Rob Walker’s “Consumed” column, “This Year’s Model“, in this Sunday’s New York Times Magazine presents an interesting question: when constrained by a lack of choice, are we forced to get creative? Walker tells the tale of Sheena Matheiken’s Uniform Project, “which involves wearing the same dress every day for a year, and seeing just how aesthetically creative she could be despite that limitation.” Matheiken’s personal background clearly factored into the project’s inspiration: on her site, she writes:
I was raised and schooled in India where uniforms were a mandate in most public schools. Despite the imposed conformity, kids always found a way to bend the rules and flaunt a little personality… Poking through the sea of uniforms were the idiosyncrasies of teen style and individual flare.
This sounded familiar to me: I wore a school uniform for 12 years. In high school, my sartorial self-expression was limited to my shoes. But while part of me engaged in the grass-is-greener fantasy of a post-high-school life in which I could wear whatever I wanted, while stuck in that plaid skirt, I embraced the challenge and got as creative as I possibly could. Doc Martens, alternated with converse low-tops, became my statement of choice. Of this sort of forced creativity, Walker writes:
Rules stifle creativity and enforce conformity. Rules can do something else too: inspire creativity that thwarts conformity.
Which makes me wonder: as it is in fashion, is it in life? Are there instances in which a lack of choice has forced you to get creative? Is that a good thing? Which would you rather have: a lack of choices that forces you to think out of the box, or endless choices proscribed by no box at all?
As for me, fifteen years post-uniform, I still love clothes. I love the freedom to wear whatever I want. (Is it any wonder that one of my regular writing gigs is as the style columnist for the Santa Barbara Independent?) But I’m not gonna lie: with the hours I’ve spent staring at the innards of my closet, digging through drawers, and trying on outfit after outfit, I could have written The Great American Novel (not to mention come up with The Great American Premise for the Great American Novel). Just this morning, I went through three options before deciding on the one in which I’m currently ensconced. But would I go back to the uniformed days of my youth? Not a chance.
Barbara Kelley
Shannon Kelley
Since I can’t really relate to ensconcing myself in much other than my daily uniform of jeans and a t-shirt ( which is funny I hated my boy scout uniform with a passion), I’ll go with what I know (artmaking). /shakes head trying to rid self of images of green stiff short shorts/
At my best, I know enough to have a self-imposed limited palette of one type or another. The art is almost always more interesting (better). I think this works for people like me who have a tendency to want to sum everything up, because there are truly SO many choices.
The infinite options ‘option’ is good for switching out of one vocabulary and into another should palette #1 get stale. IMHO.
The more I try to stay true to the chaotic everythingness of everything, the more immobilizing it is for me. Sometimes the smallest thing (which I often discover is much more expansive than I expected) can be a testament to that larger rule.
Maybe I should dig out that old uniform.
I wore a plaid skirt everyday for 12 years. I loved free dress days and would literally plan out my outfit for weeks.
Flash forward 15 years, I am a lawyer, and some days, I am excited when I have to go to court, not because I am pumped for whatever hearing, but because I can just grab a suit (kinda like a uniform) and not think about what I’m going to wear that day….
I think limitation/less choice absolutely leads to more creativity. Which is why great art is usually made by people who come from lesser means. I, too, did time in Catholic school, and actually had this very observation in highschool. Not that I enjoyed the itchy, ill-fitting plaid skirt—but it was sort of a game/challenge to find a way to allow one’s personality to shine through—hair color, shoe color, nail polish color. It just goes to show choice or “lack of” can be a blessing and a curse. I think it really comes down to an individual’s ingenuity and courage to be themselves.
[...] chat revolved around the inverse relationship between choice and creativity — and the curse of the plaid skirt: I think limitation/less choice absolutely leads to more [...]
[...] reminded me of this comment from Tamara, in response to my post about The Uniform Project, and whether less choice leads to more creativity: “I think it [...]
I grew up as the oldest of 6 children, with a stay-at-home mom and a working father–and money was fairly tight. From the time we were age 10 or 11 the 4 oldest girls of the family babysat to earn our own money so we could purchase fabric to sew our own clothes. At the time it was MUCH less expensive than purchasing ‘store-bought’ clothing. Mom taught us the basics and we learned the rest in sewing classes at school.
We spent most of our summers choosing fabric and McCalls patterns at the fabric stores, creating new patterns out of newspaper or switching pattern pieces from one style to another. I would say that limited choices motivated us to have fun designing our clothes and being ‘creative’.
So we didn’t wear uniforms to school–but in one sense the styles preferred by the majority of students constituted a ‘uniform’ of sorts! (then AND now). And we couldn’t afford the ‘uniform’ of the current designer and brand name fashions.
At the time, I often wished there was a required uniform–since it was difficult wearing clothing that was ‘different’ than the other students. I tried my best to imitate some of the designer stuff, to no avail…
Now, as the mother of 5 grown children, I no longer sew my clothing. But I crave the creativeness of my past, so I put together my wardrobe from yard sales and thrift stores–I have a wonderful time and have found great combinations of clothing–I STILL don’t measure up to my peers and their designer fashions–but am quite happy with my uncommon choices!
Due to limited income while raising my kids, they too have become quite creative and have invented amazing ways to accomplish what needs to be done in life. They can ‘think out of the box’ and solve problems.
Sometimes this approach has one ‘reinventing the wheel’ so to speak, which is not always profitable, but is, for the most part, enjoyable and exciting.
Thank heaven for limited choices that push us into creativity…