Function Over Form

"Quality" design is a subjective feature in contemporary fashion's methodologies, but the Dior by Mystery Ranch collaboration checks all the right boxes for a practical and exquisite product.

- Manfred Lu

How can we define "good" design? We form such opinions on how an item is well-crafted - some might assess them through strict reasoning, while others use simple intuition. In the 1970s, German industrial designer Dieter Rams appeased his afflictions with the very same question by defining good design as such: it has to be innovative, useful, aesthetic, understandable, unobstructed, honest, long-lasting, thorough down to the last detail, environmentally friendly, and posses as little design as possible.

Albeit a long one, it is a simple list of criteria. Yet, fashion has increasingly ignored most of them in favour of humour and shock value, crossing a threshold once upheld by the utilitarian desire for function over form. For the first time, the correlation between the material features of garments and the moral condition for quality becomes increasingly tricky to tether, allowing clothes to wear and define the wearer instead of the people wearing and defining them.