Is Steve Buscemi in your closet?

He should be and if you go down my rabbit hole below you’ll see why.

I created the CP (Creative Pragmatist) sliding scale for a reason. Because there are some days when you crave to feel deeply creative, and others where you just need to slap yourself in to focus. And this brings up 2 key points:

1. Like much in life, we are two things at once and it’s all in the balance.

2. And knowing this, you can see how important your thru-line is. In life it’s our principles, in fashion it’s our personal style dna: the adjectives and the modifier.

Since visuals speak louder than words, I’ll let the visuals here talk.

Let’s take Fana for example, one of the stylists on our team. Fana’s looks go from super creative / with pragmatism (she still works, lives a life - she’s got shit to get done- it’s not an endless scroll of mirror selfies for her); to super pragmatic with her signature creativity. And on those dates, she may be reaching for just more control or focus. But the key word in the above is “signature”. That’s our modifier (chapter 9 in The Creative Pragmatist book available here). It’s what creates Fana’s through line, no matter how she’s feeling from one day to the next. It keeps her grounded, it makes her most creative days not so chaotic and it gives energy to her most pragmatic.

In this past week’s style class, here, we dubbed it a “style challenge”. The challengers: Sarah our head of branding who is super deft at c10 work, myself whose always running pros/cons, plus/minus balance in my head, and Traci our head of design whose North Star is a combination of utilitarian, Japanese, clever, luxury craftsmanship. We tasked ourselves with imbibing our new pieces from the Fundamentals collection with our style sensibility. Note: I didn’t say favorite pieces - I said new, as that would have been redundant - if it makes it in to Fundamentals, then it’s a fave).

We got the idea for the “challenger style class” when we were styling the new Fundamentals campaign. For this shoot, we wanted to show the range of the collection - communicate how hard it can flex when it wants to, but also how it’s the ultimate character actor able to take on the vibe of any day.

Traci, myself and Sarah each got a “model” to make in our core sensibility. It’s great when an idea comes about because of the range of the people involved rather than anything algorithm generated that is created with intellect but no intuition. It keeps it real, real is good.

You can see the videos at tibi.com - Derek did a great job here. But my screenshots are below to keep us moving down this rabbit hole:

And naturally, this got me thinking…..

The thing about the fundamentals of your closet is that their core job responsibility is to play the best supporting role ever, they help you convey a full robust story. Your story.

And so, you see, this popped in to my head…..

Maybe the Fundamentals, your WithOut Fails, are the Steve Buscemi of your closet?

Never diminished, always in character, but irreplaceable - you don’t just switch Steve out for a substitute because it’s not the lead role. Without him, the whole story doesn’t come together. And no matter the wide range of roles, he’s seen without taking over - his thruline is always present.

My closet Steve is named Liam. See?