Less is more

Less is more

I am at the Sabyasachi store in Delhi. The salesgirl sizes me up and down—I have come in jeans and T-shirt—and picks out a “beautifully subtle”, cream-coloured sari for me

 

Good design is as little design as possible—Dieter Rams

I am at the Sabyasachi store in Delhi. The salesgirl sizes me up and down—I have come in jeans and T-shirt—and picks out a “beautifully subtle”, cream-coloured sari for me. As she mock-drapes it, I suck in my breath. It is beautiful, stunningly so. But subtle? Not by a yard. The fabric is lush Kanjeevaram silk, with an intricately woven black and gold zari border—look closely, and you will see a line-up of peacock motifs—which is embellished with a second border of deep burgundy with rich zardosi embroidery. The pallu amplifies the same patterns, ending in a wide swathe of frenetic zardosi work with gold wires, gota appliqué, and tiny white beads. The blouse is a totally different brocade, soft and luxurious, with woven flower motifs, a sensuously cut deep low back, held up with a tasselled string tie-up. The string itself is further adorned with playful dangling gold balls, and an appliqué mirror thrown in for good measure.

Sabyasachi store in Mumbai, where our traditional design sensibility searches for complexity.

Phew. Just as I am wondering how so much opulence can qualify as subtle, the salesgirl pulls out a dazzling orange-and-green sari embellished with even more abandon, and then we try the bright yellow net concoction (Oprah wore an apple-green one during her recent India trip),and just for fun, I put on the neon pink khadi silk number too. Half an hour later, I have warmed up completely to her notion of understated razzle-dazzle because whatever you pick, there is always another piece that sets the bling-bar higher, and soon we come full circle, to the first sari which I am now referring to as subtle.India’s aesthetic code is “more is more”. Somewhere deep in our cultural DNA, our design sensibility is programmed for glorious colour, rich materials, laborious karigari, embellishments, complexity, clutter, even chaos. While Sabyasachi does it with regal finesse, look around your everyday life, and the same design ethos is played out—the colourful crowds in the Metro, the back of a TATA-OK truck, the thali at Rajdhani, the new office towers of Gurgaon, all stay true to the “more is more” design code.
So when my editor asked me to write about design, especially the minimalist, functional sort that is gaining currency internationally, the first question that popped in my head was how this “less-is-more” design philosophy is going to work with a nation that values “more-is-more”. Will we evolve over time and embrace it? More importantly, from a brand’s point of view, what would it take to change our deep-seated collective preferences?

Purity in style: Apple’s products, like the iPad, have always been simplistic in design

While international design philosophies range from Versace lush-and-plush to Apple clean-and-simple—and everything in between—it is fair to say that the less-is-more end of the spectrum has risen dramatically in recent times. In my view, Apple has single-handedly moved the needle on that, and ironically the death of Steve Jobs has put a sharp focus on the role of design itself as a strategic weapon, and Steve’s obsessive beliefs about what constitutes good design, that elusive “purity” he sought. Apple’s design head Jonathan Ive—who has been called Steve’s “spiritual partner”, and has led the design of everything from the iMac in 1998 to the new iPad that went on sale last week—has caught the spotlight too. In turn, the man who has been Ive’s lifelong inspiration—the prolific German designer Dieter Rams, now 80, whose designs for Braun and Vitsoe are revered classics—is being feted through exhibitions and books, and one of them, Dieter Rams: As Little Design As Possible, even has a foreword by Ive. Indeed, the proximity in design is so uncanny, it is as if Rams is somehow working through Ive.Steve, Ive, Rams, their words may be different, but they are all talking of the same principles. Good design is as little design as possible. It gets out of the way. It is easy to use. Intuitive. Self-explanatory. It takes away anything that might distract. Pure. Simple. Less.
This is at complete variance with the complexity and clutter that define Indian design. We are not taking away anything that might distract, we are adding decorations for the express purpose of distracting. Fit, form, functionality are not our strengths, in fact they are glossed over by our focus on embellishment instead. Was the Sabyasachi sari easy to use? Hardly, it weighed a ton. But did I care? Not a shred. I was too busy feeling like a princess.
There are other cultural quirks that influence our evaluation of design. Will we pay big bucks for a plastic chair? No, we strongly associate plastic with cheap. What if the chair is designed by Charles and Ray Eames, a design classic, a 10 on comfort? Or the other design icon, the delightful Panton chair, now made in polypropylene? I am not sure. There is a hierarchy of materials and associations in our head that is difficult to dislodge. Furthermore, while we may pay for materials we consider precious—gold and diamonds, for example—we are averse to paying for the design and “making charges”, which we will haggle down to the bone. We don’t really value the design either, and will happily get a local jeweller to copy a brand’s design, justifying it as the sensible thing to do.
Is it possible to love Steve and Sabyasachi in the same breath? Here’s the thing—while we may not subscribe to the design principles central to the iPhone or iPad, we subscribe wholeheartedly to the products themselves, in fact they are objects we desire immensely. What gives? Perhaps it’s a tribute to Steve’s design, the appeal of which is so universal that you fall in love with it regardless of your cultural orientation. Perhaps the design is so unobtrusive we focus instead on the product’s capability, delighted by Siri or swept off our feet by Retina display. Perhaps it is the cult status of the Apple brand, and the fact that you have shelled out a hefty sum adds to your own status.
Or perhaps the iPhone is the final embellishment, the perfect accessory, to add to a Sabyasachi sari.