Connecting Creativitythe lectures, but his texts help us to identify some of the peculiarities of
creative thought. When he writes about imagination, for instance, Calvino
defines it as a list of potentialities, of hypotheses, of what was not and may
never, but might have been. What is important to him is to draw from this
gulf of possibilities, to recreate all the possible combinations, and to pick the
ones which best fit the purpose.
As I have suggested, many who have dealt with the concept of creativity
have used it as a label or accolade for individuals whose output is different
in a striking, even obvious way. In my view, it is erroneous to make such
evaluations without taking the context into consideration. Take, for example,
Renaissance artists and their works. We would be obliged to regard their
creative value as slight, to consider them as minor artists, if we did not judge
their work in the context of the strict patronage; the political, social and
religious reality they were commissioned to represent. By extension, products
that vary only slightly from the established norm, contrary to their immediate
appearance, may in fact be the result of great creative thought. In fashion, a
‘commercial’ product can be as much the result of creative ‘genius’ as an
extravagant catwalk creation.
Creativity and FashionIt is widely agreed that clothing is a language, but a very ambiguous one. Its
vocabulary changes or evolves, and can express different meanings at different
times according to the wearer and the observer.^6 We might say that clothing
is a dynamic language open to endless resetting. Some adhere to the view
that fashion follows a ‘trickle down process’^7 whereby innovative ideas are
transmitted from the elite top layers of the social pyramid to the bottom.
Others consider it mainly a matter of points of view, where each style creates
an anti-style that defines it, and stimulates further change.^8 In reality, it is
difficult to frame the rules by which creative thought gives a shape to
fashion and its changes, although it appears that a good many can be linked
in some way to technological innovations in textiles, and there seem to
be recurrent patterns such as the relaunch of historic items in different
contexts.
- Jullien, F., Procès ou creation, Un Introduction á la Pensée des lettres Chinois, Paris:
Edition du Seuil, 1989. - After Veblen, T., The Theory of the Leisure Class: an economic study of institutions,
London: Allen and Unwin, 1970. - Hollander, A., Sex and Suits, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994.