Perhaps the central question for us all, and certainly for fashion, is how do we keep a core public identity when the digital age demands a constant flow of images, concepts and content? How do you maintain an essential self when you are traveling through the internet at high speed and needing to deliver something new to attention spans that are a nanosecond long? How does that essence that is you, whether you are an influencer or a brand, not become split into so many fragments, for so many segments, that you simply disappear?
In the facilitating company of Tim Blanks, in an article for Business of Fashion, Miuccia Prada is taking on this very issue, somewhat late in the game compared to other brands. However as always, she brings her unruly genius and ironic sensibility to the question at hand. She frames the question as one that challenges us to find the line between being superficial and serious. The Prada woman as envisioned by this designer has always been a woman in motion, and as noted in the article this characteristic has challenged those marketers charged with developing a cohesive brand story. Her suggestion…less theory, more passion. More putting yourself out there.
This feels right. A focus on being human, relishing the materiality of humanity, of my own. Embracing the irresistible and transforming power of engagement with diversity. whether that be people or thoughts that are different than you and yours. Keeping your core but allowing yourself to be transformed as you are “in relation” with the internet, people, information and new and different ideas. As my “public identity” continues to evolve and as a woman in motion, these attributes seem to be the building blocks of the reparative mindset I mentioned Monday and wish to cultivate as I travel faster and faster through the digital world of fashion.
Accidental Icon Wears:
Black Wool Jacket: agnès b, Pants: Moschino, Shoes: Y’s, Black Suede Pleat Earrings: Aumorfia
How do you maintain your essential self yet still remain open to change?
A good article on Prada. I enjoyed reading it. Thank you
A good article on Prada. I enjoyed reading it. Thank you
I can only be inspired by the small number of people I know who have managed to do so into their nineties. The common factor amongst them seems to be an ability to make real friendships with younger people, not the patronising relationships most people establish with subsequent generations whilst only having friends of their own age. The influence and challenge provided by real relationships with younger people in which one is valued for your essential self allows for and inspires genuine change. I have also found younger people deeply uncomfortable with the superficially of much production in the digital age and I’ve had much more interesting discussions with them about it than with many of my contemporaries who don’t want to engage at all.
Lastly what is the lovely photo above your head in the picture?
I can only be inspired by the small number of people I know who have managed to do so into their nineties. The common factor amongst them seems to be an ability to make real friendships with younger people, not the patronising relationships most people establish with subsequent generations whilst only having friends of their own age. The influence and challenge provided by real relationships with younger people in which one is valued for your essential self allows for and inspires genuine change. I have also found younger people deeply uncomfortable with the superficially of much production in the digital age and I’ve had much more interesting discussions with them about it than with many of my contemporaries who don’t want to engage at all.
Lastly what is the lovely photo above your head in the picture?
"…how do we keep a core public identity when the digital age demands a constant flow of images, concepts and content?" For me, the threshold question (even before the digital age) has been whether to create or maintain "a core public identity" in the first place. When, as a young professional, I had the opportunity to become famous (in the first instance) and a public figure (in the second instance), I decided, as soon as I encountered the journalists, broadcasters and imagemakers that would be the vehicles through which either would happen, that neither was for me. That was none of those vehicles was interested in substance or fact; they were concerned with image, whether it bore any relation to me or not. The "constant (and rapidfire) flow of images, concepts and content" demanded by the digital world of anyone with a "core public identity" makes that even more true. Fortunately, I have the luxury of being able to enjoy meaningful engagement with a number of very diverse (in every way) individuals and living as a member of a number of communities without having (or needing) to create or maintain a "core public identity" in the digital world. While I do appreciate how email and low-cost telephone and data service allow me to communicate in seconds with just about anyone, I have no desire to make myself a presence on social media or to otherwise have a "core public identity". And I am very grateful that neither my personal nor my professional life calls on me to do so. Am I the only person who feels this way?
Always lovely, eloquently delivered intelligent and thought provoking topics that talks to your readers, not down to them. For me, this topic presents as an evolving transactional process akin to motherhood. While we change and evolve as our children grow, and while they need a continual delivery of new information as they grow, we continue to remain anchored to our truisms. Walk into any mother’s home, and we see how unique she is in her constructed place, constructed self, and the way she interacts with her children. Rarely is this static, but an organic, reshaping, refining process. And, yet, while each day is different, brings change, new challenges, new experiences, etc., children know the mother’s essence around which their worlds orbit, an essence upon which they can always depend, positively speaking, of course. Individual passions keep us tied within ourselves, and though we have many passions, there is often a common core within them, which creates further stability amidst constant change. Thus, we can be true to ourselves while adapting to change, new experiences, and in our delivery of new information.
White Dog Diaries
To Leslie from Oregon, in answer to your question about whether or not anyone else has her experience. . . Yes. I also have very little desire to be a presence on social media, but I do enjoy participating deeply in the communities I have helped to build in real life, and I do find that reading wonderfully thought provoking things online and participating in some virtual conversations is also enriching. Those experiences make it pretty easy to feel rooted in my own identity, while encouraging myself to grow and change and become ever more my true self.
To Leslie from Oregon, in answer to your question about whether or not anyone else has her experience. . . Yes. I also have very little desire to be a presence on social media, but I do enjoy participating deeply in the communities I have helped to build in real life, and I do find that reading wonderfully thought provoking things online and participating in some virtual conversations is also enriching. Those experiences make it pretty easy to feel rooted in my own identity, while encouraging myself to grow and change and become ever more my true self.
You and your thoughtful readers raise big questions—you could design a course about the issues in this post. Like Leslie in Oregon, I am not at all a fan of media, social and otherwise, because I too know how it can distort substance and fact in favor of images. I think we can see from recent events—a "post-truth" era?— how such distortion can corrupt our ability to weigh and judge facts. (Unlike Miuccia Prada, I think we might need less passion and more actual thinking these days.) The real benefits of the internet, though, are that it does offer us "the transforming power of engagement with diversity." So enriching. But I have been feeling a need lately to pull back from social media that urges me to try on an image of self—whether clothing or home design—by buying something. Can we no longer get at our essential selves without buying something new? In any case, thank you for challenging us to think! I look forward to more dialogue with you and your readers in 2017.
P.S. I would love to know what do you mean by "the materiality of humanity."
Amazing and very stylish look. Greetings
Amazing and very stylish look. Greetings
I think the answer is somewhere in the space between "core public identity" in your first sentence, and "essential self" in your final question. To answer, my suspicion is that it becomes paramount to mind the gap.