer must use their knowledge of styling (matching appropriate colours, details, textures, a garment's meaning), product performance, fit etc., to meet the customer's specific needs.

Colour Matching

Creating balanced, pleasing to the eye outfits are not just made by those with a gift for 'style'; there are colour matching rules, when applied to an outfit they complement, blend, or accentuate one another. These rules compliment the outfit creation and selling process, as each combination makes a certain statement about the owner e.g. 'casual', 'formal', 'powerful', 'subtle' etc.

"Art is a human activity consisting in this, that one man consciously, by means of certain external signs, hands on to others feelings he has lived through, and that other people are infected by these feelings and also experience them."

- Leo Tolstoy, the definition of art and it's value - creating an empathetic connection with another.

Today's Consumer

For the past century the consumer has been predominantly shaped, not through their demand for goods, but from the supply of goods. The Ford Motor Company's assembly line in 1913, and the subsequent popularization of mass production and planned obsolescence in the 1910s and 1920s, created a potential over-supply of goods in a frugal post war market. Enter Edward Bernays, known as the 'Father of Public Relations', started his 'Public Relations Council' in 1919 to manipulate public opinion, for the good of businesses' and governments' power and profit. 

Barbara Kruger "I shop therefore I am" (1987)

Design - A design school approach

Here I have detailed some core ideals we learnt about creative product / fashion design from my four years at Massey University in Wellington, which I finished at the end of 2007.

Socratic Questions = Great Ideas.

The 'Socratic question' was a way in which the philosopher Socrates believed we could all become less passive, demonstrate logically why we believe something to be true and therefor not become a 'sheep'. The process involves systematically breaking down a question into parts for analysis. Below is one such formula using Socratic questioning, I have added 'statements' and 'products' to give the formula a broader relevance.

John Waters on Style

John Waters - Writer, Director, Producer, the 'Pope of Trash' and big fan of Japanese deconstructed fashion, has this to say on being creative with fashion, from his book Role Models: