I was shopping for a V-neck sweater a little while ago but sadly, my preferred choice in necklines does not appear to be particularly fashionable at the moment.
The options, it seemed, were crew necks or quarter-zips.
My reaction to quarter-zips is visceral.
Because while a crew neck is a thing, a V-neck is a thing and a cardigan is a thing, all with a clear purpose and dignified identity, the quarter-zip is not and does not.
It is neither sweater, nor jacket nor cardigan.
It is merely a sweater with a small zip added to the top.
As far as I can tell, nobody was sitting at home wearing a perfectly functional sweater and thinking:
“If only there were a way to open the top three inches of this garment.”
Yet somehow the quarter-zip was born.
I suspect nobody really intended it.
I suspect a garment made from leftovers simply appeared independently in different environments until suddenly every golf club, accounting firm and middle-management retreat in the western world was infested with them.
Once I had quarter-zips on the brain, I started noticing similar affronts to decency everywhere I looked.
Take the hidden placket.
For those of you who don’t spend your evenings becoming irrationally annoyed by menswear, a placket is the strip of fabric that hides the buttons on a coat.
Fashion photography loves hidden plackets because words like “minimalist” and “silhouette” are somehow words that describe menswear.
For normal people the reality is rather different.
The visible-button coat gives you a coat.
The placket coat gives you an experience… with a discovery phase.
The buttons haven’t gone anywhere. They are just not as readily accessible any more.
So suddenly you own a jacket with a placket and when you do it up you look like a toddler negotiating buttons for the first time.
Just yesterday I was confronted by a payment terminal roughly the size of my first television.
It was playing video that I assume was advertising something while I was attempting to buy something else.
It may very well have been capable of communicating with satellites.
Could I work out where to insert my card?
Could I hell.
An innocent bystander would have been entitled to compare my examination of the EFTPOS machine to the way a great ape looks at a new piece of fruit.
Surely the place where payment occurs should be one of the more obvious features of a payment terminal.
Then Apple entered the chat.
I don’t know why, but I lingered over the full stop button on my phone for a moment longer than usual and was offered the option of an ellipsis in much the same way you get to choose vowels with accents.
…
Like that.
The existing option of simply pressing the full stop key three times is quicker.
…
Like that.
You can’t even tell the difference.
Nobody has ever typed three full stops and thought, “There must be a better way.”
Well, one has.
He works at Apple and really needs a vacation.
In his defence, not all press-and-hold keyboard options are useless.
I also discovered that performing the same operation on the zero key gives you the degrees symbol.
So now I don’t have to type 21degs like a Neanderthal but 21° like a functional adult.
21° is useful and clear. It is a genuine improvement.
And that, of course, is the difference.
Not every new idea is a quarter-zip.
If you’re a fashion designer with an improvement on a removable collar, you should absolutely stitch it onto the shirt.
You’re the reason we don’t have to travel with twelve packing trunks and someone to help us dress.
The world is full of genuinely useful innovations.
The challenge is distinguishing those from the ellipsis popup.
Because the hidden placket, the EFTPOS terminal and the ellipsis popup all do something, I guess.
They just have the wrong result.
They make existing things slightly harder.
Somewhere along the way, the object had become more important than the person using it.
The same happens at home.
I have, for example, programmed several automations for my bathroom. A ridiculous thing to confess.
I am not entirely convinced this represents progress for anybody except me. I am almost certain Joy misses the simplicity of a light switch.
Perhaps that is the true purpose of the quarter-zip.
Not as a garment.
As a warning.
A reminder to stop occasionally before introducing a new process, feature, form, workflow or garment and ask a simple question:
What problem are you solving?
If the answer is unclear, put the zip down and slowly back away.
Anyway.
I still need a V-neck.