By Sichun Song

What’s wrong with fashion? I hope it was simpler and with more goodwill than it is now. So I looked up the etymology of the word “fashion”:

Fashion (n.)

c.1300, “shape, manner, mode,” from Old French façon (12c.) “face, appearance; construction, pattern, design; thing done; beauty; manner, characteristic feature,” from Latin factionem(nominative factio) “group of people acting together,” literally “a making or doing,” from facere “to make”

People challenge fashion because it panders to the bad side of people: the side that of greedy, jealous, irrational, complicated, and contradictory. Fashion controls and pamper our lust and make money of it. What happened?

Those people who are fashion machine workers

Fashion has become an industry with fashion workers acting as countless but replaceable parts of this gorgeous machine. “Ta-ta-ta-ta-” the sound of high heels, perfect hairstyle and make-up…The careers connected with fashion are always bling bling. However, there was a joke about fashion magazine: what the fashion magazines do is teach people who earn 4k/m with how do people who earn 20k/m spend money by a bunch of fashion editors earning 8k/m. It’s so true! What’s more, do you find that the fashion magazines in Beijing is sharing the same content as NYC’s?

Consumerism is the lubricant of this machine as well as commercial is the fuel. Apart from fashion magazines, “there are professions really harmful and possibly one profession is phonier. Advertising, in persuading people to buy things they don’t need, with money they don’t have, in order to impress others who don’t care, is probably the phoniest field in existence today.” Said by Victor Papanek in his book Designing for the Real World.

Fashion got an Alzheimer’s disease

Being always forgetful with the latest thing (did I have lunch today?) and remembering the oldest story in childhood clearly is the most obvious symptom in early Alzheimer’s disease. Don’t you think fashion is like someone who has sickness like this? Fashion has poor memory with the just-out-of-fashion things and embrace the vintage trendy element in 1980s warmly. So called “fashion” is a “noihsaf”, a reflux process of “abandon- retrieve- retro- abandon- retrieve-retro.” The fashion machine keeps running in a certain routine to be boring, forgetful and stupid.

So in the end, what happens to all the fashion stuff we bought? At this rate of consumption, it can’t fit into our houses even though the average U.S. house size has doubled in this country since the 1970s. It all goes out in the garbage. And that brings us to disposal. All of this garbage (stuff we bought) either gets dumped in a landfill, which is just a big hole in the ground, or first it’s burned in an incinerator and then dumped in a landfill. Either way, both pollute the air, land, water and, don’t forget, change the climate. World will be finally exploded because of “fashion trash”.

The earth becomes ugly with every “pretty” product we buy every second. How ironic!

How fashion will die?

Although it is biased I am still looking forward to seeing the end of fashion industry. This will be difficult unless it dies in an unnatural way, like global war, huge financial crisis, environmental disaster or outer space aggression. Fashion, as an unnecessary of human being’s first and second level of needs according to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs will be ignored by the world finally. No fashion week, no SS/FW trend and collection releasing, no fashion magazines with luxury commercials, celebrities no longer pretend to walk on street with deliberately casual, internet and 3G will be interrupted, department stores and boutiques closed… Thus, no one has new to wear. Hooray! Everyone starts to look up their storage and closet for old clothes and even share with family members and neighborhood. No “in” or “out”, the understanding of fashion from people’s intuition reflects on mix-match of styles and colors and the reconfiguration of different vintage clothes.

Designers don’t design fashion; real fashion is an emergence from both top-down and bottom-up. Fashion can exist with a new form by emergence, a way that is guided and designed by no one. The human instinct towards the balance of functionality and aesthetics is the most fair and natural decision maker and trend leader. Anyway, this is my own wishful thinking. Our civilization is as complicated as the universe, unfortunately, it’s becoming more complex instead of simpler.

The new fig leaf

The original value of clothes is keeping warm and acting as the fig leaf, so does fashion. The more civilized, the more complicated the “embarrassment” means. “I am not a barbarian,” the fig leaf on your waist claims, while fashion claims: “I am not the mass. I have my life style.”

This is a way to balance wildness and adhere social complexity. It promises the cultures evolving, races migration and classes change, which means, you start to look down on people wearing Old Navy when you start to wear Zara someday, but soon you will feel shame when standing with the ones in Armani Exchange. In other words, fashion makes you keep feeling embarrassed by making your fig leaf transparent. At the same time, society will merge and evolve when you keep updating your sense of shame. The sense of superiority is build and exposed. Cultures will evolve, races will migrate, classes will change while we are finding next fashion tag as our fig leaf.

Let’s get to the point, can we face the world nakedly and throw all fashion tags away? I once was confident with it before I found myself showing my “tag” of my education background subconsciously. Suddenly I knew, it is so hard to forget no matter luxury handbags or famous school which are the same thing: the fashion tags that attached on our body: the new fig leaf.

by Sichun Song

When Isaac Newton holds a simple dropped apple and unseals the most mysterious principle of nature, system could be simpler than you see, but also more complex than you think. Being praised by poets, philosophers, and all the ancient wise men, every little thing like a flower, a leaf, and a teardrop is a system.

“To see a World in a Grain of Sand

And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,

Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand

And Eternity in an hour.”

William Blake (1757-1827)

System is about relationships

System is artificial and natural. Interestingly, from biological laws to ideological philosophy and from philological experiments to economical principles, most of the theories in the world have similarities. When you see the world and every single piece of it as a system, you will discover the inherent relationships, your past experience and knowledge will be connected and you will get inspired.

System is about questions 

System gives the reason of every existence and why they exist this way. The nature of system is relationship, so there is no sense to judge a thing without thinking in the context of a system. System is ubiquitous. It outspreads its fairly long tentacles around us. Those tentacles are the most accessible and pervasive touch-points in our life. If you stop here and make decision/ judgment base on what you see, you will no longer see the full body. The tentacles are the questions but not answers, clues to the intangible relationship and position in a more organized system.

System is about look outside

System is a tower. People in it overlook the view from the tower and they think that view is a full view. But only people who stand outside the tower will see the exactly whole things. Things go same when we talk about design. We usually used the word ‘user-centered design’ in the product design or interactive design process; however, it is totally different when we see design in a systematic vision. There are many stakeholders in this Eco-system, including business, marketing, management, engineering and so on. It is no longer a systematic thinking if we only consider the user, what’s more, a risk will be taken for the structural mistakes.

System is design

Nowadays, most leading digital giants on this planet, such as Google and Apple, applied system thinking in their strategy. Every product they make will be a very important tentacle in the system they are building to cover every touch point of customers. A single product is no longer a collection of expected features by customers, but also possible connections to other possibilities. Take latest iOS versions for example, the Passbook in iOS 6 is not a single feature but an incredible connection to all the existing travel services in mobile; similarly, the thumbprint scanner in iOS 7 opens up a door to the next generation of payment, security check, personal identification, etc. What they bring to the industry is an increased complexity and possibility of a system, but not longer a feature. This is how system thinking changes the business world, it amplifies how product can be influent in a business context, more than in a customer context.

To be a designer is far more difficult than before, as the world is become more and more artificial and overwhelming knowledge and information and more importantly, the desire to gain them. Design is no longer only aesthetic, functional or creative; it’s a part of the system, as well as business, society and technology. System thinking is the first criterion for being a real 21st century designer.

System is a philosophy of life

Buddhism shares similar thought with system thinking in life. (I am not a Buddhism, but the following philosophy is the best explanation of how system thinking important in life.)

The main question that Buddhism tries to answers is “how to overcome suffering”. Ji, one of the four basic principles in Buddhism (Ku, Ji, Mie, Dao) tells us the reason why we are suffering from our lives: the incomprehension of the ultimate truth of the world, namely “the rules of origin”, a kind of system thinking. The incomprehension may lead to the feeling of like or dislike, and the motivation of endeavor or rejection. The result is greedy to things and suffering comes along.

“The rules of origin” claims that nothing in the world will exist alone in eternity; All origins attach others and combined by elements and conditions in the systems. Nothing has noumenon. We will definitely be suffering if we are going to pursue happiness from a single thing.

In a word, system thinking is not only important for design, but also for our life. If we see things from the system perspective, then there will be less complaint, disappoint and even less ecstasy and crazy. Our mindset will be more calm and clear. It is a practical philosophy for all human beings.

by Sichun Song

Roland’s ‘Mythologies’ is a critic way to influence how the society understand social culture, like many of the avant-garde designers managed to express their connection with the world, in a critical, ironic, and unique way by doing design fiction or critical design. However, for both Roland and the design avant-garde, they are using design/writing as a medium to ask for attention, stimulate thinking and provoke debate and revolution. Everyone is trying to influence the world from every single field using his own way: Steve Jobs’ Apple; John Lennon’s rock music; Coco Chanel’s fashion revolution; Yuan Longping’s hybrid rice and Roland Barthes’ semiology theory. You and I can make it too.

So when I was reading these two short beautiful articles, I felt simple and interesting instead of being scared by profound philosophy (the true reason may be that I can’t understand Roland well based on my knowledge and comprehension.) I even played the role of Roland and tried to empathize his intention to get insight from the social culture and provoke people by using the ‘Myth’. I was impressed by two stories: Toys and Plastic. Toys reminds me of Neil Postman’s The Disappearance of Childhood, which strongly criticizes that the boundary between adults and children has been destroyed fiercely by the media like Television. By contrast, Toys seems more mild yet more thorough by coming with three main arguments:

– The transformation of toys’ nature；
– The disappearance of the functions of toys；
– Toys’ materials become lifeless.

Roland analyzes that adults uses “Toy” as props to unconsciously establish a “stage” that allows kids to behave like an adult, we are losing our curiosity and our children’s minds is destroyed, now we have build to destroy our kid’s, this is not right. Before I read this article, I always thought that, similar with the majorities, toys were harmless, friendly and innocent. When I recall the memory of my childhood toys, I suddenly find that all the toys are designed by adults, no matter they are bought by parents, their friends, or asked by myself in the toy store. And those so-called “creative” toys are also full of adults’ traps! Adults use toys, the favorite treasures of children, to built children’s consciousness. The similar situation is discussed in Amusing Ourselves to Death: Television, our favorite entertainment, is destroying our ability to think. More cautious should be paid to building than destroying, because building children’s consciousness or value system means shaping our future world and even the possible next century. Strongly contrasting from Roland’s straightforward style, a famous picture book author Jimmy from Taiwan paints and writes in a childlike and poetic styles which also makes people touching, thinking and feeling sorrow. In his latest picture book, My Faults are Adults’ Faults, Jimmy shows the worries, happiness, wishes and protests from children’s eyes. He wrote:

The most wonderful thing in the world is to

Embrace a brand new day in every morning

Totally free

Never sold out.
…

Please love me, cherish me and praise me as usual

For the one I used to be

When I turn to be different from your expectation.

Plastic. 1950s is the era of mass production of plastic. Plastic provides basic raw material to make this happen. Its scalability and fabricability, more importantly how cheap they are, make us lazy to touch the world around us. Roland describes Plastic as “the first magical substance which consents to be prosaic”, “what best reveals it for what it is is the sound it gives, at once hollow and flat; its noise is its undoing, as are its colours, for it seems capable of retaining only the most chemical looking ones.” Well, another interesting phenomenon is that you can change the words “toys” and “plastic” into other words and it’s still reasonable.

We are contradictory, on one hand we are creating a likely “happy and hilarious” childhood by flourishing toy industry; on the other hand we worry about “is the essential value of the real world forgotten?” Roland once wrote: “What I claim is to live to the full the contradiction of my time, which may well make sarcasm the condition of truth.” in the year 1957 when Mythologies first published. During these 60 years, his book has been never out of date. The reason may be because our era is still with full contradiction, although we can’t define where is the extremity; and Roland’s theory will not out of date as he didn’t limit his view within phenomenon. Design for the Real World by Victor Papanek is another never-out-of-date classic I read, which was written in 1971 (42 years ago). Some avant-garde concept like ‘Green Design’ that weren’t acknowledged by people that time, are regarded as very prospective classical theories today. This is how Roland’s stories teach me, which is thinking out of the box of common things, wisdom may keep you balanced and rational, then you start designing for the real world.

by Sichun Song

罗兰的“神话”在于用一种批判的方式影响社会对于大众文化的认识，就像很多设计师用一种“宣言性”的方式体现对世界的影响。例如他们用design fiction, critical design的思想去做设计，看似讽刺、批判甚至荒谬，但他们却只是在用这样一种形式或是媒介来唤起关注，激发思考进而引发社会讨论和变革，这与罗兰的神话可谓异曲同工。其实每个领域的人都在用自己擅长的方法在表达自己，试图影响世界。就像是用苹果影响世界的史蒂夫·乔布斯，用音乐影响世界的约翰·列侬，用时尚影响世界的可可·香奈儿，用水稻影响世界的袁隆平，更有用符号学理论影响世界的罗兰·巴特。你，我，都可以。

所以当我阅读罗兰·巴特的这些精美小文时，并没有觉得特别的深奥（应该是我的理解力现在并不能读“懂”他），我反而觉得很简单很有趣味性。我甚至试图扮演罗兰这个角色，想要体会他是怎样通过所谓“神话”的方式来理解社会文化，唤起人的共鸣的。有两个小故事让我印象深刻：《玩具》和《塑料》。《玩具》（Toys）这篇小文让我想起了之前读过的尼尔·波兹曼(Neil Postman)的《童年的消逝》(The Disappearance of Childhood), 那本书更加激烈的批判了电视媒体等对童年与成人世界分界线进行猛烈摧毁所导致的童年的消逝。《玩具》相比之下更为温和却也更透彻，罗兰通过三个论点：

– 玩具性质的转变；
– 玩具功能的丧失；
– 玩具材料的去生命化；

论述了“玩具”是童年社会被成人世界导演的道具，我们在失去童趣的同时又在设计一个成人的儿童世界，这是不对的。在读这篇文章之前，我像很多人一样，觉得玩具是一种无公害的，友善的，单纯的东西。而现在回过头来看，我童年时代玩的玩具，不管是父母塞给我的，别人送的，还是自己指着商场货架上点名要的……原来全部都是大人设计好的。现在那些所谓激发创造力的玩具，居然也可以说是大人做好的圈套！大人通过玩具，这种孩子喜爱的东西，建造了孩子的意识形态。就像《娱乐至死》（Amusing Ourselves to Death）中，人们喜爱的娱乐方式——电视，反而笑里藏刀地成了摧毁人类自我思考能力的慢性杀手。相比于摧毁，也许建造需要更加审慎。因为建造儿童的意识形态和价值体系，就意味着塑造了未来的世界，塑造了至少之后一个世纪的可能性。与罗兰和尼尔的直白形成鲜明对比，台湾漫画家几米的漫画充满童趣和诗意，同时也让人陷入深思和悲伤。在他的一本绘本《我的错都是大人的错》中，几米用一个孩子的角度道出了孩子的担忧、快乐、愿望还有抗议。他写道：

世界最棒的事，

就是每天醒来都有崭新的一天，

完全免费，

永不断货。
……

当我变得和你的期待不一样时，

请爱我原来的样子，

疼我原来的样子，

赞美我原来的样子。

塑料。1950s正是塑料开始大规模生产的时代。“塑料”可以说是这场“成人儿童剧”的原料，它的可塑性和低成本，让人懒惰，从此难以接触到真实世界。罗兰对它的神表述是“它是第一种神奇的甘愿平淡的物质。”罗兰老师，不要这样，塑料它脸皮薄。“塑料显露最多的是空洞平板的声响，它的噪音就是它的毁灭，它的色彩也一样，它只能保留最平庸无奇的化学外貌。”好吧，其实还有一个很有趣现象，你可以试着把罗兰文章中的“塑料”“玩具”替换成其他词而基本不改变它的意思……

我们的世界是矛盾的，玩具制造了一个让我们满意的“成人儿童世界”——丰富的玩具让童年开始，塑料让这一切成为可能，但繁荣背后的思索是，我们是不是“忘记了真实世界的价值”？罗兰巴特曾经有过这样的宣言：活在我们这个矛盾已达极限的时代，何妨任讽刺和挖苦成为真理的代言。(What I claim is to live to the full the contradiction of my time, which may well make sarcasm the condition of truth.) 这句话写于1957年，《神话》初版的时候。而当我们在近60年后的今天再来看这本关于当年大众文化/神话的诠释时却觉得罗兰的观点依然适用，原因大概是因为我们的这个时代，矛盾依旧到达了极限，虽然我们无法定义极限到底在哪里；而且罗兰所述的那些不局限于现象的真理并不会过时。在我读过的书里，还有类似的一本经典：维克多·帕帕奈克(Victor Papanek)的《为真实的世界设计》 (Design for the Real World)，写于42年前的1971年。书中哪些当时并不被认同的前卫理念比如“绿色设计“，今天看来却是非常有前瞻性的经典，传授了每个设计工作者都需要认知的道理。对于符号学和罗兰的理论我只知皮毛，但回头想想那些“最初的问题”，质疑和挑战现状，这就是罗兰给我的启示，被愚蠢和矛盾裹挟的一代人，如何在大系统中保持清醒和平衡，这就是知识之外的人生智慧。

by Sichun Song

Having read the article How Steve Jobs’ Love of Simplicity Fueled A Design Revolution by Walter Isaacson, I learned more details about Jobs’ thought and stories even though I had read Steve Job’s bibliography before. Isaacson emphasizes Jobs’ insistence of simplicity and the influence on Apple. As a result, the hallmark of Apple’s design under Jobs: clean and friendly and fun continues to today. What impresses me is that Jobs consciously positions himself at the intersections of the arts and technology. More accurately, he is at the intersection of arts, technology and business. Not only because he always made products that people like, but also creates a motivation from the air for the customers who are totally ignorant of what they need and how the world could be. He is so powerful to make us believe in the reality he designed and forget how we lived our life before the era of Apple. When we talk about Steve Jobs, especially his uniqueness, TASTE is a hot word as well as a tricky one. For Steve, taste is a capacity rather than a style. That is a capacity to feel and recognize beauty, namely, the perception of aesthetics.

In my opinion, that perception of aesthetics cannot be described or crystallized. When we discuss his philosophy of “simplicity”, many people see it as a trend or principle. However, I think it is a preferred choice but not a rule of “taste” or “aesthetics.” It’s the spirit of Apple as a brand. Thus, simplicity is not a necessary component of Apple and Steve’s success. No matter how much Steve loved simplicity or complexity, he would always make us believe and follow his will. For example, Apple is so tricky to change our sense of aesthetic and logic of operation unconsciously by engaging our vision, namely the interface of iPhone. From the iOS6 to iOS7, the style of visualization is totally changed from realist design to a “flat” design, which is like from Realism in painting to Abstractionism. The change is so influential to our appreciation of “aesthetics,” because the “flat-designed interface” is what we look at everyday from when we wake up to when we say good night, even more than the times you look at your own face. We are going to gradually get used to “flat” until Apple makes another visual revolution. However, Design is how it works. “Flat” is the external. It is very, very deep inside. “It wasn’t an aesthetic idea to try to create layers. It was a way of trying to sort of deal with different levels of information that existed and to try to give you a sense of where you were.” Jonathan Ive said.

This reminds me of Jobs’ words from his interview with FORTUNE Magazine: “In most people’s vocabularies, design means veneer. It’s interior decorating. It’s the fabric of the curtains and the sofa. But to me, nothing could be further from the meaning of design. Design is the fundamental soul of a man-made creation that ends up expressing itself in successive outer layers of the product or service.” My heart has been deeply touched by his definition of design. The difference between human being and animal is that we make things. Jobs is the very one who was born to make things by shaping their souls and ensouling their shapes. As for me, he is a role model for dreaming a universe and starting from something as simple as a screw.

The picture is a copywriter of Designed by Apple in California, a motto of Apple. I love it.