What Survives the Moment

On fashion, taste, character and the things we choose to keep

I have never been particularly interested in following trends, although I have always been interested in watching them. There is a difference. After a lifetime in design, you learn to notice when a color begins to gather force, when a hemline shifts, when shoulders widen, when trousers loosen, when a material once considered vulgar suddenly becomes chic. You notice the moment when something that looked improbable six months ago begins to look inevitable.

Fashion likes to pretend these changes simply happen. They do not. They come from somewhere.

You Can’t Ignore the Zeitgeist

Not following trends does not mean ignoring them. Quite the opposite. If you work seriously with design, you have to keep your finger on the pulse of the moment. Politics affects taste. So do money, technology, fear, prosperity, boredom, rebellion and desire.

A narrow silhouette can speak of restraint; a wider one can suggest freedom, ease or even defiance. The return of corsetry or bondage references is never only about provocation. It can reveal something about power, sexuality, control and the body.

I think some of my fascination with Jean Paul Gaultier and Vivienne Westwood came from recognizing that, although I would not have been able to articulate it at the time. I had already watched the culture changing around me. 9 to 5 had put the frustrations and ambitions of working women on the screen, and by the mid-eighties, living in New York, I could see women claiming a very different kind of presence in the professional world, including the heavily male territory of Wall Street. Clothes reflected it too: stronger shoulders, sharper tailoring, a more deliberate assertion of authority.

Then came Madonna in Gaultier’s fiercely pointed cone-bra corset. To me, it belonged to the same cultural arc. The corset, once associated with restraining and shaping a woman’s body, had been turned outward almost like armor. It was theatrical and sexual, certainly, but it was also about control. She was deciding how the body would be seen.

At the other end of the spectrum, I remember the very delicate Gunne Sax dresses I wore in high school. Lace, softness, romance, a certain nostalgia—they belonged just as unmistakably to their moment. Looking back, the contrast fascinates me. A Gunne Sax dress and a Gaultier cone bra may seem to have almost nothing in common, yet both tell us something about the desires, fantasies and changing ideas of femininity surrounding them.

I did not understand all of this at the time. I was simply paying attention. I noticed the clothes, the films, the music, the way women were beginning to carry themselves differently, and the changing atmosphere around me. Only much later did I understand that I had been reading the culture without knowing I was reading it.

Perhaps that is how an eye develops. You notice first. The meaning catches up later.

And fashion is only one part of it. Music, art, film, architecture and literature all respond to the same atmosphere. Sometimes they reflect it, sometimes they resist it, and sometimes they reveal something about the moment before we have language for it. The clothes change because the mood changes, but so do interiors, objects, songs, movies and the things we suddenly find beautiful.

Materials and proportions become a kind of social weather report. They tell us what people are ready to expose, what they want to conceal and what they may be trying to imagine about themselves. That is why trends are worth watching even when the trend itself is not particularly interesting. They are evidence.

This is also why curiosity matters. If you stay curious about what people are listening to, watching, reading, wearing, building and rejecting, you begin to see connections that are easy to miss when everything is viewed separately. A color, a silhouette, a movie, a song, a room and the mood of a society may appear unrelated at first. Often they are not. The deeper meaning is usually in the relationship between things.

Perhaps this is also why I have always preferred to have my own voice in the way I dress rather than simply follow whatever is newest. That feels harder now. We are exposed to such a constant stream of images, opinions, recommendations and micro-trends that it can be difficult to hear your own response before someone else tells you what to want. Curiosity helps, but so does knowing when to step away from the noise long enough to find your own center.

A good designer should understand not only what people want, but why they have begun to want it. I want to know why something suddenly feels right before deciding whether I think it is good. Some trends flare and disappear because novelty was all they had. Others reveal a genuine shift in the way we live, dress or see ourselves, and those are the ones that eventually change the vocabulary of design.

So I do not believe in ignoring trends. I believe in noticing them without surrendering to them. That may be one of the better definitions of style: knowing the moment without allowing the moment to dictate who you are.

Classic Doesn’t Mean Conventional

The word “classic” has acquired an unfortunate reputation for good behavior. It suggests beige cashmere, pearls, polished mahogany, perhaps a camel coat so correct that no one could possibly object to it. There is nothing wrong with any of that, but it is not what I mean.

Some of the greatest classics in design were once deeply unconventional. A Bertoia chair is now familiar, but there was nothing timid about reducing a chair to a drawing in steel. Issey Miyake changed the relationship between fabric and the body. Jean Paul Gaultier made provocation look intelligent. Tribal weavers created compositions generations ago that can look more modern today than much of what is made to look modern now.

The best things were not safe when they first appeared. They had nerve, and that is often why they lasted.

Good Things Survive Their Moment

Trend depends heavily on repetition. We see something once and dismiss it; we see it again and begin to understand it; we see it everywhere and suddenly it seems desirable. Fashion has always understood the seduction of familiarity.

Good design does not need consensus. You can encounter an object without knowing who made it, when it was made or whether anyone important has approved of it and still respond to it immediately. The proportion feels right. The material makes sense. The construction has intelligence. And sometimes there is one small thing that is slightly wrong in exactly the right way: a rug whose pattern shifts unexpectedly, a dress with a seam that refuses to behave, a piece of jewelry just a little too large for good manners.

That interests me more than perfection. I like evidence of the hand and evidence of use. I like things that show some life.

Character tends to age better than perfection.

That is true of objects, and I think it is true of faces as well. A face that has aged naturally can hold far more interest than one from which every irregularity has been endlessly corrected. The desire to erase every line, every asymmetry and every trace of time can eventually erase the very thing that made a person distinctive.

Furniture, textiles and clothing acquire something in much the same way. Patina is not necessarily damage. Sometimes it is simply what gives something depth and beauty.

I Have Always Bought This Way

I was interested in clothes long before I understood fashion as an industry. I noticed color, shape, fabric and construction. Later, working in art and design gave me more language for what I was seeing, but the instinct itself had been there from the beginning.

I never felt much desire to rebuild an entire wardrobe because a season changed. I preferred to keep good things and change the way I wore them. A jacket I have owned for decades can look entirely different with a current shoe, an unexpected scarf, a large brooch or a piece of jewelry with a different scale. A good piece does not have to be worn the way it was worn when it was made. In fact, that is often what makes an older piece look old.

The piece has not changed. The context has.

That is one reason I have never understood the urge to continually replace good clothes. Sometimes what needs changing is not the wardrobe but the way you are looking at it. Furniture works much the same way. So do rugs, jewelry and almost anything else worth living with.

Over the years I bought things because they interested me. Some were by important designers; others were not. Sometimes I bought something before I entirely understood why I liked it, and years later the reason became obvious. That is one of the pleasures of collecting. Taste develops through attention. You train your eye by using it.

Comfort Is Part of Good Design

There is one thing I have never been willing to sacrifice completely to fashion: comfort. That does not mean giving up on proportion, shape or glamour. Quite the opposite. Good design and good construction should understand the body they are asking to inhabit.

A beautiful shoe you cannot walk in, trousers you cannot comfortably sit in or a dress that requires constant adjustment eventually stops being beautiful because your discomfort becomes part of how it looks.

That does not mean I have never endured a little discomfort for the sake of the look. Amazing stilettos for a special evening out? Why not. But for everyday walking, give me a well-crafted leather loafer.

I prefer leather shoes because they breathe and, perhaps even more importantly, they give. Feet warm up and swell during the day. A good leather shoe gradually responds to the foot rather than fighting it. That is non-negotiable for me. My apologies to the vegan readers.

Fashion can ask us to reconsider what feels familiar, but it should not require us to suffer for the privilege.

Comfort and style are not opposites. The best clothes allow you to forget about them once you put them on.

Buy the Object, Not the Name

A great name is useful. It can tell you something about authorship, history, provenance and intention, but it cannot rescue a mediocre object, and anonymity does not diminish beauty.

I would rather turn something over, look at the seams, feel the weight, examine the weave and study the proportion. Does the material make sense? Does the construction have intelligence? Does the object still hold my attention after the label stops doing the work?

A famous name may explain why something matters. It cannot make you love it.

A Home — and a Wardrobe — Should Take Time

I approach a room much the way I approach getting dressed. I rarely want everything to belong to the same period, provenance or idea. A good room needs a foundation, but it also needs tension. An old rug can make a very modern chair more interesting. A severe piece of furniture may need something handmade beside it. Something precious can sit comfortably next to something humble.

And just as an old jacket can be made current by changing what is worn underneath it or around it, a room can be renewed without replacing everything in it. Change the lamp, move the art, introduce a textile, bring in an unexpected object, and suddenly a room you have lived with for years feels different. The furniture did not become outdated. The relationships around it changed.

That is why I have never felt compelled to continually replace good things simply to make a room—or myself—look current. A collected room does not need to be finished, and neither does a wardrobe. The interesting ones evolve. Something inherited sits beside something found while travelling. A modern chair shares a room with an old textile. A thirty-year-old jacket suddenly looks right again with a brooch or scarf.

Things from different periods begin to speak to one another, and this is where personal style enters. It is not the age or pedigree of the individual pieces that creates the whole. It is the eye that puts them together.

When everything in a room is bought at once, it often tells you where someone shopped. When things are accumulated over time, they begin to tell you who someone is. That is the difference between decorating and accumulating a life.

But this does not mean you need decades of possessions before a room can have character. Everyone starts somewhere. If you are young, starting fresh, or simply beginning again, choosing each piece thoughtfully makes the difference. A room does not need history on the first day. It needs intention.

The Test of Time

Every so often I take something out that I bought twenty or thirty years ago and realize I would still buy it today. That may be the simplest definition of classic I know: not something frozen outside of time, but something strong enough to move through time without losing itself.

Trends can be useful, and at their best they can be exhilarating. They introduce a new proportion, a new material or a new freedom. But they should not make the decision for you.

Know what is happening and why it is happening. Learn materials, proportion and construction. Pay attention to comfort. Look at how things relate to one another. Stay curious enough to notice what your own time is telling you, and then trust your eye.

Buy fewer things, perhaps, but choose things with enough character to survive your own changing taste. And when you still love something after everyone else has moved on, keep it.

That is usually where style begins.