think about picking the new beijing olympic stadium back in 2003, if my design were just with bricks and cements, would i have gotten the project?
let’s say you are driving a bmw. a newer model comes out and it looks great. very modern. but then you find out that the horsepower didn’t change. no new safety features. the fuel efficiency didn’t even improve. basically, all that is change is the new styling of the exterior. would you buy it? what about getting a new designer chair? a new phone? a new computer? i think you got the point – a new styling is not really a new design. so here is my real question: why are you buying yesteryear’s technology when you are buying fashion?
fashion champions vintage like no other design fields. couture values how many thousand of man-hours are needed to make one dress, how the embroidery techniques are unchanged for over a century. how backward is that? if vintage is so great, then why are we buying new stuff? yea, i am talking to you, marc jacobs.
and this bring me to fashion design in china. playing catch up with the west is a losing battle. competing in the quality of traditional tailoring with the italian is a slow and painful process even if you win. and we are at a great disadvantage if we simply subject ourselves to the judges of good taste from france.
we need to look no further than the chinese auto industry for hints. wang chuan-fu, the ceo of ‘byd’, knows styling is only part of the equation. to outrun the gasoline-based car companies and truly compete internationally, he saw lithium ion batteries as the solution – new technology. for examples, how can we utilize the sneakers production technology and create something new and fashionable that we can call our own?
armed with the knowledge and the experience of western designers, we should all be new style trailblazers to push fashion forwards. and let technology be our tools.
(first published in the feb. 2010 issue of his life magazine)
陈词滥调让荷包坚挺
假设你开辆bmw。一部全新的款式，外形好看，现代感强。但你发现车的马力没变，没有新的安全功能，燃油效率也并没有提高。简单的说，唯一的变化是它外表的新造型。你会买吗？同样的道理你会买把新的设计品牌的椅子吗？新手机？新电脑？我想你明白我的意思——新的造型不代表新的设计。那我想问：在购买时装时你为何选择昔日的设计？
时装界的大腕儿们比起任何其它设计领域都要老式。高级定制时装不在乎花费多少人工来完成一件礼服，还有几百年来始终不变的刺绣技术。这不是在倒退是什么？如果老式这么好我们又为何在买新的东西？没错，我正在说marc jacobs，他向来是时尚界中一位笨拙而孤僻的局外人。同时，他又是最酷、最具影响力的时装设计师。著名时尚评论人suzy menkes曾经 在《国际先驱论坛报》上写道：“lv的08s/s整场表演是对经典时尚的一次拙劣模仿。”
说到这里，中国的时装设计也面临同样困境。追赶西方的设计只意味着一场败局。与意大利在传统剪裁的质量上竞争，既是你获得胜利那也是一个缓慢又痛苦的过程。同样，如果我们只服从良好品味的法国，无论怎样我们都处于不利地位。
中国的汽车产业就是最好的例子。byd的ceo王传福明确地了解造型只是答案的一部分。想要超越燃烧汽油的汽车产业并在未来的市场站住脚，他预料锂离子电池才是汽车能源的未来——也就是说新科技。举个例子，我们怎样能采取球鞋上的生产技术来创造出属于我们的全新的时尚产品？
容纳了西方设计师的知识和经验，本土设计师应该打破所有限制，用科技推动时尚到极限，否则消费者的荷包只能一直坚挺了。
(第一次发表: 2010年2月 他的生活杂志. 翻译: joe wang.)
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