Design as Art

In the United States stylists are responsible for giving a new look to a car or other object that has flooded the market and is no longer selling. Leaving the vital parts inside the car alone, they dress it up in a new suit, launch a new fashion and spread the word that the old style is Out. So everyone who sets great store by his dignity rushes out to buy the new model for fear of being thought old hat. What does fashion actually do? It sells you a suit made of a material that could last five years, and as soon as you have bought it tells you that you can't wear it any longer because a newer one has already been created. The same principle can be used to sell anything. The motto of styling is 'It's Out'. As soon as one thing is sold they must invent another to supersede it. The stylist therefore works by contrasts. If curves were in yesterday, square corners are In today. Out with delicate colors, in with bright ones. It is well known that women's fashions work the same way. A fashionable color reaches saturation point and everyone longs only to see its opposite so that an excess of violet produces a desire for yellow. After a season of violet, then, one can fairly reliably predict a season of yellow.