Monthly Archives: April 2007

My “off duty” pants

Canon_powershot Occasionally, I venture an opinion on the best equipment for the traveling ethnographer.  And this trip, I tested something new.  I called them my "off duty pants." 

All this begins with the fact that airlines continue to choose new and unexpected destinations for my luggage.  As nearly as I can tell, my Tumi bag has been to South America several times.  I’ve been there only once. 

And this means we must never, and I mean never, surrender our bag to the airlines.  And this means that everything we take with us must fit in a bag that must fit in the overhead compartment. 

And this means a 2 suit, 5 day rotation: alternating suits and just enough shirts, shorts and socks to last five days. (Even with a 5 day rotation, I end up getting caught between hotels.  I am unable to get things into the laundry service, (or, horrors, out again), and I’m obliged to buy things to "tide me over."  I have made some really put fashion choices in this way.  (Or at least, that’s my excuse when Pam, her exquisite aesthetic faculties on alert, says, "where in God’s name did you get that shirt?")

The trouble with the two-suit-5-day rotation is that we are always wearing our "on-duty" outfit, even when sitting in our room, waiting for the day to start or stop.  From a sartorial point of view, I are never off duty.  Psychologically, I never detach from life on the road.  This may in fact be my reality but what’s the point of saying so with my clothing code. 

This trip, I tried something new.  They are standard issue, beige, American, Khakis, made of distressed cotton, by Ralph Lauren (the Andrew pant, RL calls them).  They are roomy and comfy.  Just the thing.  The effect is not quite as dramatic as the one achieved, rather more famously, by the Elizabethan Lord Burghley who is reputed to have removed his robe at a formal occasion and said something like, "lie thee here, counsellor, while I go off to dance" but it is vastly better than sitting in your room in your suit.  I mean, how sad.  It’s a little like wearing your Little League outfit to bed when you’re a kid.  Talk about over-committing to role!

So far my off duty pants have made a signal contribution to my journey.  I wear them around the hotel room and that’s all.  But even this makes me feel like I am on a little vacation.

The perfect black bag addendum

I have made a substitution to  the "perfect black bag" (see the post below).  This used to contain a Nikon Coolpix 3700. But this proved to be a counter intuitive piece of design, the designer’s way of showing the consumer’s who’s boss.  (Not you, poor, wretched consumer.)   

This trip I have been using, and can now heartily recommend, the Canon Powershot, SD1000 (pictured, get the one on the right).  It is perfect: little, elegant, great memory, flawless in execution, and a joy to be with (not at all like its owner). 

References

McCracken, Grant.  2006.  The Perfect Black Bag.  This Blog Sits at the Intersection of Anthropology and Economics.  October 24, 2006. here.

McCracken, Grant.  2006.  Advice to a young consultant.  This Blog Sits at the Intersection of Anthropology and Economics. June 20, 2006. here. 

Scitovsky, dynamic design, and the Frankfurt shower head

Parker_jotter In The Joyless Economy, Scitovsky observed a problem in the consumer society: that the pleasure of ownership turns to mere comfort. 

Here’s an example.  We give up our Ford Focus and buy an Audi.  We are immediately impressed by how much more fun it is to drive the Audi.  It is better engineered, better built.  But it is not very long before we forget the Focus.  And eventually we come to take the Audi for granted.  Our pleasure has turned to comfort.

I am a little suspicious of the argument as a general proposition.  I own things that continue to give pleasure long after purchase.  I love my ThinkPad.  I love my new pen, a Parker Jotter (pictured). Inexpensive, a little inelegant, old fashioned, it is the perfect implement for the hard working ethnographer (and a lot likes its owner).  I’ve had my Jotter for several months now and if anything I grow more fond of it. 

(Scitovsky assumes that the meanings of the object are only those created by marketing and that these wear away with ownership.  But we know perfectly well that our possessions take on new, more personal, meanings, and that good marketing "scores" them precisely so that they may do so.  When this is the case, the first pleasure ownership is augmented by second and subsequent pleasures.)

But Scitovsky is on to something.  I now live in a free standing house much roomier and better appointed than the little condo I had in Montreal.  I have ceased to note the difference and no longer treasure more room, a back yard, the ability to walk to the Long Island sound. This pleasure has turned to comfort.  My present cell phone is much better than my first cell phone but I do not give it credit for the difference.  Pleasure is merely comfort. 

And this brings me, of course, to the shower head of my room at the Hilton.  For reasons of its own, it delivers an inconsistent temperature.  Sometimes, the water is much hotter than I want. Sometimes, less.  Generally, it circulates gently up and down this narrow range, but occasionally it spikes high, and I have to be quick about getting out of the way.  (This turns out to be good training for the rest of the day.)

Now, I am pretty sure this is an accidental product feature.  The water system of the hotel must deliver water at many temperatures to many rooms, so variation is inevitable.  But this does have the effect of gently changing the temperature, and giving me the pleasure of reentry.  As I return from too warm or too cold to "just right," I have the opportunity to appreciate "just right" all over again.

And I wonder of this is not a way of solving the Scitovsky problem. Could we build variation into product formula in order to remind the consumer of what they liked about the product in the first place? 

Clearly, it doesn’t make any sense to hobble our Audi for some purposes that we might be reminded of its "go fast" ability in others.  And indeed we don’t have to.  Traffic congestion takes care of this. Variation is naturally occurring.

Similarly, I don’t want my Parker pen to skip periodically that I may reminded of its ability to write smoothly.  But it might be possible to build in a shifting center of balance so that the pen feels differently in the hand from time to time.  This would help remind me of how well it is designed.  (Naturally, it should also be possible for me to lock in or release this ability as I want.)

I know that some companies are thinking about how they can allow the consumer to change the formula by, say, twisting the bottom of a can.  But what I like about the Frankfurt shower head is precisely that my intervention is not required, that variation happens on its own.

I can see designers perhaps rising to this opportunity.  After all, we do sometimes come to take for granted their best work.  Work in a little variation, and we are returned to our first reaction of awe struck wonder.  What designerly ego could resist this opportunity?

We could see a time when a variation cycle is a standard feature of design, and something we go looking for.  (Of course, some will want something that remains precisely what it is and not another thing.)  But on balance, I think variation might be the coming thing, and it represents a new challenge for the designer, yet another consideration that must be factored in.  (Note to self: ask Holly Kretschmar at Ideo if there’s anything like this in the works.)

Ours is a culture that embraces variation, variety, change and even discontinuity.  Sometimes this mean we prefer things to remain precisely what they are.  But there will be moments when this immutability will make brands and products seem tedious and a little repetitive, as if they insist on making the same joke over and over again.  Static products may eventually appear stingy and withholding.  These will be products to avoid, for they do nothing in the face of the Scitovsky effect, blithely allowing pleasure to disappear into comfort. 

References

Scitovsky, Tibor.   1992.  The Joyless Economy.  Revised edition.  New York: Oxford University Press. 

The Devil Wears Durkheim

Devil_wears_prada One good thing about life on the road is the opportunity to catch up on movies.  On the flight  over, I saw Casino Royale, and as I bounced around Germany, I saw Children of Men, Nacho Libre, Departed, and The Devil Wears Prada.

I was surprised how sympathetically "Devil" presents the fashion industry.  It ends, as it must, with Andy Sachs repudiating the fashion world and taking a "real" job at a "serious" newspaper.  In the meantime, director David Frankel and writers Lauren Weisberger and Aline Brosh McKenna manage a more sophisticated view.

At one point in the film, Andy (Anne Hathaway) dares to laugh as Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep) struggles to make an editorial decision.  Miranda challenges her, and Andy replies,

No, no, nothing. Y’know, it’s just that both those belts look exactly the same to me. Y’know, I’m still learning about all this stuff.

Miranda says,

This… ‘stuff’?  Oh… ok.  I see.  You think this has nothing to do with you.  You go to your closet and you select out, oh I don’t know, that lumpy blue sweater, for instance, because you’re trying to tell the world that you take yourself too seriously to care about what you put on your back.  But what you don’t know is that that sweater is not just blue, it’s not turquoise, it’s not lapis, it’s actually cerulean.  You’re also blindly unaware of the fact that in 2002, Oscar De La Renta did a collection of cerulean gowns.  And then I think it was Yves St Laurent, wasn’t it, who showed cerulean military jackets?  And then cerulean quickly showed up in the collections of 8 different designers.  Then it filtered down through the department stores and then trickled on down into some tragic casual corner where you, no doubt, fished it out of a clearance bin.  However, that blue represents millions of dollars and countless jobs and so it’s sort of comical how you think that you’ve made a choice that exempts you from the fashion industry when, in fact, you’re wearing the sweater that was selected for you by the people in this room.  From a pile of stuff.

We don’t like the fact that the fashion world helps construct our culture.  Should something so superficial be allowed to give shape to who and what we are?  Most say "no."  Especially when the architects of the industry appear to be not only superficial but mean, demeaning, selfish, egotistical and vain. 

So condemnation is the order of the day.  In this case, Anna Wintour and Vogue were irresistible targets.  (The film is of course based on a book of the same name, and this reports, in fictional form, the author’s stint as a Wintour’s assistant.)

The trouble with the traditional view is that it often fills fans of fashion with a certain self loathing.  Their love of fashion obliges them to hate themselves…at least a little.  How could they care about shoes and handbags?  Can they really be a superficial as this ?

So it was a pleasure to hear another argument, especially when given so beautifully by the preeminent actress of the American cinema. True, the balance offered by Devil does not represent  the intellectual versatility of a Russian novelist, but it is vastly better than the monochromatic approach of the average film.  It may also be evidence that contemporary culture is mustering a more intelligent view of itself.  Well done, Frankel and company.

References

I thank unamed volunteers at Internet Movie Database for the transcription of the passage above.  There are more quotes from the movie here.

For the full imdb treatment of The Devil Wears Prada, go here.

Acknowledgements

To Joan Kron who taught me to take fashion seriously.