No chaos or killings, my style is so brilliant
-Spider-Man Enter the Spider Verse, “Elevate”

This week I had the opportunity to visit and be an exhibitor in the Dubai air show. The first time I ever heard of Dubai I was taking my first international trip in 2004, and I had a layover in the Heathrow airport. There was a sign there advertising for “The World,” a group of man-made islands made in the shape of… the world, off of one of Dubai's beaches. I thought to myself - what a weird advertisement for a sci-fi movie, and then later doing some googling and finding - holy sh*t - that's going to be a real place. Clicking through, I also found it somewhat amusing that at the time, the bought islands mirrored the order of colonial occupation. Man-made Europe was full-up, America was getting crowded, South America was growing, and Africa… well, still developing. Regardless, I had found out about a place that was inventing itself from the riches if oil and hoping to position itself as the transportation center of the world.

15 years later, I'm getting to see it for myself, even more fortunate to have work pay for the trip. This post is about style and design because as a modern city with unique history, Dubai was the blank canvas a city could hope for. Unlike rapid expansion in the US, which builds horizontal, sprawling communities, Dubai knew from the beginning that to get on the map, it had to go vertical (although it has its share of sprawl).

High skyscrapers surrounded by barren dessert creates a striking contrast of opulence for opulence's sake.

To me, style is what remains when you take everything else that is unneeded away. If the unneeded vastly outweighed the substance, what you are left with is flourish and embellishment, not style. That’s why, I’ll argue that designing a spacesuit could be a great analogy to what makes something stylish. A few thoughts on writing style which also applies to things outside of writing, from a literary classic:

Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.
-Strunk & White, The Elements of Style

I’m sure there are fashion essays that describes this perspective more clearly, but I’ll approach it as an analyst. To me - discussion of design incorporates three things: Style, Fashion, and Trends. I see Style being anything that directly relates to the function being performed. Its why the pieces of clothing that sem to be the most timeless are those that are used for a specific purpose - think uniforms - military, police, maybe clergy. I’d argue that there aren’t many typical women’s garments in that category because they have historically been more toward the fashion side. Where fashion is more closely aligned with ornamentation - decisions made that are on top of the purpose of the clothing. If women had had the opportunity to be the designers of their own clothing earlier, I think there would be more timeless styles to point to. And lastly, there are trends -things that are tied to a time period, such as materials available, predominant climate, the way of displaying the clothes.

Design can be only stylish - completely made for function, but that is almost impossible to do without being pulled by trends or fashion influences. Similarly, something can purposefully be solely fashionable to evoke a certain feeling or idea without needing to worry about what the clothing is supposed to “do” as much (think New York fashion show).

My impressions of Dubai are very surface level. I was there for five days, but saw very little of the city. I did, however see how people interacted, and the attractions to which the city aspires - the tallest building, and planning for a global Expo 2020, which is basically a re-invention of World’s Fairs of the past. Perhaps the reason Dubai seems cool to visit but less tempting to want to live is that the designs move purely toward the trendy side. If someone has done it, Dubai will follow, but move it to the over-the-top category. I liken it to a distant family member who has recently come into some money. It’s impressive to visit with them, but in the back of your mind, you’re left wondering - what’s the point of all of this?

The three components of design choices: Style, fashion and trends

So all that preamble to say that a spacesuit is a really interesting design problem that gets back to the purest expression of style. Invent something that has to keep high-paying toursts extremely comfortable while being conscious that it needs to contribute to these people’s ability to stay alive in a harsh atmosphere, not weigh a lot, provide options for carrying many different things - notebooks, personal mission statement, and still photograph well to preserve the memory and visuals from the experience.

To the point above on there not being many timeless women’s style expressions, women’s and men’s suits look the same, because there isn’t room for much ornamentation. However, a spacesuit can’t be purely stylish (read completely built for function), because there are limits on cost, sponsors to please, and some trends that are just implicit in our approach to clothes at this point in history.

Relating this back to Spider-man, we all love the flashy superhero costume - the primary colors of Superman, the contrasting red and blue of Spider-Man, the flashy green of The Riddler… OK, nevermind. The point is that these colors make the superheros easy to identify, especially when they were introduced subject to being printed in grainy newspapers and black and white TV. But fast forward to now, and the Black Panther’s spacesuit-esque costume in Avengers makes a whole lot more sense and will age a lot better than whatever it is Wolverine wears.

So in your next design project - website, essay, artwork, get back to the very core expression of what you are doing. And then make conscious decisions to add ornamentation or trendy things. They will stand out that much more.