“Apple’s lexicon of pure, pared-down forms, smooth surfaces, gleaming metallic colors, and soft contours within hard carapaces has emerged over the past 20 years under the eye of chief designer Jony Ive,” Rob Haskell reports for Vogue. “Talking over coffee on the old campus about the growing synergy between the company and the fashion world, Ive points to his rose-gold Apple Watch, a precious counterpoint to the Clarks on his feet. ‘Nine years ago, the iPhone didn’t exist, and the most personal product we had was too big to carry around with you,’ he explains. ‘The technology is at last starting to enable something that was the dream of the company from the very beginning — to make technology personal. So personal that you can wear it.'”
“In the fall of 2014, Apple held an event at Colette, the Paris boutique, to introduce the Apple Watch to the fashion crowd,” Haskell reports. “The following year, for the first time in its 40-year history, Apple invited a fashion house to collaborate on the design of a product: the Apple Watch Hermès, a square of highly intelligent steel fixed to a hand-stitched leather strap. ‘That watch,’ says Ive, ‘is the result of two temperamentally, philosophically aligned companies’ deciding to make something together.'”
Both the hand and the machine can produce things with exquisite care or with no care at all. But it’s important to remember that what was seen at one time as the most sophisticated technology eventually becomes tradition. There was a time when even the metal needle would have been seen as shocking and profoundly new. — Jony Ive, Apple Inc. Chief Design Officer
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take:
At their core, fashion and tech have more in common than one may think. They both teeter on the edge of the absurd in an effort to shepherd in the future. They both rely heavily on elegant design and function. And they both reinvent the past in new, better, cleaner ways… The best in fashion and the best in tech can be described with one word: fearless. These sibling industries are coming together to shape the future. So maybe, just maybe, tech could be the new black. — Ashton Kutcher, Harper’s Bazaar, August 8, 2011
SEE ALSO:
Jony Ive and Taylor Swift to cohost next Met Gala star-studded fashion event – October 16, 2015
With Apple Watch Hermès collection, Apple broke some traditions – September 11, 2015
Apple and Hermès collaborate on luxurious Apple Watch Hermès collection – September 10, 2015
Apple’s Marc Newson on Apple Watch, fashion and cars – June 4, 2015
Elle Australia magazine offers Apple Watch fashion and wardrobe tips – March 23, 2015
Luxury fashion retailers to preview Apple’s groundbreaking Apple Watch – March 10, 2015
The fashion elite crowd around Apple Watch at Colette in Paris – September 30, 2014
Sounds nice, when macs work smoothly.
But when the slogan “It just works” no longer applies, then I no longer care about fashion.
Exactly. The worst part – Tim Cook doesn’t even care so the question of whether we will ever be able to return to the day when “it just works” is not going to be answered as long as he is there. Phones are working as well as any and that’s all that matters to him.
Trolls
What is being said, silverhawk1, is the ever increasing talk on this site including from MDN. When are you and others like you going to give up the blind support for the inept CEO and realize that all that once was about the once great company is in the past.
The problem, Jay Morrison, is that they repeat this mantra at every opportunity, thinking that sheer repetition will make it true. We know where they learned that technique, and we also know that it, unlike the vast majority of Apple products, does not work.
Just in case it slipped by you, JM, you are included in “they.”
Jay – you are breaking your promise — AGAIN!
Anyway, the actuality is:
– Apple products continue to sell in massive numbers,
– Apple sales remain healthy while the rest of the PC sector continues the slippery slope down.
– Apple continues to lead satisfaction polls.
Moreover, oft-repeated stories in mass media acquire a reputation of plausibility that is wholly undeserved.
When a celebrity tweet, news rumour, or YouTube video goes viral it is because they stimulated the generation of juices in the human nervous system that defeat all attempts at rational contemplation. Retractions when they occur go unnoticed. People prefer fun to truth.
here is one example of unblinkered reporting:
View at Medium.com
My 2 macs work flawlessly
Well you are very lucky, moreck. I have 3 Macs that I use regularly and not one works flawlessly. Don’t misunderstand me, I’m not saying the competition is better but having used Macs since the distant days of System 6, it is very disappointing. An example? Why can’t mail handle attachments like everyone else? It’s no good pointing the finger at Microsoft and telling me Exchange uses proprietary technology, I know that but I still have to communicate with my customers, if Thunderbird can do it, why not Mail? I have many more examples. I’m a huge Apple fan but the last few years have seen a significant loss of software quality.
Im not saying everyone has the same experience, but my 5-year-old Mac works flawlessly. Working (synced with my iPhone) on it everyday for work and play is something I appreciate very much. Make a change on one and the other updates automatically. It just works.
We are the goon squad and we’re coming to town- beep beep
Bonus points for the “Fashion” reference… nice one mate!
Jony’s been quiet lately. Good. Hopefully that means he’s getting stuff done.
Sir Jonathan Ive is in danger of finding his head up his arse. Good design may well be new to the US tech industry, but the Europeans having been doing this for years. Bang & Olufsen is a good example.
The Apple Watch is not ugly, but it is far too thick to be a fashion statement. Adding an ostentatious and quite ridiculous leather strap just marks the wearer as a dickhead.
There will always be people with far more money than taste. But do you really want to designing your products with these people in mind? So an Apple “designer” accessory becomes the new mark of vulgarity. Where then for Apple?
Apple has always been vulgar, an upstart, an intruder, violating conventions even as it defines new ones. Its experiments are not to be dismissed as failures but ought to be regarded in the same light as innovations introduced by Mother Nature herself. This is not an ordinary company, but a pure force of organised human creativity. As such it will always be subject to the wrong criteria by conventional thinkers, and overlooked for its unique contributions to human advancement.
Fashion is not a dismissive, throwaway word, but a defining one. Refute that if you can.
I respect Jony Ive, I love some of his designs, the iPhone and kin’s industrial design (as in ‘looks’ and ‘feel’) are great, top class
BUT for the ‘trucks’ of Apple I’ll rather have functionality over design if ‘BOTH’ can’t be achieved.
Take the Mac Pro, it’s beautiful but it’s now got 3 GB cards (for the top model starting at $4000 and that’s with a micro 256 GB drive) while PC users can get 12 GB video cards. Barefeats site shows a 5 year old MP with upgraded video being 2-3 TIMES faster on GPU tasks than a current Mac Pro! (which can’t be upgraded).
I assume because the design is so complicated Apple can’t even upgrade the machine easily themselves. If a simple BOX design is easier for upgrades (say every 12 months — this is a PRO machine after all) then I would opt for that box than a more elegant and beautiful ‘shape’.
Also I would buy a MID TOWER priced between the crippled Mac Mini and the crippled Mac Pro (say under $1500) which features a fast subsystem, one Workstation multi core processor, upgradeable card and Ram, Thunderbolt 3 EVEN IF it looked like a 1990’s DELL….
“Also I would buy a MID TOWER priced between the crippled Mac Mini and the crippled Mac Pro”
YES!
Ugh! You quoted Ashton Kutcher. ::::Cringe::::::
Funny, she looks a lot like my girlfriend.
I love Jony’s designs, but please bring back software buttons. I understand why you don’t use them on the Apple Watch, but please bring them back on the Mac.
Fashionable Apple is enjoyable as long as it’s part of a smooth and seamless experience. But removing useful buttons, the endless churn of iTunes and pretty-fying for no purpose is a real weakness of Ive’s approach. Fashion as the #1 guideline is only important for push-up bras and golf shirts. The thing I miss most about Steve Jobs was his willingness to administer the occasional dope-slap when Ive ran off the rails.
Jony’s obsession in action:
1-Take a good looking trackpad, seal it up so you cannot use rechargeable batteries, finish it in an ugly white that class with everything else, and just about damn near double the price.
2-The stupid Macbook with one wired connection that requires you to buy expensive new cables and does not function better than what existed before, but it is slimmer.
3- The sealed up Mac mini, the sealed up iMac, etc.
I would rather Apple make it’s shit work properly.
If there is a trade off between form and function the function must win.
Too many of the recent products are hamstrung by lack of flexibility in an effort to lock you in to the ecosystem and charge huge mark ups for piffling additions to memory capacity.