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:

Slimane and Berlin #1

Hedi Slimane, Designer of Dior Homme from 2001 through 2007, was a huge fan and took much inspiration from youth culture in Berlin and London, while he was designing collections in Paris. Slimane's style was a kind of addiction for his Dior Homme customers, and a source of trend direction for designers of high and low, male and female fashion.

Der Stil #1 - Pleated Trousers

"A house is a machine for living in." - Le Corbusier. Along with other postmodern designers, Le Corbusier attempted to create harmony of form and function, and dismiss "frivolous ornament."

Final Project Thesis - May 2007

The research for my 2007 final project began in March of that year. During the summer of '06/'07 I read American Psycho (1991) by Bret Easton Ellis and Affluenza (2007) by Oliver James. These books had very current cultural themes of consumer addiction, celebrity obsession, and the general excesses of western 20th/21st Century lifestyle. Further useful reading was Thorstein Veblen's The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899) and Karl Marx's Capital, Critique of Political Economy (1867). These authors had lived through and critiqued economic boom and bust, and seen consumer frivolity and tragedy, their critiques gave an idea of what was to come...

My conclusion is more or less pointing toward a 'return to self', though it is left a little open ended. My ideal conclusion would have been: "A global recession will financially ruin The U.S.A and Europe, an uprising will be experienced by the ideologically repressed, some more outrageous celebrities will take there own lives, and thus fashion will embrace a radically new set of ideals based on a new set of foundations" 

My views on where the industry was going were far more radical than I cared to write down. I think I had shocked my tutors enough by writing about major changes in the way we saw consumerism, many took this as an attack on the fashion industry and therefor themselves, but far from it, i thought it a new beginning!

'The last supper 2007' Mood board: March 2007