“The successful people we spoke with — in business, entertainment, sports and the arts — all had similar responses when faced with obstacles: they subjected themselves to fairly merciless self-examination that prompted reinvention of their goals and the methods by which they endeavored to achieve them. […]
No one’s idea of a good time is to take a brutal assessment of their animating assumptions and to acknowledge that those may have contributed to their failure. It’s easy to find pat ways to explain why the world has not adequately rewarded our efforts. But what we learned from conversation with high achievers is that challenging our assumptions, objectives, at times even our goals, may sometimes push us further than we thought possible.”
Lucky Peach: Fashion and Food
If you’ve been following my blog long enough, you’ll notice a trend of me comparing the fashion and the food industries. I’ve always said to people that if I wasn’t doing fashion, I would probably be in the food industry (and equally loving/hating it.)
In Chef David Chang’s latest issue of Lucky Peach, there is a great article by T-Magazine food editor Christine Muhlke comparing the nature of the cooking and fashion industries: how recipes spread from innovators to mass market family restaurant chains, Award winning chef’s “selling out” promoting frozen foods to survive and the stealing of ideas.
“The tween buying jeggings at Forever 21 in 2012 has no idea that they derive from the Spring 2010 runway of Balmain (which was styled by a French Vogue Editor, who last year became editor-in-chef). Meanwhile, her mom is ordering a Triple Chocolate Meltdown at Applebee’s, happily unaware of who Michel Bras is, or that he invented the half-baked chocolate cake in Laguiole, France, in 1981. To her, haute cuisine is a frou-frou luxury with no bearing on her life-not unlike $1,200 designer jeans. And yet…good ideas will always find a larger audience. Class becomes mass, and the beet chip goes on.” - Christine Muhlke. “Trickle-Down: The Circuitous Path of Ideas in Food and Fashion.” Lucky Peach Spring 2012: Pg 62-67
For anyone that has a mutual interest in both industries, I suggest you picking up this issue and reading the article. It ends with a very insightful Q&A with Che’s Alain Ducasse, Eric Ripert and David Kinch.
