Toilet designed by a fashion designer
These are a few slides from a talk I gave to a group of high school students on the media messages and their impact on our lives/body image last year, as part of the Eating Disorders Foundation of NSW’s annual Youth Forum.
Fashion designers work to a fantasy of what the human body looks like. They are taught how to draw human figures in a distorted, idealised way.
The two figures in the middle are typical of fashion design drawings. Designs are based on these oddly proportioned, fantasy, body shapes.
The figures on either side were statistical averages from a series of anthropometrics studies done with US military personnel. Whilst limited to a select age range and profession, these nonetheless are based on measurable and observable reality. These are real body shapes. ( From Human Dimension & Interior Space by Julius Panero and Martin Zelnilk)
If a product designer were to work off the same fantasy body shapes that fashion designers so, a typical toilet would look like this.
None of us would willingly climb a stepladder every time we need to use our toilet - how silly would that be? And yet, why is it that we continue to try and fit into clothes that were not designed for our bodies to begin with, or shoes that are uncomfortable and damage our feet?
This is most peculiar.
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[...] Click though to see what this distorted image would mean for the design of a toilet. [...]
In a lovely coincidence, this week Polish researchers announced that we’re sexually attracted to legs 5% longer than average.
Short legs are linked with “a higher risk of cardiovascular disease and type II diabetes and with higher levels of a body fat called triglyceride, which is linked to the clogging of the arteries, heart disease, strokes and insulin resistance in men”.
Yet another example of “sex sells”, it seems.
I also read somewhere that the current ideal for the female figure as portrayed in the media actually matches that of a 10 year old boy in reality. Now that’s seriously warped!
thats crazy about what zern said
its great that your speaking to teens about body image and eating disorders influenced by media; but do more in depth research about fashion illustration before you stereotype the fashion figure as “fantasy idealized figures”. I am a design student my self and we are not told to draw them in a fantasy way because that’s ideal; but rather the proportions with longer legs are created to make the sketch more efficiently to convey important garment details such as hems, pleats, gathers etc.
Thanks for the comment Brigette.
I did not know that the distortions to the body shape are done to help designers communicate details of the design that would otherwise be too small to represent clearly.
So the intention is not to portray or push some ideal body shape. This is good to know.
Having said this, and assuming I have understood you correctly, this practice still supports my point.
If you design to a distorted basis (regardless of the intention behind the distortion) then you are not really designing for reality. And if you are not designing for reality, you are making art (which does not have to conform to reality).
Taking the same logic, one would expect to see the blueprint for a car with a HUGE engine and tidy cabin. This would be because the engine is the most complex, and therefore the blueprint had to be distorted to show all the details.
Similarly, the blueprint for a house would show a GINORMOUS kitchen and bathrooms, as these are the most complex elements of a house. And therefore the drawing has to be distorted to show all the details.
I somehow doubt punters will flock to buy such distorted houses and cars.
Indeed, coming back to fashion drawings, I could contend that typically, the trousers and skirts I have seen tend to have less detail in the leg area. The most detail tend to be around the waist area – pockets, seams, pleats, belts. Going by this logic, shouldn’t the figures have relatively short legs and HUGE hips instead?
I apologise if I seem to be attacking you personally Brigette, believe me I am not. I am simply questioning a long-held practice. A practice that has implications on wider society. These drawings are shown to the public afterall.
Perhaps it is time to revolutionise production drawing for fashion designers? If the drawing is too small to show details, draw a close-up view at a larger scale. Architects and product designers have been doing it for ages. Some inter-disciplinary learning could be useful here.
The clothing or fashion market is a multi-billion-pound industry and the constantly changing styles that dominate it are largely dictated by well-known designers who showcase their new seasonal collections several times a year at fashion shows in cities such as New York, London and Paris so because it is something I am interested in I thought I would try my luck at getting a piece of the action and wright some fashion fashion blogs - so I hope you don’t mind that I am scouring the net to get some idea’s from other peoples blogs to see exactly whats hot and not, yours has giving me a few fashion science tips, Thanks
I love your thoughts! I normally don\’t even bother to leave comments, but I wanted to let you know that you hit the nail on the head!
Awww - thank you Fashion Trends!
I think this is so true. I hate the fact that fashion designers design in the fantasy world, it makes the more vulnerable believe that’s how we should look and leads to many eating disorders… your opinion is very logical. I’m an artist and I have to conform to the rules of the real world. to draw a figure correctly as nature intended is VITAL. why should fashion designers be any different? are they designers or abstract artists? you’re completely right in saying that the clothes that are designed on those models aren’t made to fit us. because they’re blatantly not. it’s unrealistic. fashion designers should be forced to conform to realistic proportions if they are to design something for real people in the real world.
and @ bridget… if all designers including *graphics architectural, and product designers* distorted their designs to fit in more detail. nothing would work correctly. your argument makes no sense. If I were a graphics designer, I would be set a format to create for… you HAVE a format to design to, you just choose to ignore it because it is not aesthetically pleasing enough… humans come in all shapes and sizes… the sooner people embrace that fact, the sooner we can all have garments that fit. regardless of whether you’re a trained fashion designer or any other form of designer. you should know the importance of KNOWING your proportions.
as Zern said “If the drawing is too small to show details, draw a close-up view at a larger scale. Architects and product designers have been doing it for ages. Some inter-disciplinary learning could be useful here.” designing to a fantasy figure will only give you flawed results. take it from a seasoned character designer… someone who knows what humans look like in the real world
oh and one last thing… according to leonardo da vinci’s rule of proportion. an average human is 7 to 8 heads long for a whole body standing upright, in the image supplied it’s around 13 heads long! I counted 8 by the time I got to the knee!! the feet should have been there! that’s just surreal! nobody can say that they can realistically design on that.. it’s no wonder I can never find jeans to fit me.
[...] thought. They have been consistently enlightening and supportive. An example is my post about how fashion designers work from a basis of fantasy, unlike all other design [...]