Ten Things I Have Learned: Milton Glaser

     

Milton Glaser is an American graphic designer, best known for the 'I ♥ NY' logo. The text below is part of AIGA Talk in London. AIGA is the professional association for design. 

Read carefully, because he has a lot of wisdom. 

November 22, 2001

1. 
YOU CAN ONLY WORK FOR PEOPLE THAT YOU LIKE.

This is a curious rule and it took me a long time to learn because in fact at the beginning of my practice I felt the opposite. Professionalism required that you didn’t particularly like the people that you worked for or at least maintained an arms length relationship to them, which meant that I never had lunch with a client or saw them socially. Then some years ago I realised that the opposite was true. I discovered that all the work I had done that was meaningful and significant came out of an affectionate relationship with a client. And I am not talking about professionalism; I am talking about affection. I am talking about a client and you sharing some common ground. That in fact your view of life is someway congruent with the client, otherwise it is a bitter and hopeless struggle.

2. 
IF YOU HAVE A CHOICE NEVER HAVE A JOB.

One night I was sitting in my car outside Columbia University where my wife Shirley was studying Anthropology. While I was waiting I was listening to the radio and heard an interviewer ask ‘Now that you have reached 75 have you any advice for our audience about how to prepare for your old age?’ An irritated voice said ‘Why is everyone asking me about old age these days?’ I recognised the voice as John Cage. I am sure that many of you know who he was – the composer and philosopher who influenced people like Jasper Johns and Merce Cunningham as well as the music world in general. I knew him slightly and admired his contribution to our times. ‘You know, I do know how to prepare for old age’ he said. ‘Never have a job, because if you have a job someday someone will take it away from you and then you will be unprepared for your old age. For me, it has always been the same every since the age of 12. I wake up in the morning and I try to figure out how am I going to put bread on the table today? It is the same at 75, I wake up every morning and I think how am I going to put bread on the table today? I am exceedingly well prepared for my old age’ he said.

3. 
SOME PEOPLE ARE TOXIC AVOID THEM.

This is a subtext of number one. There was in the sixties a man named Fritz Perls who was a gestalt therapist. Gestalt therapy derives from art history, it proposes you must understand the ‘whole’ before you can understand the details. What you have to look at is the entire culture, the entire family and community and so on. Perls proposed that in all relationships people could be either toxic or nourishing towards one another. It is not necessarily true that the same person will be toxic or nourishing in every relationship, but the combination of any two people in a relationship produces toxic or nourishing consequences. And the important thing that I can tell you is that there is a test to determine whether someone is toxic or nourishing in your relationship with them. Here is the test: You have spent some time with this person, either you have a drink or go for dinner or you go to a ball game. It doesn’t matter very much but at the end of that time you observe whether you are more energised or less energised. Whether you are tired or whether you are exhilarated. If you are more tired then you have been poisoned. If you have more energy you have been nourished. The test is almost infallible and I suggest that you use it for the rest of your life.

4
. PROFESSIONALISM IS NOT ENOUGH or THE GOOD IS THE ENEMY OF THE GREAT.

Early in my career I wanted to be professional, that was my complete aspiration in my early life because professionals seemed to know everything – not to mention they got paid for it. Later I discovered after working for a while that professionalism itself was a limitation. After all, what professionalism means in most cases is diminishing risks. So if you want to get your car fixed you go to a mechanic who knows how to deal with transmission problems in the same way each time. I suppose if you needed brain surgery you wouldn’t want the doctor to fool around and invent a new way of connecting your nerve endings. Please do it in the way that has worked in the past.
Unfortunately in our field, in the so-called creative – I hate that word because it is misused so often. I also hate the fact that it is used as a noun. Can you imagine calling someone a creative? Anyhow, when you are doing something in a recurring way to diminish risk or doing it in the same way as you have done it before, it is clear why professionalism is not enough. After all, what is required in our field, more than anything else, is the continuous transgression. Professionalism does not allow for that because transgression has to encompass the possibility of failure and if you are professional your instinct is not to fail, it is to repeat success. So professionalism as a lifetime aspiration is a limited goal.

5. 
LESS IS NOT NECESSARILY MORE.

Being a child of modernism I have heard this mantra all my life. Less is more. One morning upon awakening I realised that it was total nonsense, it is an absurd proposition and also fairly meaningless. But it sounds great because it contains within it a paradox that is resistant to understanding. But it simply does not obtain when you think about the visual of the history of the world. If you look at a Persian rug, you cannot say that less is more because you realise that every part of that rug, every change of colour, every shift in form is absolutely essential for its aesthetic success. You cannot prove to me that a solid blue rug is in any way superior. That also goes for the work of Gaudi, Persian miniatures, art nouveau and everything else. However, I have an alternative to the proposition that I believe is more appropriate. ‘Just enough is more.’

6. 
STYLE IS NOT TO BE TRUSTED.

I think this idea first occurred to me when I was looking at a marvellous etching of a bull by Picasso. It was an illustration for a story by Balzac called The Hidden Masterpiece. I am sure that you all know it. It is a bull that is expressed in 12 different styles going from very naturalistic version of a bull to an absolutely reductive single line abstraction and everything else along the way. What is clear just from looking at this single print is that style is irrelevant. In every one of these cases, from extreme abstraction to acute naturalism they are extraordinary regardless of the style. It’s absurd to be loyal to a style. It does not deserve your loyalty. I must say that for old design professionals it is a problem because the field is driven by economic consideration more than anything else. Style change is usually linked to economic factors, as all of you know who have read Marx. Also fatigue occurs when people see too much of the same thing too often. So every ten years or so there is a stylistic shift and things are made to look different. Typefaces go in and out of style and the visual system shifts a little bit. If you are around for a long time as a designer, you have an essential problem of what to do. I mean, after all, you have developed a vocabulary, a form that is your own. It is one of the ways that you distinguish yourself from your peers, and establish your identity in the field. How you maintain your own belief system and preferences becomes a real balancing act. The question of whether you pursue change or whether you maintain your own distinct form becomes difficult. We have all seen the work of illustrious practitioners that suddenly look old-fashioned or, more precisely, belonging to another moment in time. And there are sad stories such as the one about Cassandre, arguably the greatest graphic designer of the twentieth century, who couldn’t make a living at the end of his life and committed suicide.
But the point is that anybody who is in this for the long haul has to decide how to respond to change in the zeitgeist. What is it that people now expect that they formerly didn’t want? And how to respond to that desire in a way that doesn’t change your sense of integrity and purpose.

7. 
HOW YOU LIVE CHANGES YOUR BRAIN.

The brain is the most responsive organ of the body. Actually it is the organ that is most susceptible to change and regeneration of all the organs in the body. I have a friend named Gerald Edelman who was a great scholar of brain studies and he says that the analogy of the brain to a computer is pathetic. The brain is actually more like an overgrown garden that is constantly growing and throwing off seeds, regenerating and so on. And he believes that the brain is susceptible, in a way that we are not fully conscious of, to almost every experience of our life and every encounter we have. I was fascinated by a story in a newspaper a few years ago about the search for perfect pitch. A group of scientists decided that they were going to find out why certain people have perfect pitch. You know certain people hear a note precisely and are able to replicate it at exactly the right pitch. Some people have relevant pitch; perfect pitch is rare even among musicians. The scientists discovered – I don’t know how – that among people with perfect pitch the brain was different. Certain lobes of the brain had undergone some change or deformation that was always present with those who had perfect pitch. This was interesting enough in itself. But then they discovered something even more fascinating. If you took a bunch of kids and taught them to play the violin at the age of 4 or 5 after a couple of years some of them developed perfect pitch, and in all of those cases their brain structure had changed. Well what could that mean for the rest of us? We tend to believe that the mind affects the body and the body affects the mind, although we do not generally believe that everything we do affects the brain. I am convinced that if someone was to yell at me from across the street my brain could be affected and my life might changed. That is why your mother always said, ‘Don’t hang out with those bad kids.’ Mama was right. Thought changes our life and our behaviour. I also believe that drawing works in the same way. I am a great advocate of drawing, not in order to become an illustrator, but because I believe drawing changes the brain in the same way as the search to create the right note changes the brain of a violinist. Drawing also makes you attentive. It makes you pay attention to what you are looking at, which is not so easy.

8. 
DOUBT IS BETTER THAN CERTAINTY.

Everyone always talks about confidence in believing what you do. I remember once going to a class in yoga where the teacher said that, spirituality speaking, if you believed that you had achieved enlightenment you have merely arrived at your limitation. I think that is also true in a practical sense. Deeply held beliefs of any kind prevent you from being open to experience, which is why I find all firmly held ideological positions questionable. It makes me nervous when someone believes too deeply or too much. I think that being sceptical and questioning all deeply held beliefs is essential. Of course we must know the difference between scepticism and cynicism because cynicism is as much a restriction of one’s openness to the world as passionate belief is. They are sort of twins. And then in a very real way, solving any problem is more important than being right. There is a significant sense of self-righteousness in both the art and design world. Perhaps it begins at school. Art school often begins with the Ayn Rand model of the single personality resisting the ideas of the surrounding culture. The theory of the avant garde is that as an individual you can transform the world, which is true up to a point. One of the signs of a damaged ego is absolute certainty.
Schools encourage the idea of not compromising and defending your work at all costs. Well, the issue at work is usually all about the nature of compromise. You just have to know what to compromise. Blind pursuit of your own ends which excludes the possibility that others may be right does not allow for the fact that in design we are always dealing with a triad – the client, the audience and you. 
Ideally, making everyone win through acts of accommodation is desirable. But self-righteousness is often the enemy. Self-righteousness and narcissism generally come out of some sort of childhood trauma, which we do not have to go into. It is a consistently difficult thing in human affairs. Some years ago I read a most remarkable thing about love, that also applies to the nature of co-existing with others. It was a quotation from Iris Murdoch in her obituary. It read ‘ Love is the extremely difficult realisation that something other than oneself is real.’ Isn’t that fantastic! The best insight on the subject of love that one can imagine.

9
. ON AGING.

Last year someone gave me a charming book by Roger Rosenblatt called ‘Ageing Gracefully’ I got it on my birthday. I did not appreciate the title at the time but it contains a series of rules for ageing gracefully. The first rule is the best. Rule number one is that ‘it doesn’t matter.’ ‘It doesn’t matter that what you think. Follow this rule and it will add decades to your life. It does not matter if you are late or early, if you are here or there, if you said it or didn’t say it, if you are clever or if you were stupid. If you were having a bad hair day or a no hair day or if your boss looks at you cockeyed or your boyfriend or girlfriend looks at you cockeyed, if you are cockeyed. If you don’t get that promotion or prize or house or if you do – it doesn’t matter.’ Wisdom at last. Then I heard a marvellous joke that seemed related to rule number 10. A butcher was opening his market one morning and as he did a rabbit popped his head through the door. The butcher was surprised when the rabbit inquired ‘Got any cabbage?’ The butcher said ‘This is a meat market – we sell meat, not vegetables.’ The rabbit hopped off. The next day the butcher is opening the shop and sure enough the rabbit pops his head round and says ‘You got any cabbage?’ The butcher now irritated says ‘Listen you little rodent I told you yesterday we sell meat, we do not sell vegetables and the next time you come here I am going to grab you by the throat and nail those floppy ears to the floor.’ The rabbit disappeared hastily and nothing happened for a week. Then one morning the rabbit popped his head around the corner and said ‘Got any nails?’ The butcher said ‘No.’ The rabbit said ‘Ok. Got any cabbage?’

10. 
TELL THE TRUTH.

The rabbit joke is relevant because it occurred to me that looking for a cabbage in a butcher’s shop might be like looking for ethics in the design field. It may not be the most obvious place to find either. It’s interesting to observe that in the new AIGA’s code of ethics there is a significant amount of useful information about appropriate behaviour towards clients and other designers, but not a word about a designer’s relationship to the public. We expect a butcher to sell us eatable meat and that he doesn’t misrepresent his wares. I remember reading that during the Stalin years in Russia that everything labelled veal was actually chicken. I can’t imagine what everything labelled chicken was. We can accept certain kinds of misrepresentation, such as fudging about the amount of fat in his hamburger but once a butcher knowingly sells us spoiled meat we go elsewhere. As a designer, do we have less responsibility to our public than a butcher? Everyone interested in licensing our field might note that the reason licensing has been invented is to protect the public not designers or clients. ‘Do no harm’ is an admonition to doctors concerning their relationship to their patients, not to their fellow practitioners or the drug companies. If we were licensed, telling the truth might become more central to what we do.

"I know you are serious. Your trousers told me." wrote Malcolm McLaren in a letter to Martin Margiela.

          This is spontaneous correspondence between Malcolm McLaren and Martin Margiela which was published at The New York Times Style Magazine in 2005. I've never heard about it before. I was kinda surprised when I saw it. Malcolm McLaren, the punk rock legend and Martin Margiela, the anonymous fashion designer? What do they have in common? Surprisingly they do. For me the first thing that links these two personas, is their rebellious character. They weren't afraid to break the rules to create something new and unique.
          Anyway, this correspondence is very accurate even it's been seven years since it came out.

          Have a nice read!

Has Anybody Here Seen My Old Friend Martin?

Published: March 13, 2005

Some would argue that Martin Margiela is the coolest man in fashion. He's certainly the most elusive. Since the Belgian wunderkind set up shop in Paris in 1988, no one has seen a picture of him, and no face-to-face interviews have been granted. Margiela sees his role as a philosopher, rethinking the basic premise of clothing -- how it is sized and sold, how it interacts with the body -- with his team of white-coated assistants. Over the years, this has resulted in frayed ball gowns, reversed seams, cloven-toed boots and, when he was designing for Hermes, the most perfectly cut pants and jackets on the planet. Now, with his high-flying partner, Renzo Rosso of Diesel, and a new, industrial-strength business plan, Margiela is hotter than ever. How to scale the ramparts and dispel the mystery? We figured that if anybody could do it, it would be that fashion and music provocateur, Malcolm McLaren. Herewith, the beginning of a correspondence. 

Dec. 15, 2004

Dear Martin, We know each other, I believe, but have never met. I certainly don't know what you look like and have even contemplated the thought that you may be a ghost! Do you exist? Sometimes I think not. But with that in mind, I am writing to you to find out.

Let me begin by saying I wear your clothes but can't help wondering if you have ever worn mine. Were you ever in London in the 70's and 80's? Because somehow, I feel we are connected. Your clothes are just a little more grown up, that's all. A more serious, Maoist approach.

I don't know what you think about that.

Wow! Just got back from Hong Kong. No flu, no shopping fatigue, but did buy a cool laser printer.

By the way, how is it working for the Diesel man? I like Renzo. He is a tough, swaggering cowboy who seems to want to do things differently in this postmillennium world of karaoke culture. What do you say?

I like your trousers. They are almost as uncommercial and impractical as mine were with a strap between their legs. I love to feel like an incroyable in his overalls. I like the boiled, mucky sweaters, too. I like your dirt and grunge. I like the fact that it looks like lots of people have stuck their dirty fingers on your clothes and left their marks all over them.

It's a different luxury, not something slick and overly produced. Do you think it's like lo-fi music? Like lo-tech culture? Are you aware of the new phenomenon bubbling across the Web? These lawless kids who convert old computers into music-making machines. Do you remember those sounds that crept out of early video-game culture? None of us cared about the sound of Nintendo back then. We just played the game. But now, I love these chip-music kids. Their icons are hackers, not Elvis. You should love it, given you're a part of that Belgian techno culture. Or are you?

These new musical hackers don't call themselves artists -- they hate that word. They prefer to call themselves reverse engineers. They love the way this antique technology can run wild. I feel this rock 'n' roll outlaw spirit has a kinship with you, or maybe I am wrong? Can you hear it? See it? Hey, are you really there? Or am I writing to no one in particular? Malcolm

Four weeks later, one note (''Did you have a nice Christmas?'') and two letters from ''Maison Margiela'' arrive. The first letter apologizes for the delay and includes the disclaimer that Maison Margiela will be doing all the talking, with input from ''Mr. Margiela.'' Thus the ''we.'' The second missive follows. 

Jan. 17, 2005 

Dear Malcolm, What a 10-part saga this has been getting back to you and conversing! You must think we are either mad or slack. Neither is true. It's simply been a totally frenetic period. We moved in late November -- fantastic new place -- a huge former convent and design school near Oberkampf in the 11th Arrondissement. Most things have gone really well, yet we seem to be haunted by many technical glitches. So, no, there are no ghosts here -- unless they are hiding in our server, stealing our e-mails. 

Of course, nearly all of us know you. Martin knows of you through magazines from when he was a student in Antwerp, but unfortunately he didn't buy designer clothes. At the time, he dressed from flea markets. Listening to your music is another matter, however -- well done! We hear you're in Paris recording an album. Any scoop on the style? 

We are really happy you like our clothes. Not at all sure about Mao and his link to what we do, though! Suppose there's a first time for everything. As for our trousers being impractical? That's really strange. We usually hear the contrary. And the dirty fingerprints is also a new one on us. Are you thinking of the garments we rework by hand from used clothing? We refer to this as our ''artisanal'' production (the label has 0 and 10 circled for men and 0 for women).Everything is always cleaned. 

We're often described as serious. This is odd since it's not at all the way we live our work ''within our walls.'' The grown-up bit probably comes from a need we have to question, to take up the gauntlet of an impulse we have, to rethink a garment and then find a stimulating way to show this to others. To be frank, though, it's always a compliment that others perceive us as taking our creativity seriously. 

We are very, very happy with the way our collaboration with Renzo is building. Renzo has brought us more stability, financial and spiritual -- we are growing together in the best way possible. (We leave the cowboy analogy up to you though.) 

Funny that you mention it, but lo-tech culture is a strong thread of interest that runs through our team and its attitude. We were late to embrace computers; for so long we simply didn't have the money. Today we keep them pretty far away from the creative process. 

Of course, we remember early video games. Those early Atari tennis games. Great sounds! Our musical influences tend to be much more grass-roots rock, in all its families -- lo-fi, as you mentioned. 

As for the rock 'n' roll outlaw spirit, hmm. The force, conviction, indignation and alienation of youth are thankfully irreplaceable, yet aren't they probably meant to wane with experience and life? They belong to youth -- but when you are no longer young . . . what then? 

So, yes, we can hear it. We can see it (when we can). And we're here! Even if it took us a while. Thanks, Malcolm. All at Maison Martin Margiela 

Jan. 20, 2005 

Dear Martin & Factory, Just got back from wicked St. Bart's and almost fell into the grave of Susan Sontag at Montparnasse Cemetery -- it was so cold! Poor Susan. I had New Year's lunch with her only last year, here in Paris. I was so sad to read about her passing in the paper over the holidays. 

Still, glad to receive your letter. Don't worry about technology. It sometimes goes a little crazy and gets out of control. Wow, well done, now that you've moved to Republique. I like certain aspects of this part of Paris -- the dirt, the stupid poseurs who hang out in crappy bars listening to funny music. I think this is what Parisians think is their version of downtown N.Y. I go there sometimes to visit the lo-fi thumb tribes that rumble occasionally on Rue Oberkampf with those rock 'n' roll Game Boys. 

Yes, you are right. I have been working on a new album in the desolate suburbs, south of Chinatown -- Ivry. Working with hackers and connecting them to the only all-girl rock band from Beijing, called the Wild Strawberries. They know how to post-karaoke with those chip-music freaks. It's fantastic! Imagine Sonny Boy Williamson or Jimi Hendrix lost in a video game of bleeps and bloops with some deadly-looking, Chinese, guitar-swinging girls ''comin' to getcha!'' (Totally inspired by the pixelated crude visuals of early video-game culture, I enclose my New Year's card for you to blitz out on. . . .) 

I started to dig up all my own history -- old records left over from my shops on the King's Road. Can you imagine beating up Bessie Smith and the Zombies? I did. You can hear the track on ''Kill Bill Vol. 2.'' 

It was around this time last year that I met Quentin Tarantino here, and before I knew it, my music found a place in ''Kill Bill Vol. 2,'' just before Uma kills Bill. Did you get a chance to see that movie? It was so good! ''About Her'' is the name of my track. Check it out. I'm working more and more in film this year. Even inspired to work on a stage musical about fashion -- certainly got the tracks. Maybe we should kick some sounds around your show one of these days? Only teasing. 

I know you are serious. Your trousers told me. 

My comments about Mao are more about me. He is fast becoming the benign and eccentric uncle in China. Strange how history is always being rewritten. 

Sometimes you sound so old, like my great-grandfather! Sensible, and deadly wise. I guess you must all be ghosts. Anyhow, see you at the shows. Maybe? By the way, does fashion end in passion or does passion end in fashion? 

And I'd like a picture! Malcolm 

Jan. 20, 2005 

Hello, Malcolm, and all those at the recording studio. It is indeed very sad that Susan Sontag has left us. ''AIDS and Its Metaphors'' was such an important work. It shoved us along in our grudging recognition and understanding of H.I.V. and the isolation it brings. It is numbing how that virus has tricked, mutated and infiltrated. We always feared it would become a pandemic, yet who in 1987 could have predicted the desolation and devastation it would reap in Africa? ''And the Band Played On'' seems so far away today. How great it must have been for you to meet Sontag so recently. 

We are so fortunate with our new home. We're just north of Republique at Rue St.-Maur. It was really weird when we came across the place. The school had been closed for 10 years when we visited it for the first time. We were totally taken aback to see that for all those intervening years everything was abandoned, just as it had been on that last day when the school fell quiet for summer. Exam papers lay on desks, pens stood in inkwells and lessons were still chalked up on blackboards. All was weighed down by a thick layer of dust. You must visit one day. 

What a great name for a band, the Wild Strawberries! Your album sounds like a feast! How will the hacking work with the sounds? 

When is it out? 

On our side, we are forging ahead with our next project -- the 10 and 14 collections for men. To go with them, we've been shooting a video project -- musicians backstage at venues just before they go onstage: crooner, rock, goth, a chansonnier, all over Paris. We're also starting a new line of shoes for men and women called 22 and accessories called 11 -- so a lot's happening! We're also guest-editing A Magazine in Antwerp. We entitled ours, ''The past is what bonds us -- the future leads us.'' 

It's true what you say about Mao -- it's as if he has become a smiling, happy parent totally extrapolated from the Cultural Revolution. 

He's become like Coca-Cola's version of Santa Claus or Hello Kitty. 

Do we really seem so old, wise, grandparentlike? We have never thought of ourselves in that way. We always say that we are too close to the trees to see the wood (or is it wood to see the trees?) to know how we appear to others, and it's true, we are. Better to keep ''doing'' and leave interpretation up to others, don't you think? 

Does fashion end in passion or does passion end in fashion? What about, Does passion end in passion and fashion in fashion? Maison Martin Margiela 

Jan. 23, 2005 

Hi, Maison Margiela! I'm reading, again, Susan S.'s ''Notes on Camp.'' It is inspirational. It hails the arrival of Andy W. and all that is pop and fluffy. My arrival at art school in 1965 happens about the same time ''Notes on Camp'' is published. A professor greets us -- ''If you think you are all going to be successful, well . . . you're not!'' 

And, pointing to the door, ''If anyone thinks they are, they better leave now!'' My head is disappearing into my shoulders. I am 17. Crushed. A year later, a few of us have survived. The old goat reappears. ''So, you're still here then? I expect you all to understand failure now.'' He turns aggressive: ''Don't think you can just fail, though. You've got to learn how to fail magnificently.'' And in a tone that breeds a certain dull confidence, he rasps, ''For it's better to be a flamboyant failure than any kind of benign success.'' It shakes me, confuses me and changes my life. 

I make myself a blue lame suit like Elvis Presley and try to get exploited by walking down the King's Road. No one notices. 

I fail miserably. I end up looking like a wet, dead rat by the time I reach World's End. It's November. It rains a lot. I start again by tearing my clothes apart. By jumping on them, making them dirty. By bathing them in gray dye. I make ugliness beautiful. I form a gang with Vivienne, and on the King's Road in Chelsea, we inadvertently invent a style that denies commercial application. It proudly displays a ''not for sale'' feeling. It's 1974. I am deconstructing clothes with Vivienne for an army of disenfranchised youth. I dig in the ruins of a past culture. It becomes my art. It's not nostalgia -- that's simply dead tissue. It's a wickedly old-fashioned, sexy chaos that empowers me and impacts on others. 

Sex (and I love it) is fashion ending in passion. And passion ending in fashion is fetishism. Once upon a time, I was accused of being a mere dilettante for managing the Sex Pistols and not sticking to haberdashery. Now, everyone is doing everything for everybody everywhere. Exhausting! Shopping is art. Shoppertainment is the new cultural ideal. The church, back in the Middle Ages, sold salvation, and people didn't need to acquire anything. Today, stores are replacing the museums as the museums once replaced the church. We are all curators now. 

The extraordinary power the fashion world possesses lies in its ability to provide identity, and sometimes I think all fashion designers can be characterized by a resistance to living in the present. This displacement appears essential as a designer must always be one season ahead. The desperate passion a new look inspires, though, seems inexplicable once it wanes. I will never forget reading about Christian Dior's life when he remarked he'd like to brand food as fashion and demanded his house brand roast beef with his name: ''Dior Rosbif.'' 

Television has been eclipsing all cultural institutions and life itself for some time. But the digital generation has struck a blow to the heart of television, and there is no stopping, now that the Internet is free. No matter how much government and industry try together to control the new media, the Internet's inherent lawlessness is its appeal, its sexiness. We are seizing the automated stuff of our world: I am excited. Love ya, Malcolm 

Jan. 25, 2005 

Dear Malcolm, Incredible! Isn't the very notion of success and failure entirely relative? Is success fame, notoriety and economic recompense, or is it, in the case of artists, the ability to express one's ideas to whatever public might be touched by that expression? Like many creative ideas, it is not necessarily the originality of the premise that is important or defines its ''art'' but the means and purity of its expression. No one can refute that what your teacher told you is accurate. But despite himself and his bombastic approach, he had a beneficial effect on you. You were lucky! 

Funny, for another project, we recently found ourselves looking for a definition of ''passion'' -- a lot of what one finds is linked to ''The Passion of the Christ.'' It is interesting that for you, passion, when related to clothing, seems to be linked directly to sex. For us, the passion is in the creation. Without that initial and ongoing passion it would be impossible for us to continue. We really do not feel this pressure to be one or more seasons ahead to remain designers as you describe. A lot hangs, of course, on a definition of ''fashion.'' When one designs clothes, one is automatically a ''fashion'' designer, but sometimes this can or should simply be ''clothing'' designer. If we are to view fashion as the tidal wave of trends that we have come to know, the expression of a designer and/or his team can exist entirely parallel to fashion. Our benchmarks are more the evolution of our own creative expression. We try to provide ourselves with new horizons as soon as the need for a new challenge presents itself. 

For years, designers -- including us -- were banging on about individual expression, that everyone should be able to find their own means of expression via what they wear. To a very large extent today we have what we were seeking then -- people are more individualistic, they are dressing more for themselves and less for others. Don't you agree? Of course, there will always be that validation some receive through wearing a brand, but there is no longer that idea of a prevailing look; skirts can be any length. You are so right when describing the Internet. Long may it reign! But for how long? Even though the Internet is presented as a wild and wonderful place of freedom of expression, those who log on today thinking that their views expressed are not being monitored are fools. All of those big brothers following every hit on your keyboard. 

On that note, we'd better get back to work. Our men's show is Friday. We're nearly there! All the best from all at Maison Martin Margiela 

Feb. 1, 2005 

Dear Martin, I never asked you where you spend Christmas; not the whole factory, that is, just you. I did the most decadent thing and landed in St. Bart's on Christmas Eve. Besotted by so many pretty things, I was immediately transported back to the Cote d'Azur in the 60's. 

Let's see, Christmas in St. Bart's. Quincy Jones, Russell Simmons, Uma Thurman, Tom Ford, Bryan Ferry, Tony Shafrazi, Robert Downey Jr., Quentin Tarantino, a Ukrainian bombshell (running around seminaked with an Asprey backgammon board), Qaddafi's son. Night and day, everybody is doing everything to everyone everywhere. I bumped into Nick Rhodes, a Duran Durannie (you remember ''Girls on Film,'' don't you?), and he's still wearing all his pan stick and eyeliner. Quite a feat in the heat! I do love him, though. He darlings everybody, always with a silent teenage girl in tow. Isabella Blow queened out in her Joan Crawford gold lame bathing suit and diamante studded stilettos, with her art-house ex, or not-so-ex. I don't know. Relationships are so complicated nowadays. Detmar Blow sat shrouded in a Philip Treacy sun hat. Detmar is hysterically critical, refuses to be clever, an absolute English invention, extraordinarily funny although he doesn't know it. A part of that fast-disappearing and better side of the English postcolonial tribe. On the beach, Giorgio Armani strolled, in his ever-so-brief black bathing trunks, ultratanned chest and the toned body of a 30-year-old. Astonishing. His gang, smoking profusely with not a hair out of place. Ah! Those Italians! The funniest thing, though: they all had matching black towels and mini canvas directors' chairs, which turned out to be headrests. 

It's snowing in Paris. Vive la neige!! It's Christmas all over again. Gotta see Sofia Coppola. I like her new project about Marie Antoinette. Just heard Marianne Faithfull will play Marie's mum. Great choice. She's related to Sacher-Masoch (as in ''masochism''). A long time ago, Russ Meyer, better known as King of the Nudies, cast Marianne as Sid Vicious's mum in ''Who Killed Bambi,'' the proposed movie about the Sex Pistols. I wrote it with Roger Ebert and Rem Koolhaas (yes, the architect! He was in Hollywood then). She had to shag Sid in the script. However, she would only agree to do so on condition he took a bath beforehand. He did have this notorious, dirty reputation. 

A sudden thought. Would you like to go to a dinner party for dogs? There will be no barking at the table. By the way, where are all those pictures you were going to send me? Lots of love, Malcolm 

Feb. 3, 2005 

Dear Malcolm, ''Curiouser and curiouser''! What a drama, receiving your last letter, that is. This weekend, we finally got to show our work on the men's collections to the press. We showed them the six small films based on the musicians backstage on the point of going onstage we told you about. The films seemed to please. Of the many that popped in, Gert Jonkers of Butt magazine in Amsterdam passed by. He said that he was busy tracking you down for dinner (did he manage?) and that he was curious as to the correspondence you are having with us. Gert also told us that your letter had been sent. Yet nothing had arrived! Was it happening again? That's when the frantic search began. Our panicked e-mails requesting another copy of your letter all arrived, as did the replies of those who could forward it to us, yet the letter itself was always blank on arrival! It finally transpired -- subject to verification, of course -- that your letter was being blocked, filtered or censored somewhere in the ether between Paris or New York! A tiny symbol in the ''Sent'' folder, in front of the many attempts to mail, showed that its contents were unsuitable for transmission. Why? Could it be that we are now at the stage where mail of ''questionable'' content evaporates -- deemed immoral? Is this the next stealthy step of reining in the Net, our thoughts and expression? Was it your reference to Sid Vicious having to to take a bath before doing Marianne Faithfull?? Or was it some lazy spell check that didn't want to get up off its bum and preferred to destroy the evidence? Quick, check Nostradamus! Well, we have your letter now -- it finally arrived, by fax!