WHAT IF? WHY NOT? HOW COME?

This part of the blog will be a collection of thoughts, free to be stolen/re-appropriated or called your own. It's all about product ideas that aren't in existence that we think should be.

FASHION - If open source and collaborative culture is the future of the creative industries why is the fashion industry lagging behind? Shouldn't fashion be leading the way? People may argue that fashion is about a singular vision of a creative person. For one moment lets forget this assumption. Lets imagine the creativity of a group of people could surpass the talents of one fashion designer.

Imagine if Comme des Garçons added another brand to their range, I understand that currently Comme des Garçons encompasses 14 brands which includes the newly launched Dover Street Market clothing range. This range however would not be controlled by Rei Kawakubo or Junya Watanabe but the members of a Comme des Garçons network of interested and interesting people. The members of this community could submit designs, vote on the best designs then release a range based on crowd sourced garment designs. This model could allow total freedom from what a clothing brand 'should' produce. One collection could be solely t-shirts then, the following collection could be a wider collection of garments.

To me this idea feels inline with the Comme des Garçons brand ethos and would offer something new and exciting to the industry.

It's worth bearing in mind, that with community/crowd sourced projects the make or break is the 'quality' of the community. If no one updated their Facebook profile it would be a dull place to be with no one worth stalking.

Here's a few interesting examples of crowd sourced in action:

Threadless.com - Similar to the idea outlined but deals solely with graphic tees
Quirky.Com - Social Product Development

I know people reading will be thinking, but what about Threadless! It's a step in the right direction, but they are prints on t-shirts. I want to see more than that from a creative community. The community could be a close community where only people who are invited are allowed to join, much like Luxury Society, the private networking site for luxury professionals.

We hope you enjoyed the first of these little rants. If you have an idea you want share, pop us an email. If it's good enough we'll put it up. Let the debate begin...

joes[a]fiend