Global Fashion Management

For the Mexico Seminar, FIT students were given the assignment to share their reflections, attitudes, impressions, and ideas on our experience in Oaxaca, and the breadth of lecture topics that were heard in Mexico City. GFM Class of 2022 student Zach Mauer shared his thoughts on two topics that were discussed at some length and his plans to incorporate his learnings into his career and his life.

 

Question Everything

Based on your role in the industry: what can you learn during this seminar?  This was my favorite question posed to my cohort while in Mexico. By the end of the seminar, my answer was simple: question everything. As someone who works in marketing, brand development, and content creation, my professional experience has always revolved around the power of storytelling. Marketing is the process of telling stories that people will buy, idealize, and defend. The Mexico seminar reminded me that as a storyteller, and more importantly, as a student, I need to continue to question things. For example: we discuss at great length in several GFM courses the value of writing a competitive analysis of an industry. But what is a competitor? What is a competitor if you change your mindset? If sharing in a community promotes wealth, harmony, and happiness, then what happens to competition? What metrics or KPI’s should a community of artisans measure its success with? For that matter, what is success? The questions are endless when you reframe your perspective from the traditional hyper-capitalist point of view of which we’re accustomed. We were reminded numerous times during the seminar that when working with artisans, you aren’t working with producers, you are working with culture. When one’s perspective changes, and the questions you’re asking change, the story can change. When the story changes, marketers, brand developers, and content creators can promote new stories for people to idealize and defend. Storytelling in this way becomes a frame.  Based on your role in the industry: what can you learn during this seminar?  Question everything, there are new stories begging to be told.

 

Slow Fashion

I entered the fashion industry five years ago with a relatively simple definition for what I considered “fashion.” Broadly speaking, I considered fashion to exist at the confluence of art and commerce. But delving deeper, I’ve always defined fashion as a form of communication which involves three different cultural dimensions to provide context for its overall message. I believe that fashion entails a combination of 1) cultural symbols, 2) the culture of people, 3) and the culture of place – ultimately shaping what we wear, how we wear it, and how it’s understood by others. At least, that was always my understanding.

We were told to go into the Mexico Seminar with an open mind, and in doing so, I was able to imagine a new dimension of fashion that I hadn’t previously considered. One of the things that our guest speakers mentioned was that clothing made by artisans isn’t just another means of communication (as defined above). Like other artisanal objects – pottery, sculptures, paintings, several of our speakers told us that these pieces have souls. At first, I wondered if that meant that fast fashion was inherently soulless. But for the rest of the seminar, I also wondered if fast fashion (a product of globalization) was the antithesis of slow fashion, or if I was trying to compare two entirely distinct concepts.

Listening to our guest speakers at the textile museums in Oaxaca inspired me to think of possible ramifications for the contrast of fast vs slow fashion. Clothing made by the artisans is a method of breathing life into traditions that have lived for thousands of years. Fast fashion is the result of a race to the bottom in terms of price and ethical payment of factory workers, as well as a fierce competition of production speed driven by the hunger for convenience by consumers. How could I compare fast fashion and slow fashion? I thought. Slow fashion doesn’t seem to exist in opposition to fast fashion, at least not when viewed through the lens of the artisans we connected with. After my group visited the Navarro sisters in Oaxaca, they told us that they had once taken an accounting class to better understand how they could price their pieces based on their costs. At the end of their story though, the Maestra threw up her hands and started laughing. Our translator told us: “she says that in the end, the accounting class was very difficult. It’s difficult to set the price on something you like to do. They don’t see it as a business. They see it as a way of life.” The Navarro Sisters continued to elaborate on why they found the accounting class challenging. Traditional accounting practices attempt to quantify every scrap and thread that doesn’t end up becoming a part of the finished garment. What’s worse, is that in accounting – these costs are referred to as “waste.” But the Navarro Sisters don’t see their materials in that way. For them, thread is not waste. In this way, slow fashion appeared to exist on a separate plane from fast fashion.

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The Navarro Gómez family invited GFM students into their home to share about their work and their lives. Video by Eva Lépiz.id = videopackOn my group’s excursion to San Antonino, we were shown a white dress that had been passed down and worn by Reina’s family for 47 years. It had been repaired, resewn, and re-embellished more times than she could count. I immediately thought of the clothes in my own closet: would I keep an article of clothing for 47 years? When an article of clothing, or even a piece of pottery has cultural meaning, when it channels a centuries old tradition, the object becomes more than just a shirt or dress. Again – how could I compare a 47-year-old dress with fast fashion? I thought of my closet full of Calvin Klein sweatshirts. How could I compare them with a dress that has existed in Reina’s family for almost twice as long as I have been alive? My sweatshirts were born out of trends, but their dress was a conduit, it has a soul.

I purchased two embroidered shirts at the market in San Antonino, and I did so on the promise to myself that I would commit to making the two shirts last in my wardrobe for the next 47 years. One of our speakers mentioned that slow fashion has become trendy in the fashion industry, which is great. But one of the things that really registered with me was that to be truly impactful, slow fashion needs to become more than a trend: it needs to be a commitment. As a fashion stylist, I’m fairly attuned to the dimensions of fashion that I mentioned earlier: symbols, people, and place. I know that I can make the two embroidered shirts last for decades if I commit to it. My reasoning being that if I can start making better decisions when purchasing new pieces, maybe I can help change other peoples’ minds about their decisions.

I’ll admit that the idea of clothing having souls was new to me, but some of the ideas discussed during the Mexico seminar were familiar. Several speakers discussed the concept of sustainability, a topic heavily discussed during the GFM Seminar in New York. I often found myself remembering a moment that happened during the New York seminar months before. One of our guest speakers was asked along the lines of: “Which brands are currently doing exceptional work in the field of sustainability?” The asker of this question had a clear intention of wanting to purchase clothes from whatever sustainable brands the speaker would mention. But instead of giving a list of brands, the speaker aptly responded: “If you’re looking to be more sustainable, start by looking at what’s already in your closet.” The speaker went on to say that increasing the life of the products we already own is the best way that we can individually be more sustainable. At both seminars we’ve had experts in the fashion industry advise that the answer to society’s mounting global problems isn’t more consumption. Specifically, during the Mexico Seminar, we learned that demanding too much, too fast, ruins the slowness of the artisan’s design process. I wondered if it was consumption, and not fast fashion that existed in opposition to slow fashion.

Our guest speaker, Anna Paula Fuentes told us that if the process stops being small-scale, it stops being artisanal. Selling, in this way, is only a quick answer to the challenges facing artisan communities. In our Global Politics and Trade course last semester, we discussed the fact that we are living in a period of hyper-globalization. Speed and convenience are highly prioritized, but hyper-globalization stands poised to compromise the cultural essence of what these artisan communities are creating. In this way, overconsumption doesn’t just run counter to slow fashion and the centuries old traditions of the artisans, it becomes a threat to their very existence.

The seminar ended two weeks ago, and my mind keeps going back to the 47-year-old dress. It goes back to the two embroidered shirts I bought at the market in San Antonino. It goes back to sitting in a courtyard of stone with my cohort, passing around clay bowls and photographs. I think about concepts like commitment, and waste. Ultimately, however, I continue to think about overconsumption, the threat it poses, and how as a marketer I can use storytelling to combat it.

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By Katharine Dorny
Program Coordinator, Global Fashion Management

One of the most frequent questions applicants ask about the Global Fashion Management program is what graduates do with their new skills after completing the program.  The answer is as varied as graduates’ individual circumstances and career goals. They can continue at their current jobs and earn promotions within their companies, change their focus by taking on an advanced role with another organization, or begin entrepreneurial ventures based on the capstone projects they’ve completed in the program.

But in recent years a new path has emerged: using GFM degrees as a springboard to PhD programs and opportunities to teach in higher education. Take Nimet Degirmencioglu, who, after graduating GFM 2010 and co-founding a fair-trade fashion label based on Indian textiles with a GFM classmate, was encouraged to pursue a doctorate at North Carolina State by GFM professor Praveen Chaudhry. She’s now a researcher and teacher, focused on fair trade, social entrepreneurship, and digital marketing–disciplines she was originally introduced to at GFM.

Or consider Dave Loranger (GFM 2011), a luxury retailer for two decades prior to GFM, who earned his PhD at Iowa State, where he based his dissertation research on Scottish kiltmakers’ craft. Dave is now an assistant professor at the Sacred Heart’s Jack Welch College of Business & Technology, where he teaches marketing and fashion business–fields he knows well through both his earlier professional experience and his academic pursuits at GFM and Iowa State.

 

Dave Loranger’s GFM 2011 classmate Caryn Pang also wound up at Iowa State in the Apparel, Merchandising, and Design doctoral program. Now finishing her dissertation, Caryn has taught at FIT and other institutions, while also taking on consulting projects. In her dissertation, she looks at the challenges of American mall culture and future applications of the “live, shop, play” concept–combining retail with residences and entertainment venues–to create a prospective new economic paradigm, replacing a staid business model.

Yet another GFM 2011 class member, Shanti Amalanathan, followed what has become a well-established path to doctoral studies at Iowa State, where she is interested in undertaking a dissertation focused on culture and social justice. And a more recent GFM graduate, Colleen Salonga, class of 2020, who earned her undergraduate degree at the U.S. Naval Academy and came to GFM after working in supply chain for the Navy, also made her way to Iowa State, where she is considering examining the circular economy from a supply-chain perspective for her dissertation.

GFM salutes the success of all its graduates, from those who continue with their original companies or assume managerial roles with other organizations, to those who initiate entrepreneurial ventures–many of which represent market-based applications of the research students began in their GFM capstones. Now that grads like Nimet, Dave, Caryn, Shanti, and Colleen have undertaken a GFM-to-doctoral studies academic trajectory, yet more rewarding venues have become available for students to display the benefits of the hands-on learning they gained through GFM.

The PhD programs pursued by growing numbers of grads qualify as a new evolutionary phase for a GFM program that has long provided an innovative, industry-driven education for its students. These doctoral-level educational opportunities not only engender new career horizons for GFM grads, their research-intensive nature ultimately involves creating, developing, and executing novel ideas and strategies for the business of fashion–innovations that characterize the progressive essence of the GFM program, and that serve as the crux of an industry whose practices increasingly represent pace-setting advances within the global economy.

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CC Salonga, GFM class of 2020, joined the program from a career as a U.S. Navy officer where she specialized in logistics and inventory management for the Defense Department. She entered GFM with an interest in retail operations and will continue her studies in the fall at Iowa State University’s doctoral program in the department of Apparel, Merchandising & Design. But in the meantime, CC is back in Washington, dedicating her military expertise to the country’s most crucial work of the moment. The GFM program takes great pride in her academic and professional accomplishments and wish her success in this critical phase of her career.

When I learned that supply chain consultants were needed to support the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) efforts towards COVID-19, I reached out.  Within a few days I found myself at the Federal Emergency Management Agency Headquarters (FEMA HQ) operations center where I assisted with tracking supply requisitions for the Strategic National Stockpile.  HHS and FEMA coordinate efforts with local emergency response officials to provide supplies and address medical needs.

The team I worked with specializes in disaster relief and tracks requirements and incoming and outgoing inventory on commodities such as ventilators, test kits, pharmaceuticals, and Federal Medical Systems which are deployable 250- and 50-bed sets with bathroom and shower capabilities.  We pulled information from multiple supply chains and different tracking systems to include reviewing thousands of emails requesting support for the states, tribes and territories.  We also tracked deliveries to designated sites — primarily convention centers, but also school gyms, warehouses, hospitals, and national guard sites.

As pharmaceuticals requirements gained momentum, I was moved to an HHS mission support building in Frederick, MD where there is a warehouse that holds some national stockpile stores for pharmaceuticals, devices and supplies designated for disaster and health emergencies.  There, I helped the staff with inventory and administrative efforts to get caches ready for deployment.

The needs of HHS continue to change, and I am now in a third location, the HHS operations center close to FEMA HQ.  I still support resource allocation efforts but also have the ability to observe videoconferences involving multiple groups within the government and the military.  I have an even greater appreciation for the monumental and collective efforts of private industry and the government. Having spent some time in the military, I have found it rewarding to continue serving in times of need.

CC Salonga, Washington, D.C.

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By Michael Battista
Industry Coordinator to the Global Fashion Management Program

As a complement to the recent Hong Kong Seminar and its focus on apparel production and the Asian markets, GFM continued onward to Japan for an optional two-day segment of executive lectures and site visits. Here, the scope of our attention expanded to include merchandising techniques at Isetan Department Store, the ethos of home goods and lifestyle brand Muji, a presentation by renowned textile designer Reiko Sudo of the innovative textile corporation Nuno, and a visit to the headquarters of Toyota [cue the abrupt screech of a record stopping]. You may be wondering what a car manufacturer has to do with Global Fashion Management. The answer is actually, quite a lot.

Toyota is one of the largest and most profitable companies in the world. Before these Japanese cars dominated the planet’s roads, it was a family business known as Toyoda Loom Works. Established in 1907, it became an innovator and inventor of a number of textile looms and cotton spinning machines, improving on the speed, quality, and efficiency of mechanical textile production, and ultimately developing the technology towards automation. The company headquarters in Nagoya, Japan hosts a museum dedicated to exhibiting this history and its pivotal transition to car manufacturing on its original founding site.

The significance of Toyota’s contribution to the apparel industry transcends its historical role in loom development and textile production. The company pioneered a highly efficient and agile manufacturing methodology, known as the Toyota Production System, that serves as the foundation for the Fast Fashion models leveraged by H&M and Inditex (the retail group behind Zara), the second and third most valuable apparel companies in the world. Additionally, Toyota’s principals of flexibility, waste reduction, and efficiency are the foundation of the Eton System, used in Esquel’s vertical production plant in Guangdong. During our China seminar, students observe​d this flexible material handling system, which is designed to eliminate manual handling and transportation, resulting in an increase in production.

While GFM Students explore the fundamentals of agile, efficient, responsive, and risk minimizing production models like the Toyota Production System in the program’s Production Management and Supply Chain course, there’s nothing quite like seeing the application of a methodology with your own eyes. The site visit to the Toyota Commemorative Museum of Industry and Technology, and then later to Toyota Motor Corporation’s Tsutsumi Assembly Plant, offered an additional opportunity for the concepts covered in the classroom to spring to life.

The museum’s textile machinery pavilion is a hangar-sized space of over 11,000 square feet filled with nearly 100 pieces of equipment from its archive­—many of which are functional—that showcases the evolution of cotton spinning and textile looms from the industrial revolution of the 18th century to today. Docents lead us through the exhibition, charting the historical progression of these production processes and stopping to demonstrate the machinery along the way. As we proceeded, we witnessed the evolution of technology, speed, and complexity, from wooden machines powered by hand to those forged by steel and guided by computer.

Compared to the more contemporary and dizzyingly fast machines used by factories today, the earlier wooden looms from the beginning of the 20th century have parts that move at speeds more amenable for the human eye to process. For those of us on the tour without a technical background in textiles, it was an opportunity to better see and understand the mechanical process of a loom shuttle moving yarn back and forth between the vertical warp threads to create fabric. It was truly an aha moment for many of us, with the cadence of clicking heard from students and looms alike.

Additional wings of the museum are dedicated to the company’s transition from Toyoda Loom Works to the Toyota that we know today. The most salient changes resulted from the generational shift in management from father to son, and a culturally astute rebranding that altered the company’s name to allude to “good fortune” in the written Japanese language.

By bus, we continued our site visit to the Toyota Motor Corporation Assembly Plant in nearby Toyota City. We ascended to a network of catwalks perched above the production lines. From here, we bore witness to a focused and coordinated effort of man and machine. There was a great deal of activity. Workers were staged across various points of the production lines, diligently and swiftly transforming frames of steel into cars by methodically adding its components. Small robotic carts tugged bins filled with parts to their respective stations. There was a symphony of coded tones and musical notes to indicate production status, delays or errors. This is where we could see and hear the Toyota Production System’s deployment of two of its core philosophical principles:

Just-in-Time: where the supply follows the demand, this is defined by Toyota as “making only what is needed, when it is needed, and in the amount needed.” Each car we saw on the production line, represented a sale and customer order for that specific model.

Jidoka: a Japanese word at the intersection of automation and human intelligence has come to embody a quality control methodology to prevent defects throughout the workflow. Assembly workers stop the production line if a problem arises or is detected before the car moves forward to the next step in the manufacturing process.

Toyota’s growth and capture of the global market share is due to its development and refinement of these core principals (among others), which have enabled it to maximize efficiency and minimize waste (waste, in this case, being defined as overproduction).

The history of this company’s success across generations and industries illustrates the value of internationalism and open trade. Both generations of Toyoda leadership were informed and inspired by site visits abroad, building their respective global empires on the foundation of their impressions of best practices and innovations, and ultimately improving on them. Sakichi Toyoda, the founder of the company’s first incarnation, visited the global textile centers of his day, touring fabric mills in the northeastern U.S. and Manchester, England. His son, Kiichiro Toyoda, who transformed the company into an automobile manufacturer in 1937, went to see the Ford operation in Detroit at the onset of its development of the Assembly Line Method, a transformative innovation in manufacturing at the time.

For a grand finale, we witnessed the mechanical ballet of the welding machines fortifying the frames of cars-to-be, rhythmically moving to the beat of their own programming. Many large mechanical arms swiftly and articulately moved in concert across the body of a single car. They stretched, contracted, and rotated around each other, sending bursts of orange sparks into the air. At this point on the catwalk, we stood entranced by the performance, which would end within a minute’s time, only to be repeated on the next car frame in line. The speed and scale of the elegant process was both impressive and humbling. Many jaws had fallen ajar at the sight of it all. As we stood there above the manufacturing line, I could do nothing but appreciate that after nearly 80 years from the company’s inception, we were witnessing the fulfillment of a vision of automation, efficiency, and synergy of human and machine. And so I wondered, what potential advancements might lie on the horizon of the apparel industry’s future, and what visions have yet to come?

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By Karen Abington (Class of 2018)

It should come as no surprise to our alums that the watchword of this year’s Paris Seminar was – drum roll please – creativity.  In discussing fashion, and especially French fashion, we would be remiss if we didn’t touch upon the creative process, and I imagine that this subject was a main focus of the seminars of years past. What was different this year, however, was the way in which this all-important subject was approached and – shall we say – deconstructed.

The centerpiece of this year’s Paris seminar was a film project, in which students from Paris, Hong Kong, and New York collaborated in the development, filming, editing, and presentation of a short documentary on the creative process of four Paris-based designers: Garance Broca, Jérôme Dreyfuss, Anne Valérie Hash, and Gustavo Lins.

This exercise was preceded by the screening of the documentary film Dreamers, which was shown at the 2012 Venice Biennale, and follows the creative process and personal story of 11 film directors and screenwriters, including Michel Gondry, Akiva Goldsman, James Gray, and Guillermo Ariaga. Director Noëlle Deschamps was kind enough to present her film and to assist as one of several filmmaking coaches throughout the seminar.

Our viewing of the film set the stage for what was to follow, as we broke up into our first meetings and started to explore our own creative styles and individual aesthetic proclivities in the context of our groups. To help us get to know each other, IFM GFM Director Véronique Schilling was prescient enough to organize a “five senses workshop” through faculty member and aesthetic specialist Jayne Curé. As a part of this workshop, we were asked to clear our heads and make a list of things or experiences that were important to us in the context of the five senses, freely associating between sight, smell, taste, touch, and sound.  We then shared our individual aesthetic impressions among our groups to determine common themes. Everyone in my group, for example, touched upon the theme of the sky in one way or another, and so images of the sky became an important element of our short film.

Meanwhile, as we got to know each other and discussed potential angles and editorial points of view, each designer was kind enough to speak to the entire class about their work as well as their creative process and personal journey. In this way, students were able to get a sense of each designer’s unique character, which would later be on display in our short films.

First up was Jérôme Dreyfuss, of the eponymous handbag collection. Jérôme let his instantly lovable personality and sense of humor shine through. To set the stage, he recounted how he decided at age 12 that he would be a fashion designer after watching an interview of French chanteur Serge Gainsbourg, who said that he became a musician in order to seduce women. I guess Jérôme began to think about strategy at a young age: realizing that he couldn’t sing, he decided then and there that becoming a fashion designer might be the next best way to appeal to the fairer sex. Despite such humor and good cheer, it was clear that Jérôme is motivated by a sincere desire to help people. He is inspired by real women, and their real, everyday needs. One of the short films showed how Jérôme – who rides his scooter across Paris to work every day – is perpetually on the verge of an accident because he is constantly turning around to watch women as they pass. He is interested in what they wear and how they conduct themselves, but most importantly he wants to know how they carry their lives around Paris in their handbags. He is constantly tinkering with his designs, so as to make them more intuitive, more practical, and more useful to real women. This concern shines through in the finished product – Jérôme’s bags are light, versatile, beautifully made, practical, and above all, effortlessly elegant.

Second in the lineup was Garance Broca – designer of the knitwear brand Monsieur Lacenaire – who was accompanied by co-owner, brand manager, and husband, Benoist Husson. Monsieur Lacenaire is an extremely playful, humorous, and creative menswear line, whose designs are restricted only by the technical limits of the knitwear medium itself. Garance is so passionate about her craft that she studied and learned Italian so that she could communicate with the knitwear artisans and technicians in Italy, where much of her line is produced. Such seriousness and dedication has served her well. Throughout her presentation, she shared prototypes, stitch patterns, and yarn samples in different fibers and gauges so that we got a real sense of the complex art of knitwear design. Garance also has a playful side, however. The theme of her presentation was the process of ‘creative ping pong,’ whereby she is able to build and expand upon her ideas by constantly bouncing them off her husband and business partner Benoist. One of our documentary films thus focused on the dialectic between Garance and Benoist, both as a way to illustrate Garance’s creative process as well as show the playful characteristics of Monsieur Lacenaire himself.

Our third designer – Brazilian native Gustavo Lins – represented an interesting contrast to the careful planning required by the knitwear collections of Monsieur Lacenaire. Formally trained as an architect and bringing an undeniable structuralism to his craft, Gustavo Lins has worked for years in high fashion and has come to embody the spirit of a true couturier. He doesn’t read fashion magazines or follow the latest trends when thinking about his next collection. He goes straight to the mannequin and begins to drape and physically construct his garments, at times allowing his initial intentions to be influenced by the spontaneous emergence of an unexpected drape or silhouette. Gustavo turned out to be a touchingly open and sincere person. While he was busily constructing a beautiful garment before our eyes, he candidly and unselfconsciously shared details and memories from his personal life, thus allowing us insight to the person he has become today. Many in the audience were visibly touched by his openness. The filmmakers dedicated to Gustavo were able to tap into and expand upon this theme in their films, showing how Gustavo had emerged from personal and professional tragedy to become the fearless individual he is – a person who is capable of uniting people through his force of character.

Finally, Anne Valérie Hash gave a highly original presentation which was a fitting conclusion to our foray into the personal creative process. A classically trained dressmaker and couturier, native Parisienne Anne Valérie gave a lecture on the themes of construction and deconstruction, in which she disassembled a pair of men’s trousers in order to reconstruct a dress. Deconstruction – whether it be of a garment, of a motivation, or of a memory – is an important part of her creative process. Anne Valérie’s previous collections have included items of personal significance gifted to her by friends – Alber Elbaz’ sky blue pajamas, for example, or Tilda Swinton’s much loved Vivienne Westwood t-shirt. Such items are taken apart in order to build something new, personal, and original. In this way, beloved possessions are given new life.   As a part of her presentation, each of us were asked to think about what we would most like to deconstruct – whether it be a garment, a memory, a photograph, or a book – and what we would hope to learn as a result. This exercise helped us to understand our deep motivations, much as Anne Valérie herself was able to gain insight to her own creative process in an interview captured on film by our students. As a Jewish women, she was recounting the Jewish tradition of the cutting of garments to signify mourning over the death of a loved one. As she was saying this, she realized that this tradition was reflected in her own work. Cutting – and deconstruction – is for Anne Valérie a way to pay homage to the events – both sorrowful and joyful – in each of our lives.

When Noëlle Deschamps was describing the inspiration for her film Dreamers, she recounted how her goal – to document the creative process of her favorite filmmakers – was initially met with skepticism and bemusement. How can you make a film about creation itself? Her detractors worried that it was simply too esoteric and abstract a subject to be successfully portrayed on film. She ploughed ahead however – she had faith in her vision – and eventually all of the pieces fell into place and she was able to make her dream come to life.

On second thought, is this really an accurate description of what happened? To say that the pieces simply fell into place does the creative process a disservice by making it appear effortless. In point of fact, Ms. Deschamps must have fought very hard for her film. Through hard work, willpower, and the courage of her conviction, she was able to overcome the objections of her detractors.

Each of us has an innate creative ability, and the 2017 Paris Seminar was very successful in demonstrating the process of creation. Despite this, the most important thing that I learned from Ms. Deschamps – and from each of the designers who shared their lives with us – was that creativity is not enough, in and of itself. It takes courage, tenacity, and discipline to bring your dreams to fruition. For me, this seminar was more than anything a manifestation of the human spirit and a glorious celebration of our artistic differences. Like our four disparate designers, each of us is formed by our own unique experiences, and each of us is therefore inimitable. Perhaps it is not exactly topical, but in reflecting on this experience, I am reminded of a passage which struck me when I first read it, and which has stayed with me ever since. In describing his theory of evolution in The Origin of the Species, Charles Darwin said: “there is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.” Let us therefore always celebrate our differences – these “endless forms most beautiful” – and the indomitable spirit which make us who we are – each of us unique, each of us irreplaceable.

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Below,  “It’s Playtime” is the short video my group created to showcase the creative perspective and process of Parisian knitwear brand Monsieur Lacenaire. Among the eight different team videos created, this was the final jury selection for “Best Director.”

 

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