Luigi Maramotti - heir to the MaxMara empire. I'm guessing his family name forms the latter part of the company brand name.
Clothing is a language
innovative
elite top layers of the social pyramid to the bottom - It seems to be the opposite to me at the moment, the style spotters are out scanning the ghettos for ideas to commercialise.
fashion is distinct from style - is it? how? what's the difference? Style is a genre within fashion or anti-fashion isn't it? Within each style there is an element of fashion just waiting to be commercialised if it hasn't been already isn't there?
young/old, male/female, work/play, simplicity/complexity, revelation/concealment, freedom/constraint, conformism/rebellion, eroticism/chastity, discretion/overstatement... tensions... frisson from the contradictions they suggest. - yup. I'm quite fond of young/old, male/female, work/play, conformism/rebellion mostly and mostly using clothes and accessories. This is big news at the moment with all the kids dressing like granny. I think right now i'm interested in the simplicity/complexity one in the form of simple life, modern tools - live like a gypsy but skype your mother. Maybe i need to update my technological knowledge out to fulfill that dream - how do you skype anyhow? Ooh, i guess the simple/complex is where my re-use of modern media comes into things too, constructing out of cassettes, slides, newspaper. Using the complicated but out-dated modern technology to re-create the information lost within in the most simple of languages, the eternal and international visual language.
fashion in an infinite game
though changes in fashion respond to macrochanges in cultures... require human action... doesn't happen by accident - here are the bottom of the pile doing their thing with their big brothers trousers. Individual creative choices spotted and made into 'the work of creative people'
the motivating force for creativeity within fashion is nearly always, or often, cultural... dress like your maid... her ability to intuit the predominant social tensions of the moment - what are the predominant social tensions right now? Certainly lots of what i'd call 'false-empowerment' where people are keeping the role of women as being sex objects and calling it empowerment despite it's negative effect on society as a whole. A film for teenagers called 'burlesque'? Nothing wrong with being sexy or a dancer or anything... and maybe through this 'normalising' of it there will one day come a time when sex workers are respected and revered as doing an important and serious job... but it seems to me that it'll increase the assumption that women are and should be available. Or will it? If all women are posing as prostitutes maybe it'll become obvious that we are not all available? It increases the need for protection. A woman walking will need a man by her side, a woman working as a stripper will be safe while on stage but what of outside after work? I wonder if that'll fit into the other social tension of unstable financial times, cuts in budgets, unemployment. Ska is back in the charts, maybe it really is coz there's a conservative government again. The environment - is it a social tension or is it just that it should be.
So they focus on conceived models of an ideal future life - i guess that's where i'm going with my simple life but using technological advances.
arouse incipient or otherwise undetected desire. usually achieved by the 'lifestyle' associations ... devote themselves increasingly to formulating our identities from visions of an ideal existence. - simplicity/complexity, the romance of a nomadic/natural lifestyle is frequently invoked on catwalks and almost constantly in advertising - a beach and a flashy car. Get closer to nature, find your way over the moors to the ye olde pub with a gps on your mobile. My vision is slightly different though, equally ridiculous/romantic/unrealistic. Either living in the woods or travelling with a horsedrawn circus. My desire isn't to look clean and tidy and get home to a centrally heated house after my rustic experience - or maybe it sort of is - but i want to take that experience further, longer, more rustic, less technology. So, less camping with hi-tech equipment, more slow-tech but documenting it with hi-tech equipment. My intended use of technology is for a different purpose.
many enjoy the challenge of 'unpicking' fashion to reveal the influences... what really matters... to examine how they generate innovative product ideas - er.... maybe i differ from him here! As described in my drift into feminism/fashion/prostitution i'm obviously interested in where the influences came from, why and where they might take us. i'm also, as evidenced in my drifting into an eco-reverie, interested in what type of innovations happen, how, where they might take us and whether they are justifiable environmentally. Sources reflect social issues and flag up current concerns. What of size 0, heroine chic, fur?
almost accidental fashionableness that was the case with the mini-skirt - an accident? really? not linked with the massive shifts in the feminism movement? Maybe that's just heresay then. massive rebellion i thought it was.
new ideas must usually relate to what already exists if they are to succeed.
The designer's creativity must be linked to a project
introduction of something new in to a collection can have enormous implications for supply, production, workability and quality control. Even the smallest of variations can cause a chain reaction which must be assimilated. The potential dangers of creativity are undoubtedly a factor in industry's ambivalence towards it yet to cut it out of the company culture is to risk stagnation and decline. - oh yeah... i'd like to ask some sheep. Shall we ask the herdwick's if they'd like to suddenly produce a thousand times the amount of wool - or shall we ask some merino's if they'd like their coats to become even heavier. there's no wonder everything becomes standardised. And yet this leads to so many cases of stagnation and decline for other industries. I'm finding mr luigi slightly annoying. Who cares about producing more, faster etc products, products, buy, consume! A glut. There are frequent moves toward individuality, handmade, different. Once everything would have been slightly different, it seems that we're looking for that again but we're trying to buy it. I"m not sure that's possible. It feels like a symptom of affluenza but i think it's maybe a more natural reaction to mass-production which is, after all, relatively new.
But as i have argued, creativity is of little purpose unchecked or unsupported. - Did he? When? I'd argue that creativity is of little purpose when it leads to mass-production and i don't mean an artist paying assistants to churn them out, i mean companies producing thousands upon thousands which go in the bin in a month. Well, i guess he's a big man supporting all those little creative people, no problem with it but it's hardly a magnanimous gesture, it's his living. What is the purpose of creativity anyway? Does it have purposes when unchecked and unsupported? yes it does! But I guess most of those people would like a living and for that being 'checked' and supported are pretty important.
designers especially are sometimes particularly reluctant ... it's unnerving to discover that the market does not affirm one's convictions. - Well how's about that! Designers, possibly rubbish, possibly ahead of the times, don't want to be wrong! Stop the press! What was that about supporting creativity? Not so magnanimous now eh mr luigi? I don't want to design products for people to sneer at one week, love the next and bin the week after. That would dry up my creative juices. That would send the muse into a catatonic depression.
The market research, retail, information, fabric, technical research, the social tensions, ambivalences and ambiguities the projections of future life... are transformed first into a drawing. then a form. This is the core of our work, and it has for me a magic and mysterious appeal. the sketches , patterns, prototypes, the styling and accessories are all equally important steps - aw... luigi, you're not so bad after all! Drawing, sketch sketch sketch! bit's of paper everywhere, lots of scratches of biro. a few lines, a few words. a bit of shading. Some measurments. a layout, a plan. a pattern. an aide memoire. a few wiggly lines and a few words are an awsome team, far more than either on their own i think.
If a seam in the back of a jacket can save 20% in the fabric lay, is it worth doing? ... a challenge to the designer since it requires him/her to devise ingenious solutions and should be regarded as a spur to the creative process, not an impediment. - it's true. 'how do i get round that' can be a great moment.
proliferation of opportunities... in other parts of the world - How to get around the labour issues. American apparel seem to have done ok... there are various fairtrade lables. i wonder if maxmara will stay italian for long. not by the sounds of it. I wonder if he'll concider the ethics of his interactions with the cheaper countries.
creating for sale is different from creating for creation's sake - you can say that again! it may stimulate fresh innovations and encourage pushed boundaries in some ways. It's really not what I want to explore though.
The importance of creating in (advertising) is obvious... consistency... absolute, possibly unique, identity.... close collaboration... can add to this a story, an element of conceived reality.
advertising in the fashion field is ... more conventional than in others - is it? Yes as it needs to sell the product but we've seen examples now of fine art/fashion advertising, that's hardly conventional is it? Sometimes you're barely shown the product, which is perfectly normal, you're only shown the lifestyle it'll buy you, just like with life insurance advertising, you don't see the policy! relatively representative and explicative he says - i'm not sure.
promotion means documentation through the press... apparently 'objective' documentation of a product acts as a kind of endorsement - The power of an editorial! The advertising feature.
when these elements are synchronized, a circle is completed where creativity can flow freely. - Mr Maramotti, surely you mean where cash can flow freely? We've already established that creativity is firmly squashed if it leads to reduced sales figures. I would call a statement like that one an attempt at manipulating your readers, but, from the sounds of it, you're the boss so i'd best be careful.
ciao
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