Dear readers, my sincerest apologies for the radio silence of over a month! A new job, new thesis subject and both new and old friends have kept me well occupied. I also want to announce that the blog has moved to
http://jeminalehmuskoski.tumblr.com
Thank you for sticking with me and please go check the latest news!
-Jemina
As promised, our quick visit to the fashion world continues with part 2/3 of basic variables. Here we go:
My first weeks of this brand new year have been busy with a lot of things to learn, people to get to know and plans to be made. Work, school and a bit of free-time too, very exciting. Most importantly, Vogue Paris Collections Spring-Summer 2011 was published and thus arrived home to me – 344 pages of pure pleasure. Digesting information and being able to utilize it efficiently is not always easy, so I have tried to keep in mind some basic elements that may help in organizing ones thoughts on these trendsetting fashion shows. After all, there are only a few elements that can be altered in clothing – it’s all about the right combinations! We will go through these basics of fashion design in a three-part series. First, volume and shape:
Busy with Christmas preparations, I took time to go for a walk in the freezing cold (-28 C) and snowy forest. Isn’t it fun how everything looks prettier with a small amount of sugarcoating? Happy holidays to all!
Christmas is a time of giving. It’s the busiest season for benefit parties and concerts, cookie sales and collecting donations. We give away time and money, do voluntary work and subscribe to charities. Still, we often expect something in return. Some of us believe that good deeds are rewarded in afterlife, some have faith in karma, and for some it’s just Justin Timberlake stuck in our heads – what goes around, comes around. I began to wonder: why is it that sharing without any expectations is such a strange thought for most of us?
Our forebears had to fight for their lives in the wild, eat when they could and keep rivals away from their hunting grounds. Now we mostly fight for the last pair of shoes on sale, eat 24/7 at McDonalds and keep rivals away from our workstations. For most of us living in Finland, owning all the things we do is not a necessity, it’s just something that we have grown into. A short while ago I noticed the 100 Thing Challenge spreading around the world, encouraging people to get rid of their personal belongings and keep only one hundred items of their own. While this sounds kind of radical to me, the message is clear: throwing away material means giving more space for the really meaningful and important things. In many religions asceticism is regarded respectable and people giving all worldly possessions away considered enlightened. Think of buddhist monks walking around in their habits living from hand to mouth – if we saw them shopping at the mall, that would create a credibility gap to say the least. But what makes us think that they are any wiser or happier without a suit from the newest collection of Armani?
Evolutionally thinking, it’s coded into our DNA to hold on to what we got. Little children almost never want to give away things that they like, whether they own them or not. How are we convinced that letting go is sometimes the right thing to do, and what price do we ultimately receive for doing so? How do we learn that sharing makes us happy, but taking without permission is wrong? Would the story have gone differently, had Goldilocks asked the bears for some porridge?
Trying to understand, explain and predict the actions of agents in economies – the reason for researchers to create theories of business. Some are pretty complicated and hard to understand, but translated to the language that most women and some very smart men master, not so difficult after all. Next, I will present the principles of Shoeconomics 101.
The law of demand is usually described as follows: the lower the price, the bigger the quantity demanded. This is because the perceived marginal utility of goods is thought to reduce after each unit of the same product that the buyer purchases. Basically, it means that after the buyer has received their first pair of shoes, they are willing to pay less money for the next one. This is true for many brands of an average price range, say Zara, H&M or Bianco. You know that the heel piece will be worn out after a stroll around the town, but they still look kind of nice.. Here we have a demand curve, that presents the relation of price and quantity of purchases. (On the vertical axis we have the price of the product, and horizontally the quantity of purchases.)
Veblen goods are a group of commodities, that people are actually willing to purchase less if their price is reduced. In this case, greater price means greater status, hence greater value. Now, I’m talking Manolo Blahnik, Jimmy Choo and Christian Louboutin. Consumers prefer this type of goods because for them, price is quality – also known as the Snob Effect.
The Bandwagon Effect explains that the preference for a certain good increases as the quantity of demand rises. This would translate to that the more people buy shoes of a certain type, the bigger number of others would purchase them too, with no necessary change to the price. This is what happened to the ballerina shoes.
Now, some shoes have such a strong connection to certain genres of fashion, that there is only a limited amount of customers willing to purchase them at any given price.
However, footwear being such an important part of self-expression for many people, and human beings having the tendency to value individuality, most types of shoes only become popular for a short period of time. When a certain point at the quantity of purchases is reached, the demand curve starts to decline. Next, we are going to study the effect of time versus quantity.
With most trends, also regarding shoes, the curve follows a pattern called the Diffusion Of Innovations. First only a limited number of people, called Innovators, start to wear footwear that is somewhat different from anything else that we have seen before. Sometimes it’s just one person, take Lady Gaga with her McQueen lobster claws. Next, fans and fashionistas follow with either the exactly same product or similar ones. They are referred to as Early Adopters. After that, a huge number of shoe manufacturers recognize their potential market opportunity and start pushing out copies of the shoe. This is when the Early Majority starts shopping for these pairs, and the shoes become a must-have in any closet. In a few weeks time, also the not so active shoppers drag themselves to the stores and, not finding any other kinds of shoes, make the purchase. They are called the Late Majority. Now we have only a small amount of the population without claw shoes, so the shops put the rest on sale. Some of these Laggards may bring the pair home now that the price is not that high. At this point, the early users have probably stopped using these incredibly uncomfortable shoes and moved on to an other trend. (Here we have quantity on the vertical axis and time presented horizontally.)
In fashion, we often also recycle trends that first became popular a few decades back. For example, the wooden clogs from the 80′s made a comeback last summer. If you are wise enough to keep all your pairs of shoes forever, you might not have to purchase new ones. Otherwise, the same cycle is repeated again.
Now we have a basic understanding of the economics of shoes, and as only practice makes perfect, I suggest you all take a little field trip to the nearest shopping mall!
The Little Black – a category that two exquisite and most desirable objects of the art and fashion industries fall into. Everyone is looking for the perfect match, the one that fits like a glove and feels just right. We each have our own criteria: some like it thicker, all like it well cut, most like it covered in leather. Some seek for years, for some it’s love at first sight.
You know what I’m talking about.
The Little Black Book is a legend amongst writers, artists, movie makers and basically all self-respectful people in the creative industries. Pablo Picasso, Ernest Hemingway, Cynthia Rowley, and me. All of us have experienced the originally French oilcloth notebook in its different reincarnations, decades apart. The classic appearance, the luxurious feeling of fine craftsmanship under your fingers, and the irresistibly crisp sound of fresh paper when you open The Book for the first time.
I myself have filled in a couple of good old faithful Moleskines, the probably most well known brand of notebooks. It’s not only that I do like these legendary journals, but us people in Helsinki, the World Design Capital of 2012, don’t seem to have much of a choice. I would really love to try out these down below, if someone knows a place to get a hold of them in Finland, please do tell me!
Fashionary is a notebook developed especially for fashion designers, with a fashion dictionary, patterns, templates and plenty of vanilla white paper.
Behance’s Dot Grid Journal offers a matrix of light dots to help sketching without overpowering the pencil, and is preferred amongst many graphic designers. The products claim also to be 100% sustainable design, so yey, go green.
And a little treat for iPhone users. Combine this Pad&Quill’s cover with the Moleskine application in progress, and we have LBB 2.0!
Then there’s the other Little Black.
Also known as “Chanel’s Ford”, this simple and short design is ascribed an invention of Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel, one of the most influential designers in the 20th century. You can dress it up, dress it down, wear it over a shirt or under a jacket. Wear it for morning coffee, five o’clock tea and cocktail hour, we don’t care – it’s fabulous at any given time.
We people tend to associate different tastes, smells, sounds and colors with particular times of the year – for many, it’s only summer after the first taste of strawberries, and christmas starts with the scent of freshly baked gingerbread cookies. The feel of our clothes, the touch of air outside, or the sound of ground under our shoes can bring that sudden feeling of a certain season. For me, winter is the time of woolen socks, burning candles and bright red mixed with a hint of metallic. It’s staying out of the snowstorms, staying up late because you can’t tell the time by looking out of the window, and staying warm under a pile of blankets.
When it’s cold outside, we want to feel warm inside. The food we crave for is different depending on the temperature outdoors, and many of us like to eat hot soups, stews and spicy ethnic foods especially during the winter. Hot chocolate with marshmallows is the classic treat for kids coming in after a long day of play in the snow.
We dress in not only warmer, but often softer and fuzzier clothes. You see, it’s not only that we want to feel warm, we also want to look like we do so. Women wearing black tights feel exactly as cold when it’s below zero than legs covered in skin-colored stockings of the same denier – the difference is that only bare looking feet shock other people and make you dressed inappropriately for the weather. Winter fashion often plays with richer tones, more texture and deeper colors than the spring and summer collections. You can dress in several layers from head to toe and add heavier accessories without it looking too excessive. Otherwise very much a summer person myself, I do look forward to getting a hold of the autumn/winter fashion spreads every year..
