“Just because a Dalmatian sits atop the truck doesn’t make it a firefighter.”
Delivered to a first-year associate who had given his opinion, unsolicited, on an esoteric regulatory issue, it sits in the pantheon of colorful partner retorts, right up there with Don Draper’s “I don’t think about you at all.” And while that young attorney would go on to become a partner at another white shoe firm, on that day, he was a 5-pound Chihuahua.
In today’s Amateur Age whereby digitally native upstarts are [attempting to] disrupt[ing] the way legacy brands look at product design, user experience and marketing, we tend to forget that a good lot of these “radical thinkers” and “polymathic geniuses” are a mix of opportunists, well-connected industry veterans, artists, Cool Guys, highly skilled marketers and in some cases flat-out charlatans. Taken together, these “Dalmatians,” if you will, sit atop the firetruck, looking all sorts of cute, coat shiny, sometimes even wearing a four-legged firefighter outfit.
Upon first glance, you are probably thinking “Trunz bout to go off!” Au contraire: I’m bout to flip ya, flip ya for real! I give you…the Firetruck Matrix.
Historically, our four-legged friends could be just as useful as actual firefighters: before trucks had sirens, they would run alongside the vehicle — or horse and wagon — barking to let citizens know what’s going down. Oftentimes, they would be the ones to actually identify and and announce the location of the blaze. They served a very real purpose, even if they weren’t the ones doing the “real work.”
I put “real work” in quotes for a reason. It’s human nature to overstate the importance of certain kinds of people (and…er…animals) while diminishing that of others. In fashion, we see this tension all the time, particularly when someone from outside “The System” transcends those who ascend within it (or, in many cases, those who are imprisoned by it).
But he’s not a real designer! Oh, he just rips off everyone else! He didn’t even go to art school!
It’s as if they forget that neither of the two most influential designers of the last 50 years, Ralph and Karl, went to design school. Just two Dalmatians keeping an eye out, observing and letting the people know what’s good.
And of course, while not a regular occurrence, sometimes a Dalmatian is able to morph into a firefighter. You can argue that is precisely what happened to Ralph and Karl. This is also what happened with Virgil: having started at the the upper-most left quadrant (an influencer’s influencer, the ultimate Cool Guy), you’d be hard pressed to argue — whether you like his catalog or not — that he’s not one of the most influential commercial designers of his generation. Even if he’s influenced by the farthest fringes of culture, those who are doing the influencing are so esoteric, raw and unproven, their work truly lays outside the scope of this matrix.
Point is, there’s plenty of room in this world for Dalmatians to coexist with firefighters. And each type can be enormously successful so long as they are self-aware: that they first identify the lane in which they operate and then drive cautiously. Put [not so] simply: baha’ing with reckless abandon like Immortan Joe on his Gigahorse is not the way to the gates of Valhalla.