We Broke Up...

The Generation M Manifesto
(click above READ IT.)

Written by Umair Haque

Umair Haque is Director of the Havas Media Lab, a new kind of strategic advisor that helps investors, entrepreneurs, and firms experiment with, craft, and drive radical management, business model, and strategic innovation.

Prior to Havas, Umair founded Bubblegeneration, an agenda-setting advisory boutique that helped shape the strategies of investors, entrepreneurs, and blue chip companies across media and consumer industries. Bubblegeneration’s work has been recognized by publications like Wired, The Red Herring, Business 2.0, and BusinessWeek, and in Chris Anderson’s Long Tail, to which Umair was a contributor.

Rob Walker/Handmade 2.0

Rob Walker is the author of Buying In: The Secret Dialogue Between What We Buy and Who We Are (2008). He is also contributing writer and columnist for the New York Times. His column titled "Consumed" is a smart discussion about consumer culture and the marketing of goods. In addition, Rob keeps a similar, but more dense blog called Murketing.

Throughout the presentation Rob listed various consumer tensions that I found also to be the tensions of designers both big and small.

This the tension list I could pull together from rough notes and my fallible memory, you'll get the gist.

1) Attracted to novelty except when the want the something familiar.

2) Being an individual except when they want to be a part of something.

3) Wanting progress and a connection to the past and craft.

4) Wanting cheap quality.

I would add:

5) Wanting to make nice and/or crafted things and be accessible to all.

6) Amongst peers, compete vs. cooperate/share.

7) Making a living and pursuing your craft.

Rob gave another list, what the consumer craves:

1) authenticity

2) ethics (spending your dollar is political)

3) quality

4) story

Larger corporations are generally equipped to make something novelty, familiar and cheap. What absent, is the story. I would also argue that craftsmanship is absent in mass produced goods. A personal purchasing encounter or relationship with a craftsman is where the consumer can find the greatest quality, authenticity and story.

So in theory this is what consumers want, but is it? Enter recession, enter the "new frugality" which attaches virtue to cheapness. We both agree that getting what is cheap is not always getting your money's worth not to mention the potential social and environmental costs.

In addition, I question whether consumers even know what quality is any more? Its hard to find in the big box retailers that make up our suburban landscape. I know within fashion it has been my experience that consumer's no longer recognize the difference between synthetic and natural fabrics, the different types of finishing on garments and or what a garment that fits looks like.

Rob pointed out that we don't know how to make/do anything anymore other than shop. If we are removed from the process of creating it makes it a lot harder to value goods and value quality goods.

There was a bit of animosity at the conference towards DIY craft. Rob believes that multiple versions of craft are just fine. There is room for everyone, creates various discussion at various levels and that the DIY crafts might act as a gateway drug for other "finer" craft. Ha, I love it. I have to agree. I don't think its hurting anyone or really a threat to master craft work.

The Craftsman in Society/Dr. Richard Sennett

I'll start by pulling a bit from The Craftsman (which i highly recommend reading) to give you an idea where we're going here.

"Craftsmanship" may suggest a way of life that waned with the advent of industrial society - but this is misleading. Craftsmanship names an enduring , basic human impulse, the desire to do a job well for its own sake. Craftsmanship cuts a far wider swath than skilled manual labor; it serves the computer programmer, the doctor and the artist; parenting improves when it is practiced as a skilled craft, as does citizenship.

Below are the talking points I extracted.

Craftsman:

• Does quality work for its own sake.
• Doesn't take shortcuts.
• Exhibits an evolution of skill.
• Building skill is slow and experimental.

Craftwork:

• Making something is a primordial mark of identity, it confirms you were here.
• Code Craft, computer programmers making coding a craft. Dr. Sennett is a big fan of the Linux community.
• A pursuit of problem solving, less or no focus on end product.
• Open knowledge systems that share "tools" of the trade.

Conflict and Challenges for Craft Inside Modern Capitalism :

• Mediocrity dominates over quality.
• Conflict between the desire for solutions and desire for craft.
• Enormous pressure to deliver goods in a short term economy.
• Quantity or growth matters more than results.
• Model of life long career is gone.
• We no longer reward quality and discriminate against craftsmen.

Machines:

• Technology is created to remove us from the process of making.
• Machines remove the need for tacit understanding. Can the machine eliminate subjective knowledge?
• Example: CAD design. Designer is the spectator. When the computer shows the results it understands, but do you (the designer)?

My two cents:

When did we get so fast? When did everything get so big? Why did "everyone" decide they wanted to "go public" and thus be pressured to produce quarterly growth at any cost? Is it because the bigger a corporation gets the exponentially greater the compensation for the top executives and they're making the decisions that benefit them? Is it the illusion that growth in corporations improves quality of life for all despite the fact that only a fraction of the population benefits from this growth?

Dr. Sennett mentioned that, "closed knowledge systems have small life cycles". I am not sure if I am understanding exactly what he means but it made me think, this is where the fashion industry has so strayed from craft. The current American fashion industry is generally closed, highly secretive and rarely collaborative among peers. We are forced to design in short life cycles, 3-4 collections a year. Has that hindered our progress and the quality of our work? If we had open knowledge systems, where we assumed our ideas were safe, shared contacts, ideas, resources, techniques, maybe even space, would we experience healthy competition, a sense of community and produce less but better fashion?

American Craft Council's 2009 Conference

I just got back from my first American Craft Council Conference in Minneapolis, Minn. I wasn't exactly sure why I was going, but felt strongly compelled to make a trip out of it. I flew into Milwaukee to hang out with my grandma and then drove with my mom across I-94 straight through the gorgeous fall leaves into Minneapolis. I was most excited to hear Dr. Richard Sennett who's book, The Craftsman has "disrupted" my life much like Small in Beautiful or Deluxe: How Luxury Lost its Luster.

Upon signing up for this conference, I feared a specific outcome. I predicted that I would attend this conference, listen to the presentations, which would then put me into a manic state and I wouldn't know how to best mobilize all the wonderful information I was adding to my database.

I was right, I came back to Brooklyn and traded bliss for angst.

To oversimplify, the angst comes from choice, the choice to be the craftsperson or study them?

Atelier or Academia?

Lucky for you, as part of my information digestion process which I am hoping will aid my decision making/life crafting, I will be creating a series of posts sharing the notes I took at the conference.

FRESH the MOVIE

Visit www.freshthemovie.com to watch the trailer. Fresh, unlike another movie that came out around the same time and rhymes with, rude pink, makes you want to hug everyone in the room rather than poke your eyes out and eat a big mac.

My first gallery show!

Dear Ms. Priebe
As part of its 2009-10 exhibition season, the Pratt Institute Department of Exhibitions will present “Ethics + Aesthetics = Sustainable Fashion,” an exhibition of fashion and contemporary art that will take place November 20, 2009 - February 20, 2010. Guest curated by Francesca Granata and Sarah Scatturo, the exhibition will take place in the Pratt Manhattan Gallery, 144 West 14 Street, New York City. We will celebrate with an opening reception on Thursday, November 19, 6 – 8.



“Ethics + Aesthetics” is the first American exhibition to survey the work of artists and designers (many of whom are New York-based) who explore practical and symbolic solutions to the question of integrating sustainable practices into the fashion system.  The exhibition builds on the already established sustainable practices of using recycled, renewable and organic fibers and the employment of fair labor, while deepening the public’s understanding of what constitutes sustainability within the fashion system. The exhibition is organized around three main themes:  Reduce, Revalue and Rethink, which are meant to expand on the traditional ecological mantra «Reduce, Reuse, Recycle» by acknowledging the importance of aesthetics within fashion design.

“Ethics + Aesthetics” will include work by Alabama Chanin, Bodkin, Susan Cianciolo, Kelly Cobb, Loomstate, Max Osterweis/SUNO, Zoë Sheehan Saldaña, SANS, Slow and Steady Wins the Race, Uluru, and Andrea Zittel and Tiprin Follett/Smockshop

"Screechers"

There has been something bugging me since I closed up shop sunday night.
I call them "screechers", inspired by the noise hangers make when they are abruptly slapped from side to side. This weekend we had quite a few people abruptly walk in and slap some hangers around like they were at TJ Maxx after a shipment of a "tattoo inspired designer" who will go unnamed (rhymes with red lardy). Not only does this make a lovely noise, it makes quite a mess. That is not even what bugs me really, its the disrespect for the items themselves. I find myself wanting to scream at them, "HEY! I MADE THAT! GENTLE! "

There is a craft movement emerging and many are getting back in touch with the process of making and/or makers, but there is still a larger part of the population who is totally indifferent to how anything gets to the shop floors. A disinterest in the who, what, how, where, of what they are looking at, and i can't necessarily blame them. We've been trained to consume. most goods in the market show up en masse with a very un-glamorous hidden life story (you've heard the stories). goods are trendy, disposable, artificially cheap, you are busy and want instant gratification.

That bums me out. social and environmental implications aside, mass consumption divides producer from consumer and homogenizes us. We have closets full of clothes we don't really like, don't really fit, resemble if not mimic the closets of our peers, don't accurately speak our identity, and mutes our own creative personal expression. Bor-ing.

So, I'll ask you nicely, "Please be nice to my things, there was great care, effort and sacrifice to get that piece to that hanger. I made that to give you and I a choice, a choice to purchase something developed with thought and care, something that could potentially serve you a life time or at the very least multiple seasons."

All seven of us at 5 in 1 have some really great pieces (at great prices) in there, fancy runway samples, handmade up-cycled cord necklaces in rich bright colors, belted halter jumpers made out of vintage fabrics, silk silk and lots delicate silky silk etc.
Even if someone isn't in the mood to buy, they still have someone to who greets them with a smile, a story if they seem interested, pretty shiny things to look at and good tunes in the background.

It was my turn to work at 5 in 1 this past weekend and despite being inside during a sunny summer weekend, I generally look forward to it. I get to play stylist, open the barn-like doors, buy flowers, fill a bowl of candy, meet interesting people, talk to them about the pieces, see them try things on, add a belt, add a scarf, see what people look at but don't try on, give "secrets" of the neighborhood to visitors, make them little itineraries and all the other possible outcomes of such an environment.