MAKESHIFT 2012: THE CONVERSATION

“Craft” might seem like it’s for the amateurs, and “fashion” for the auteurs. Yet we live in an age where creativity and innovation are increasingly found in collaborations between makers and users, crafters and designers, designers and manufacturers, and in the loosening of the boundaries between them. Open sourcing and the emergence of DIY everything (from apps to dresses to education) are THE design stories of the 21st century.

If the philosophers and economists are right, such stories reflect renewed possibilities for building communities, for growing businesses, and for practicing everyday forms of enchantment, ethics, and sustainability. It is time to expand our way of thinking about the relationship between craft and fashion, between the self-made and the ready-to-wear, between fashion as intellectual property and fashion as an open source. What can we learn from the fields of music, product design, and education? Does a backward glance help us see how fashion was at the forefront of these innovations from the start? What is a Vogue pattern if not an open source? What are les petits mains other than artists?


1 comment on “MAKESHIFT 2012: THE CONVERSATION

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Click to read 1 comment
  1. Louise Farant

    I think for a lot of people, what they make becomes what they do as they leave/lose traditional “jobs”. Toffler predicted this high-tech/high-touch dichotomy way back on the Dark Ages. Maybe he was right in a million ways he never expected!

    Reply