Listening to the Future.

In the classical Greek and Roman worlds, Augurs were prized as creative and religious officials gifted with extraordinary visionary powers, and who could purposefully ‘listen’ to the future. Their chief role was the practice of augury – interpreting the will of the gods by studying the sky, and the particular and varied flight pattern of birds. They were considered central to any major public or private decision-making process, especially where that might affect matters of societal harmony, liberty, wellbeing, and commercial opportunity.

‘Listening’ to futures, then, in divergent and distinctive ways may become the calling and craft of what may be termed ‘design augurs.’ Such individuals and teams may serve to imagine and conduct uncommon experiments to establish compelling conditions for innovation and revolution within design, (whether fashion, graphic design, architecture, music, etc), and where ensuing ideas or strategies emanate less from any conventional understanding or expression of the designer/developer/maker, but rather from evolving apperceptions of the ‘fashion rehearsal.’ 

This new creative role might also be distinguished by a consideration of fashion that is defiantly disconnected from current or conventional practice, thinking or transaction. The design augur can then be described as a blend of pioneer, provocateur, agitator, radical, revisionist, progressive and dissident; and their charge will be to locate new platforms and prototypes that define patterns of fashion beyond consumer culture.