We are living in a world increasingly driven by fashion. From the food we eat to where we live to the car we drive, fashion informs our decision-making processes more and more. Why is this?
I suppose because in the ‘developed world’ at least most of our needs are so well supplied that we now take functionality for granted. Cars, for instance, don’t break down anymore. And when was the last time you called a TV-repairman or took your trainers to be repaired?
When assessing whether or not to buy something, we now tend to assume – or ignore entirely – functionality, concentrating instead on making the right fashion statement.
We want our decisions, especially our purchasing decisions, to say to the world out there: Look at me – I’m forward-looking, modern, aware, connected to what’s going on. Buying into what’s fashionable is the quickest way to communicate this.
But the danger in dabbling with what’s fashionable when creating is that you’ll get it wrong, or that by the time you’ve executed your work the world will have moved on.
For this reason, chasing fashion for its own sake is bound to end in failure.
So what should you be doing? The answer to that is innovating. By doing something different, by not following the crowd, you’ll instead lead fashion. And, incidentally, dictating to the world just what is and isn’t fashionable is a hell of a lot of fun.
This is what James Dyson accomplished when he developed the technology for his bag-less vacuum cleaner. Not only did he innovate the way a vacuum works, but, driven by innovation, he also changed the way it looked. And in the end created a must-have consumer product.
If you think about it, making a vacuum cleaner fashionable could quite possibly be the ultimate creative achievement.