Integral Consumerism

My famous British grandfather Karl Schenker* had a huge influence on the fashion industry in the previous century. Many of the trends he started set the tone for an entire generation.

He was a true artist. And his art required being in direct contact with people every day.

What a long way we’ve come from those days, to our time of mass consumption. 

I’ve just come out of a fascinating talk about the future of the fashion industry, and my mind is blown. 

The big brands really think we’re going back to exactly the way things were before the outbreak. 

So I’d like to introduce a new concept that I hope will shed some light on the future of fashion and consumerism. 

INTEGRAL CONSUMERISM 

Usually we learn a subject and then try to adapt it to ordinary life. 

With the integral approach, ordinary life has to conform to what we learn, which is a fundamental, qualitative change.

We tried developing ourselves through advertising, to create a new desire in the consumer. But this approach is no longer working because it doesn’t touch our core desires. 

The consumer has a new desire, but it’s not yet clear or understandable to them.

On the one hand consumers cannot enjoy the old consumerism, but on the other, they have not yet reached the new consumerism. 

As organizations learn the integral approach to creating and selling, they will also need to learn how to educate the consumer to consume new things, and enjoy new products. 

The consumer enjoys what the creator enjoys, the creator enjoys what the consumer enjoys.  We are together in the process. It’s a two-way street. 

We are seeing organizations that are already moving towards this by showing the consumer the process of production, where materials come from, how they care for the consumer, how they are seeking to create more enjoyment, as they produce healthier, more comfortable things for the consumer that are also good for the environment. There is still a lack of participation, but the approach is already beginning.

Yet brands will have to go one step further in the system of creation and consumption, so that consumers will feel the genuine concern at every stage, and feel that the creators are with them at every stage. Not that they simply sell us things and we don't even know where they came from, but that we are really in this together.

There has to be this back and forth interaction to create new consumption habits. 

*Karl Schenk-er (1886–1954): the “born por-trai-tist of el-e-gant peo-ple,” “a mas-ter of sev-er-al medi-ums,” “s-tage di-rec-tor of wo-m-en’s heads”—the press was en-thu-si-as-tic about the pho-to-graphs that made Karl Schenk-er one of the best-known so-ci-e-ty pho-to-g-ra-phers in the 1910s and ’20s. Ev-ery-body who was any-body had their por-trait tak-en in his Ber-lin stu-dio on the fa-mous Kur-fu?rs-ten-damm.