calculating fashion

Matthew Crawford, in Shop Class for Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work*, distinguishes between two types of knowledge— abstract/universal knowledge and experiential/intuitive/tacit knowledge. According to Crawford, universal knowledge “aspires to a view from nowhere. That is, it aspires to a view that gets at the true nature of things because it isn’t conditioned by the circumstances of the viewer. It can be transmitted through speech or writing without loss of meaning, and expounded by a generic self that need not have any prerequisite experiences.”

Our society values this abstract knowledge—we crave more “technique” as Jacques Ellul would describe it. We value processes, technical manuals, best practices and flowcharts, rather than experiential or tacit knowledge. Crawford describes the basic idea of tacit knowledge:

“We know more than we can say and certainly more than we can specify in a formulaic way. Intuitive judgments of complex systems, especially those made by experts… are sometimes richer than can be captured by any set of algorithms.”

Perhaps the difference between intuitive knowledge and abstract knowledge is best illustrated by the supercomputer Deep Blue and the master chess player Garry Kasparov. Though Deep Blue did beat Kasparov, it relied on a different sort of intelligence, if it can be called that at all, than Garry’s. Kasparov himself writes:

“Instead of a computer that thought and played chess like a human, with human creativity and intuition, they got one that played like a machine, systematically evaluating 200 million possible moves on the chess board per second and winning with brute number-crunching force.”

When we only recognize abstract knowledge, we bureaucratize human intelligence. In the words of Crawford:

“Appreciating the situated character of the kind of thinking we do at work is important, because the degradation of work is often based on efforts to replace the intuitive judgments of practitioners with rule following, and codify knowledge into abstract systems of symbols that then stand in for situated knowledge.”

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The nonprofit sector subscribes to abstract knowledge, evidenced by the proliferation of jargon about “innovation,” “portfolio,” “outcome measurement” and “performance”. In my consulting work, I struggle with what kind of knowledge I implicitly support. But like a good stereotypical female blogger, I'm going to spend the rest of this blog post writing about clothing (Actually according to this, female bloggers prefer to write about Christmas, family, love and babies. Matt says that I ought to question whether the dataset analyzed is a representative sample).

Getting dressed is a difficult and stressful task for me. It’s a complicated operations procedure, rather than an expressive fun activity. Basically I think of it this way: I need to optimize my appearance given a set of constraints: amount and type of physical activity (e.g. biking or walking), indoor and outdoor temperature, level of desired formality and professionalism, level of comfort, clean clothing available and semi-clean clothing available. (I complicate this task by keeping a pile of worn-once-or-twice-but-still-clean clothing that I keep in a drawer that I try to wear before that drawer overflows).

In deciding what to wear, I first think about all my constraints. For example:
- Need to bike in regular clothing today. Need a skirt that will allow ample leg movement. No pencil skirts.
- Workshop presentation. Need to dress professionally and make sure that you have a decent shirt underneath your sweater because you get really hot when presenting…
- Um, you’ve already worn that black cardigan three times this week.
- Um, you don't have enough time to put on two pairs of tights. (Trust me, when you wear two pairs of tights at the same time, the second pair is very difficult to put on).

And then I rely upon mental algorithms I’ve developed to optimize appearance, primarily from my husband’s excellent fashion advice:
- Best colour combinations for me are black + grey + one other colour (which cannot be yellow, brown or navy, but would ideally be purple or blue).
- I can ditch the black and do grey + navy + white. Or maybe do beige + navy or beige + brown, but beige and brown are not the best colours for me.
- Only one article of clothing can have patterns, ruffles or extra embellishment
- Skirts generally look better than pants as long as I can find appropriate matching tights. Skirts must be above the knees!
- I can’t wear dangly earrings when I have my glasses on. It's just too many metal appendages.
- Fitted clothing usually looks better. I am supposed to avoid empire waists, puffed sleeves, boatnecks and blazers.
- Apparently the whole trendy/Michelle Obama wearing a belt over a cardigan looks stupid on me.

Given that my algorithms are not very well developed, I often find myself venturing in foreign territory. This often proves disastrous or atleast results in a tardy appearance at work. For instance, this morning, I wanted to wear a brown sweater. My algorithm for brown (brown + beige) was not going to work because I didn’t have any beige skirts or khakis. So I tried a pair of grey jeans, but they didn’t fit over my long underwear. Then I tried brown workpants that were too stripey compared to the stripe texture on the brown sweater. Then I tried a brown skirts which proved too brown. Then I panicked, since I was running later, and finally opted to just wear blue jeans, which were rather uncomfortable.

So this is why it takes me 20 minutes to get dressed in the morning. Perhaps I can reduce it to 10 minutes if I use a flowchart. Or maybe I should diagram a set of successful outfits at different levels of constraints and choose from the list. (I once though about creating such a diagram for biking clothing for weather… e.g. which thickness of gloves do I need given the daily range of temperature and windchill?). Or write a computer program that draws from a database of all my clothing and then compiles outfits based on inputted variables. That would be pretty awesome.

Alternatively, I could try to develop some experiential knowledge.**


* The famous essay that preceded the book is well worth reading.
** Or I could get rid of all my clothing and just buy a few sets of black skirts, black tights + grey shirt + grey cardigan. And just wear it ALL THE TIME. Simplicity is so tempting sometimes, but unfortunately I like novelty and variety and other comforts afforded by my American educated class privilege.
*** This only a slight caricature. I actually think about getting dressed in the morning this way. That is why it is so stressful. It’s up there with grocery shopping and meal planning and cooking (yet another algorithm-dependent area of my life). A quick google search has yielded a few others who have "best practices" for getting dressed.