It’s easy to think of buying handmade as a trend. We see cool people buying handmade, embracing homegrown, and embracing the DIY aesthetic.
Go to the mall – look around – you’ll see big brands trying the emulate hand-stitched appliques, hand-thrown ceramics, and indie designed jewelry. Surely this is just one trend in a succession of many trends. People will soon want to see machine perfection and cookie cutter design, right?
Eh… I don’t think so.
Megan posted the latest Jeep commercial on Crafting an MBA as evidence of this. The jist of the commercial is that America was founded on hard work & great craftsmanship. We’re people that know how to make great stuff (in this case… Jeeps) and it’s time to remember that again. The values of craftsmanship, the desire for quality, the respect for hard work and interesting design aren’t new, folks. It’s way old school.
What was a trend – albeit it an extended one – was the desire for crap. For most of the last century, there was a growing trend for things that looked machine-made, mass-produced, digitized, modern, industrial. As this trend reached its zenith, there were more machines making more cheap crap than ever before. And we bought it.
We bought it because that was the trend. We bought it because our neighbors were. We bought it because the marketing told us to. It was the thing to do.
What we realized with the financial collapse of the last couple years is that crap is not a sustainable platform for an economy. And it’s really not very cool either. Seriously.
You know what is? Making great stuff with our own hands. And with machines that our hands guide & manipulate. In fact, we make pretty great stuff – and we always have. We make innovative, fashionable, trendsetting, revolutionary stuff that changes people’s lives.
Crap just doesn’t change people’s lives. And I don’t think it’s here to stay.
Nope, sorry crap – you’re just a trend. And a bad one at that. I’m ready to throw you out the window and get back to buying awesome stuff made by hand.
{grapefruit pin cushion by seapinks}
P.S. If you’re in the US, happy 4th of July! I might be back Monday… but probably Tuesday.
P.P.S. Check out all the fabulous new summer advertisers on the right!
