I was recently invited to examine the Vivienne Tam edition of the HP Mini 1000 netbook. I won't bother you with the techie details of the computer itself. But, it did get me thinking about the convergence of fashion and product design.With technology imposing itself on more and more elements of our lives, I believe we have reached a crossroads in design. Will product designers like Jonathan Ive at Apple be elevated to the same level as Yves Saint Laurent, or will the Saint Laurent's of the world design more than just clothes? Most likely the former will be the case as I'm not yet convinced that a fashion designer can also be a good product designer (and vice versa). Many fashion designers make you suffer for the sake of fashion. A good product designer's job is to make technology assessible and attractive. But hell, I still salivate at the possibilities: imagine an Alexander Wang laptop or a stereo system by Tom Ford!
2 Shots of the Vivienne Tam Netbook
Some of the best examples of products as fashion and function:
Bang & Olufsen Beolab 5 Speakers
Geneva Lab GenevaSound XL Sound System
MUJI Wall Mounted CD Player
Meridian Audio DSP8000 Speakers
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2 comments:
I was fascinated by the Vivian Tam laptop - sooo pretty. But it also set me thinking: the merger of technology and fashion is so different than anything we've undertaken in the past. Previously, if a designer ventured into, say, tables and chairs, the worst that could happen is the materials might be cheap and not wear well over time. But with technology, it's a whole different ball game. The real value of the item is so much more than its appearance (is the laptop any good? what's the operating system? How many gigs? Quality speakers? Anti-virus security? The list goes on and on.). Hopefully, fashion designers will go beyond the "look" and make sure the quality of the product is equal to their design.
Sanity, that's exactly what I hoped the post conveyed! And I think its an important question to ask whether fashion should be practical or impractical. Because product design must be practical. Can the fashion world understand that enough to design good products and not just beautiful ones? Or are good product designers and good fashion designers diametrically opposed?
Thanks for the comment
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