What retail helped me understand about creativity.
I have been working in retail for the past 10 years and here is one of the things I have learnt and that made me understand something fundamental about creativity.
Bags are just bags
Look at the bags in the Louis Vuitton screen capture below:
Do you notice anything special apart from the fact they are Louis Vuitton bag and that you might like them or not?
Probably not.
Now pay attention to THIS bag:
It is called the ‘Capucines’ bag in tribute to the first Louis Vuitton Store in Paris, 23 rue des Capucines next to the famous Place Vendôme.
This pink bag is made out of Taurillon grainy leather, making it extremely resistant and soft at the same time.
A unique feature is that the LV logo is embedded in the front, mixing leather and metallic edges. It is the sign of the top quality bags of Louis Vuitton.
The embedded logo is visible if you fold the top inside the bag. Owners who do not like to have a visible brand on their bag can fold the top over the front and cover the LV logo. The iconic quatrefoils monogram flower — symbol of Louis Vuitton — will become apparent, giving a discrete and elegant look to your bag.
All the stitching is done by hand; the leather is of the highest quality on the market (same quality as Hermès leathers); the finishing is impeccable and the time to assemble is it close to 20 hours.
Now stop for a second. Did you notice something?
On the first picture, this pink bag was present on the picture. But you probably did not notice it among the ‘crowd’.
It was a bag among bags.
It was ‘present’. But it didn’t ‘exist’.
To make it more than just a bag, to make you notice it and make it ‘exist’ for you, I had to share something with you and take the risk that you might not like my sharing and drop the reading.
The flip side of the risk I took is the chance that my ‘sharing’ made you like this bag; made you happy to learn something new; gave you an idea for a 20, 30, 40 (or more) years’ birthday (it starts at 4,700 USD, just so you know) or simply made you curious to learn more about it.
Like bags, your creations are just creations. Until you talk about them.
Retail has taught me this: sharing information with others transforms things from ‘being present’ to ‘existing’ in the world.
Translated to creativity, without sharing your creations, they will be ‘present’ but won’t ‘exist’ in the world.
If you have read my previous post, you might remember that Nathalie gave me a creative challenge: draw a short comic of four squares each day for 30 Days. One of the commitments was to share my results daily, either just with Nathalie or on Facebook. I decided to share it on Facebook, not really knowing what it meant but feeling it would make me feel more accountable.
It turns out that sharing my sketches on a public Facebook post was what made this whole creative experience exist.
Without sharing, all of my sketches would have been a waste: just like the Louis Vuitton Capucines bag lost among other bags, my creations would just have been ‘present’ on my iPad with a lot of other documents.
They wouldn’t have existed for dozens of people who enjoyed my drawings as their little fun read at the end of their day.
Look at the type of nice comments I got from a sketch on day 26
This sketch and the other 30 I did have created connections, made an impact, generated laughs, questions, sometimes discussions.
When creating anything, think about this: sharing what you create matters.
Even if one person sees your work, one only, it is worth all the gold in the world.
— —
Download a free copy of The Creative Break and join a community of people dedicated to activate their creativity.
