There's this idea in industrial design. 'Planned obsolescence'. This is basically when a company plans for the literal failure of their electronic devices, for example. So like a phone that become increasingly slower over time. This isn't just electronics though. We have had the technology to make virtually indestructible fabric since at least like the 1940s. Well not totally indestructible, you could probably cut them up with like scissors or something, but fabric that would be essentially indestructible under normal circumstances. INTRO At one point in time- Nylon stockings were specifically marketed as being pretty much indestructible to normal wear. Nylon is a totally synthetic material that was developed in the 1930s for toothbrushes and nylon stockings. It was used during WWII for military parachutes. In the 1940s, it was marketed as being indestructible. It's 2020, if we've had this technology since the 1940s, where is it? Why cant we have indestructible fabric? Well because it's actually a terrible idea… for business. It is true that this fabric is very resistant to tearing. Like- it would probably outlive you. But that's the problem. Because people would buy like a dozen, at the most. And that's it! Because they're indestructible! They last a lifetime! So the 'fashion' became to have thinner and thinner materials. This is reflected in the marketing. They made it fashionable to want the thinner material. This was devised by Dupont, the creators of Nylon- and the nylon stocking as we know it today is born- it rips and runs very easily- so you will have to replace it eventually. You can kind of extend this to all fashion. Jeans companies don’t want their jeans to last forever, just long enough for them to not feel like a bad deal. That's a delicate balancing act. Why is this relevant? because you can actually extend it to just about everything, and especially when you apply this to technology- you get the idea of… Planned obsolescence - A policy of producing consumer goods that rapidly become obsolete and so require replacing, achieved by frequent changes in design, termination of the supply of spare parts, and the use of nondurable materials. Like super thin nylon. The problem with modernism is a sort of inconvenient truth. Some parts of modernism fit perfectly with capitalism- which was the increasingly dominant economic structure from the middle 20th century onward. Other parts do not. It's great to have a building or a logo that will last forever and never needs to be remade, but you don't want consumers holding on to their products forever- because then they don't need to replace them. If your brilliantly designed electric razor never needs to be improved or redesigned, why would you ever replace it? That's bad, from an income perspective, for the electric razor company. And it's bad for the economy, because capitalism requires the free and consistent flow of capital to function. The Bauhaus Utopian world- one is which a perfect society emerges from perfectly designed parts- is not really compatible with capitalism. It wasn’t dreamt up FOR capitalism. So what you end up with from the middle of the 20th century onward is sort of a mix. We see elements of style- like streamline or googie- becoming increasingly enmeshed in industrial products, while architecture and some graphic design holds onto modernism and it's serious, elegant, austere symbolism. Modernism used the building as a model for all design. But after modernism, increasingly we see something else. If modernism is not compatible with consumer products- especially ones that are likely to be replaced due to functional or stylistic obsolescence- what could we use as a model going forward? Increasingly the answer becomes fashion. Architecture is to modernism what fashion is to post modernism. Post modernist designers are looking towards fashion in part because it's sort of the opposite of architecture. Modernist Architecture is permanent- divorced from space and time. Fashion is temporary by it's very nature, and completely dependent on place and time. Different parts of the world have different fashions at different time period. That's what the post-modernists were interested in, capturing the zeitgeist- the spirit of a particular place and time. Something like a tea kettle may last forever, but what happens to an electronic device that is designed to last forever in terms of it's materials and construction- once it's function becomes obsolete? Once better technology replaces it? It will probably still last forever, in a landfill. The Bauhaus probably could not have predicted that issue. It's not like post modernism doesn’t have problems with waste or pollution, but increasingly it moves towards more biodegradable and recyclable materials in the late 20th century. The shift to fashion as a model for design philosophy and aesthetics is a major shift in the ethos of the designer. From designing the perfect thing that lasts forever, to designing ephemera that lasts as long as it needs to- since it will eventually be discarded either way. This is a model for design that is compatible with capitalism. Yes there is style and ornamentation- yes this will eventually look outdated and obsolete. But that's great, because then you'll have to buy the new thing. And the next new thing. Forever. The Harlem Renaissance and Style in America While Europe was contending with the ancient symbolism of wealth and culture, and searching for some objective notion of perfection- America in it's youthful adolescence had been weaving through idiosyncratic styles and fashions since the industrial revolution. But the United States was a product of Europe and European ideology. It inherited a lot of those symbolic systems also. The word culture takes on a few distinct meanings. On one hand it could mean the best that society has to offer according to the most powerful people in that society- cultured things like… opera… and symphonies… and stuff. Or culture could mean the soul of a society as it is reflected by every part of that society. The most powerful people in a society can control what it thinks of as it's most important stuff- but the culture as a sort of soul of a civilization is harder to control. It's automatic. The ideology that emerges as the dominant ideology carries with it an unpredictable semiotic barrage of constrains and affordances on thought and behavior. The Mainstream culture of America had obvious echoes of aristocracy. Monarchy democratized through capitalism. The elegant, austere, sophistication of the elite. A problem in search of a solution that modernism would soon resolve. The problem, like I said earlier, is with permanence and temporality. Most things needed to be temporary to be viable products, but culture needs to a sense of stability and permanence. It's a weird contradiction that seems to resolve in America with culture and sub culture. Sub cultures provide the impermanence of style- it provided a sense of progression not immediately necessary or desirable for the people that currently hold power. Remember Art Nouveau? The Bold, Graphic, expressive and curvilinear style of Art Nouveau finds a kindred ally in the Harlem Renaissance movement in the United States. The Harlem Renaissance was a movement that emerged out of the world of literature in New York, but was directly connected to France through the black population in Paris that resulted from French colonies in Africa and the Caribbean. So there was a clear sharing of ideas through literature, but this French connection was also aesthetic, and it was largely the lens through which Art Nouveau was introduced to the United States. And it sort of its like a glove in a lot of ways. I mean the black community in the United States has a rough history with their own representation in imagery- which we already know is powerful and can leave a permanent impact. So the Harlem Renaissance artists were not as interested in making that French Salon style work, even though they totally could and were largely- like the abstract expressionists- traditionally trained artists- they were going to make 'new' art, democratized art. And moreover they were going to make art that sought to retire and replace the racist cartoonish imagery that had often been their only representation in the visual art world. Harlem renaissance artists would refer to non-western and african imagery and folk art to inform their imagery. And similar to how the non-western, japanese aesthetic kind of changed European design, the Harlem Renaissance plays a giant role in sort of changing the style of Art Nouveu into Art Deco- which is just very much the style of 'American' design up to the great depression. Yet the Harlem Renaissance visual art wasn’t really decorative in the same way that art Nouveau was decorative. Or that Art Deco was decorative, but it was kind of the incubator for a lot of this imagery. The harlem renaissance fused together literature, fine art, design, music, and fashion in an American Bauhausian sort of way. At around the same time as the Bauhaus in Europe- the 1920s. Just like the Bauhaus was the main incubator for the avant garde in Europe, the Harlem Renaissance was the main incubator for avant garde ideas in America. But they were different ideas with different philosophical underpinnings. The Bauhaus was socalist- it was about the collective. America has always been about the individual. That's why abstract expressionism dominated in American- it's expression. This was represented in parallel between music and fashion. Beatniks and The Space Age Post world war II tension involving the nuclear weapons and the threat of aggression from the soviet union served to sort of homogenize the United States around a sort of capitalist utopia. This is were we get suburbs, middle class, white collar jobs. But it's intensely capitalist nature and isolationism really butted heads with the values of expressionism and individualism that America had always championed. This is how counter cultures are formed. The 1950's youth generation is often called the Beat generation. They are sort of an intermediate, transitional cohert between what we could normally call the silent generation and the baby boomer generation. Most of these people were probably too young to have fought in world war 2, but they lived through it. They were called the 'beat generation' because they were beat- as in beat-up. Defeated. Resigned. They idealized modernism to a degree because of it's European avant garde weirdness compared to traditional white Americana- but they also saw the failure of modernism to deliver Utopia up close. They also saw the failure of capitalism to deliver the kind of techno-utopia it promised. I mean capitalism as a solution to all social ailments brought on the collapse of the great depression, which played a large role in the rise of highly nationalistic and conservative viewpoints as a response to the obviously wrong and destructive hedonism and unregulated market capitalism of the 1920s. As a result, their philosophy was sort of anti-capitalist but non-committal. They upheld bauhaus sort of ideals, but those take on a different meaning as a result of the requirements of capitalism. This happens with a lot of late modernists. Failing to fully implement those modernist values- because of the demands of capitalism in American and post-world war 2 Europe- does not lead to Bauhaus-esque stuff, it leads to mid century modern stuff. This is a style, it now looks retro, right. It's not hard to place this in time and space. But real Modernism is suppose to be timeless- clearly something went wrong as it was imported to the US. Their style was called Beatnik- a portmantu of the work beat and 'sputnik', the first artificial earth satellite put into orbit by the communist soviet union. Beatniks were inspired by socalism and communism, just as the bauhaus had been, but in America that attitude turns into a style. An anti-fashion fashion. And there would have never been beatniks, without the Harlem Renaissance and later the Black Arts Movement. These were the templates used by post world war 2 children and young adults to rebel from the system that they're suburban parents were beholden to. They listened to Jazz, blues, bebop and later rock and roll. They performed spoken word poetry about marginalization. They saw in the struggle of black Americans, However tonedeaf and misguided it was, their own suburban alienation with the lifestyle that was preordained by the previous generation. This is not a valid comparison. To white suburban American kids, the choice to live an 'urban' life was a choice. A symbolic rebellion against an establishment that was literally built for them. To black Americans, the struggle that was being referenced was not a choice, it was means of cultural survival against that establishment. Jazz, R&B and Rock and Roll are all the logical evolutions of traditional African percussive music. The same music that was suppressed and through of as demonic and destructive to white slave owners and their European culture. Merging these aesthetics with white European instruments was a way of keeping these traditions alive and undercover. But increasingly this will become a well upon which the counter culture of America would withdraw cultural capital to fund it's otherwise insoluble demand for 'style' and 'fashion' So what is happening here after world war 2 is appropriation for the purposes of rebellion. And this is important because it creates a counter culture. On one hand, it is turning philosophy into style, but on the other hand the popularity of the culture popularizes a diverse range of viewpoints on how things should be made. It's not good or bad, it's not socialist of capitalist, it's contradictory. It's definitely not modernism in a purist sense- and modernism continues to exist- but modernism is done. It looks the same as it will always look. This is the thing that's moving the needle- that's progressive. Fashion is fashion. I mean the word fashion essentially means something that is trendy. It doesn’t last long but represents some kind of reflection of a culture at a particular time. It's kind of the opposite of architecture, and the styles of fashion- clothing- really reflect that. It reflects the Zeitgeist. The way the modernists in the 40s and 50s and 60s used architecture as kind of the jumping off point for the development of their aesthetics, later generations in the 70s and 80s and 90s would really use fashion. Because in some ways it does a better job. It's not trying to create something that is objectively perfect like architecture was in modernism, fashion is acknowledging that perfection is only possible subjectively within a particular time period, at a particular place, among a particular group of people..