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designDesignThe way things look.5NA=1154&NC=1236&DI=4098&PS=58552&PI=7315designfalsefalsespacernotembeddeddesignWhat Is Good Design Now?Listen in on Slate's panel featuring Adam Gopnik, Jonathan Adler, Ahmad Sardar-Afkhami, and Paula Scher.noWhat Is Good Design Now?Listen to Slate's panel on design featuring Adam Gopnik, Jonathan Adler, Ahmad Sardar-Afkhami, and Paula Scher.noLast night, Slate hosted a panel on the state of design at the Museum of Art and Design in New York. Adam Gopnik moderated, quizzing potter Jonathan Adler, architect Ahmad Sardar-Afkhami, and graphic designer Paula Scher about their early influences, toughest clients, and most interesting projects.truenotochyperlinkno200932710919PMFridayMarMarch133/27/2009 5:09:19 PM633737561590000000200932710919PMFridayMarMarch133/27/2009 5:09:19 PM633737561590000000designStick FigureHenry PetroskiThe marketing genius who brought us the toothpick.noStick FigureA brief history of the toothpick.noCharles Forster was a marketing genius who might have sold a side of beef to a vegetarian. He was born in 1826 in Charlestown, Mass., into an old and aristocratic New England family. While working for his uncle's import/export business in Brazil, he noticed that the natives had beautiful teeth, which he attributed to their use of handcrafted toothpicks. At a time when virtually everything was becoming mass produced, Forster vowed to make a fortune producing wooden toothpicks so cheaply by machine that he could export them to South America.truenotochyperlinkno2007103142818PMWednesdayOctOctober1610/31/2007 8:28:18 PM6332944489800000002007103142818PMWednesdayOctOctober1610/31/2007 8:28:18 PM633294448980000000designComing to AmericaMichael HsuMuji, the Japanese design powerhouse, is opening U.S. stores. Hallelujah!noComing to AmericaMuji is opening U.S. stores. Hallelujah!noAmong the design conscious, the most exciting news of the year has been that Muji—the Japanese retailer of nondescript, mercifully plain wares—is opening two stores in New York City. Muji's SoHo store, its first in North America, will open in mid-November; the company's flagship in Midtown Manhattan should open sometime next year.truenotochyperlinkno2007921105114AMFridaySepSeptember109/21/2007 2:51:14 PM6332596867400000002007921105114AMFridaySepSeptember109/21/2007 2:51:14 PM633259686740000000designHow Modernism Got Its CurvesVirginia PostrelA look at the extraordinary career of designer Eva Zeisel.noHow Modernism Got Its CurvesHow modernism got its curves.noClick here to read a slide-show essay about the extraordinary career of designer Eva Zeisel.spaceryeshyperlinkZeisel940675ssotwtrfalsefalse1placeAd(1,'slate.arts/slideshow') 200551810055PMWednesdayMayMay135/18/2005 5:00:55 PM632520180550000000200551810055PMWednesdayMayMay135/18/2005 5:00:55 PM632520180550000000200551810411PMWednesdayMayMay135/18/2005 5:04:11 PM632520182510000000200551810411PMWednesdayMayMay135/18/2005 5:04:11 PM6325201825100000001/123125/122967/2125340/2125341/slideshow_header_Interim.gif94054http://img.slate.com/mediafalse200932714002PMFridayMarMarch133/27/2009 5:40:02 PM633737580023920306200932714002PMFridayMarMarch133/27/2009 5:40:02 PM633737580023920306200932714002PMFridayMarMarch133/27/2009 5:40:02 PM633737580023920306false200591104021AMThursdaySepSeptember109/1/2005 2:40:21 PM632611680210000000200591104021AMThursdaySepSeptember109/1/2005 2:40:21 PM6326116802100000001/123125/122986/2111960/2116067/2116783/2116938/SlideshowFooter.gif94024http://img.slate.com/mediafalse200932714002PMFridayMarMarch133/27/2009 5:40:02 PM633737580023920306200932714002PMFridayMarMarch133/27/2009 5:40:02 PM633737580023920306200932714002PMFridayMarMarch133/27/2009 5:40:02 PM633737580023920306false200541844310PMMondayAprApril164/18/2005 8:43:10 PM632494393900000000200541844310PMMondayAprApril164/18/2005 8:43:10 PM632494393900000000FFFFFF000000spaceryeshyperlinkIn October, the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum will give the National Design Award for Lifetime Achievement to Eva Zeisel, recognizing her "lyrical and shapely ceramics" and extraordinary productivity (more than 100,000 objects). As is often the case with such awards, the recipient is elderly; she will be 99 in November. Her greatest commercial success occurred a half-century ago, when her Tomorrow's Classic line was the best-selling set of dishes in the country and her Prestige glassware was sold all over the world.But Zeisel is not ready for the design-history books. After a hiatus between 1963 and 1983, she has spent the past two decades creating new work not only in ceramics but in furniture, tile, glass, and metal. Newlyweds again furnish their table with her platters and vases from Nambé, and the prophetically named Tomorrow's Classic has been reissued with minor modifications and now sells as Classic Century at Crate & Barrel. Zeisel is not just a prolific creator. She's an intellectual force within design, and she has lived to see her sense of the designer's mission return to the profession's mainstream.spacer600450no1/123125/122967/2125340/2125341/176.jpghttp://img.slate.msn.com/mediayesStandardImage1/123125/122967/2125340/2125341/176.jpg600450http://img.slate.com/mediafalse200932714002PMFridayMarMarch133/27/2009 5:40:02 PM633737580024076555200932714002PMFridayMarMarch133/27/2009 5:40:02 PM633737580024076555200932714002PMFridayMarMarch133/27/2009 5:40:02 PM633737580024076555false200591104021AMThursdaySepSeptember109/1/2005 2:40:21 PM632611680210000000200591104021AMThursdaySepSeptember109/1/2005 2:40:21 PM632611680210000000Image courtesy Eva Zeisel Archives.200591104021AMThursdaySepSeptember109/1/2005 2:40:21 PM632611680210000000200591104021AMThursdaySepSeptember109/1/2005 2:40:21 PM632611680210000000spaceryeshyperlinkFor much of the 20th century, "good design" meant unornamented, largely rectilinear geometric forms, without the idiosyncrasies of sharp angles or compound curves. Modernist ideology generally held that function, material, and technique dictated the single best design for a particular purpose. Early 20th-century theorists like Le Corbusier, Zeisel wrote, "often referred to the sum of the forms and lines of their work as a form language rather than a style, because they felt they were creating eternal values." Zeisel admired many modernist designs, including what she calls "Le Corbusier's beautiful pavilion" at the Paris Exhibition of Decorative Arts. But she has always rejected the modernist design philosophy, with its claims to objective, eternal truths and its scorn for the audience's emotional response."The goal of the designer should be to give pleasure to the audience through his designs," she writes in On Design: The Magic Language of Things, published last year. Her philosophy has become mainstream. From the iMac to Karim Rashid's blockbuster Garbino trash can, the touchstones of turn-of-the-century industrial design are full of personality and curves. Rounded, biomorphic "blobjects" may be less dominant than in the late 1990s, but designers have absorbed their chief lesson: "Form follows emotion," in the words of designer Hartmut Esslinger.spacer600450no1/123125/122967/2125340/2125341/EZCat023.jpghttp://img.slate.msn.com/mediayesStandardImage1/123125/122967/2125340/2125341/EZCat023.jpg600450http://img.slate.com/mediafalse200932714002PMFridayMarMarch133/27/2009 5:40:02 PM633737580024232804200932714002PMFridayMarMarch133/27/2009 5:40:02 PM633737580024232804200932714002PMFridayMarMarch133/27/2009 5:40:02 PM633737580024232804false200591104021AMThursdaySepSeptember109/1/2005 2:40:21 PM632611680210000000200591104021AMThursdaySepSeptember109/1/2005 2:40:21 PM632611680210000000(Top) Eva Zeisel, salt and pepper shakers, 1945-46. Photograph by John Paschal. Image courtesy Hillwood Museum & Gardens, Washington, D.C. (Bottom) Image courtesy Karim Rashid Inc.200591104021AMThursdaySepSeptember109/1/2005 2:40:21 PM632611680210000000200591104021AMThursdaySepSeptember109/1/2005 2:40:21 PM632611680210000000spaceryeshyperlinkEva Stricker (sometimes spelled Striker) was born into an accomplished Budapest family. Her father was a prosperous textile merchant; her mother, the first woman to earn a doctorate at Budapest University, was the sister of Michael and Karl Polanyi. As a child in her mother's experimental kindergarten, Eva began a lifelong friendship with the novelist Arthur Koestler.In 1925, she left art school to apprentice to a potter and soon demonstrated the self-confidence that would mark her career. At 22, she became the designer for Schramberger Majolika-Fabrik in Germany despite scant experience, no knowledge of drafting (an architect friend gave her a quick lesson), and a depressed economy. "My job was to keep the company going. Three hundred fifty people's jobs depended on me. Our pots were bought on the basis of design," she later recalled. "It was a time of pressure."She created 200 designs over the course of two years. They show the influence of contemporary fashions, particularly in architecture. "I was fascinated by some beautiful modern villas, which I visited several times. Soon some of my inkwells started to look like tiny modern villas," she explained.spacer600362no1/123125/122967/2125340/2125341/ma1995.440a-c.R_REVISE.jpghttp://img.slate.msn.com/mediayesStandardImage1/123125/122967/2125340/2125341/ma1995.440a-c.R_REVISE.jpg600362http://img.slate.com/mediafalse200932714002PMFridayMarMarch133/27/2009 5:40:02 PM633737580024232804200932714002PMFridayMarMarch133/27/2009 5:40:02 PM633737580024232804200932714002PMFridayMarMarch133/27/2009 5:40:02 PM633737580024232804false20059973053AMFridaySepSeptember79/9/2005 11:30:53 AM63261847853000000020059973053AMFridaySepSeptember79/9/2005 11:30:53 AM632618478530000000Eva Zeisel, designer; manufacturer: Schramberger Majolika-Fabrik, Inkwell, 1929-30. Image courtesy the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.200591104021AMThursdaySepSeptember109/1/2005 2:40:21 PM632611680210000000200591104021AMThursdaySepSeptember109/1/2005 2:40:21 PM632611680210000000spaceryeshyperlinkZeisel has always understood modern design as a "fashion trend" that expressed a small group of talented designers' emotional responses to 19th-century styles and circumstances. They embraced technology, saw standardization as the solution to poverty, and rejected 19th-century design individualism, with its "eclecticism, historicism, and emotionalism." In so doing, she argues, they adopted an unnecessarily puritanical design code. "Today we seldom read about the designer's audiences, the people whose feelings we might want to coddle, whose hands and eyes we might want to please," she wrote in 1984. "In statements explaining the form language of our time, concern for the pleasure of the designer's public is almost always programmatically excluded, or called incidental to the quality of a design. The words 'REDUCE! REDUCE!' do not herald visual delights nor inspire us to make pretty things."For all its compound curves, Zeisel's own work absorbs and transforms the elements of modernism, with its smooth, abstracted forms and industrial perfection. "I believe that when future anthropologists unearth my work, they will put the right date on it," she wrote in 1984.spacer600450no1/123125/122967/2125340/2125341/slide4_revise.jpghttp://img.slate.msn.com/mediayesStandardImage1/123125/122967/2125340/2125341/slide4_revise.jpg600450http://img.slate.com/mediafalse200932714002PMFridayMarMarch133/27/2009 5:40:02 PM633737580024389053200932714002PMFridayMarMarch133/27/2009 5:40:02 PM633737580024389053200932714002PMFridayMarMarch133/27/2009 5:40:02 PM633737580024389053false20059971145AMFridaySepSeptember79/9/2005 11:11:45 AM63261846705000000020059971145AMFridaySepSeptember79/9/2005 11:11:45 AM632618467050000000(Left) Eva Zeisel, "Tomorrow's Classic" teapot, designed 1952; manufactured by Hall China Company, 1952-57. Image courtesy Gene Grobman. (Right) Chelsea Turner, 1785 © Francis G. Mayer/Corbis.200591104021AMThursdaySepSeptember109/1/2005 2:40:21 PM632611680210000000200591104021AMThursdaySepSeptember109/1/2005 2:40:21 PM632611680210000000spaceryeshyperlinkIntrigued by the Russian musicians and artists who visited Berlin, where she was living in 1932, the adventurous young Eva decided to check out the Soviet Union. It was, she soon discovered, a desperately poor country that "smelled of old, wet clothes." She began designing for the Lomonosov State Porcelain Factory in Leningrad, which produced dishes for communal cafeterias and tourist facilities. Her assignment was to "rationalize" the factory's pieces, reducing the cost of manufacturing, shipping, and use. Among her innovations was to make teapots cylindrical rather than round, saving room in the kiln.This set is currently on display in the Hillwood Museum and Gardens' exhibition, "Eva Zeisel: The Playful Search for Beauty," which was originally put together by the Knoxville Museum of Art. Although Zeisel designed only the shapes, visitors seem more interested in the propagandistic scenes of Leningrad.In the wee hours of May 28, 1936, Eva was arrested for supposedly plotting to kill Stalin. She spent 16 months in prison, mostly in solitary confinement, resisting demands for a false confession and expecting to be executed. In September 1937, she was released and put on a train for Vienna.spacer600314no1/123125/122967/2125340/2125341/EZCat006.jpghttp://img.slate.msn.com/mediayesStandardImage1/123125/122967/2125340/2125341/EZCat006.jpg600314http://img.slate.com/mediafalse200932714002PMFridayMarMarch133/27/2009 5:40:02 PM633737580024545302200932714002PMFridayMarMarch133/27/2009 5:40:02 PM633737580024545302200932714002PMFridayMarMarch133/27/2009 5:40:02 PM633737580024545302false200591104021AMThursdaySepSeptember109/1/2005 2:40:21 PM632611680210000000200591104021AMThursdaySepSeptember109/1/2005 2:40:21 PM632611680210000000Eva Zeisel, designer, 1933, and Varvara Freze (Russian, 1883-1970), painter, 1935, Leningrad 1935 decoration on Intourist Tea Service, 1933-37. Produced at the Lomonosov State Porcelain Factory, Leningrad, Soviet Union. Photograph by Edward Owen. Courtesy Hillwood Museum & Gardens, Washington, D.C. Sidebar image courtesy Eva Zeisel Archives.200591104021AMThursdaySepSeptember109/1/2005 2:40:21 PM632611680210000000200591104021AMThursdaySepSeptember109/1/2005 2:40:21 PM632611680210000000spaceryeshyperlinkSix months after Eva's return, Hitler annexed Austria. She caught the last train out, settling in New York with her new husband, Hans Zeisel. In 1939, the Pratt Institute hired her to teach ceramic design for mass production, the first such course in the United States. Unlike the heirs of the Arts and Crafts movement, Zeisel found the dichotomy between "artistic" handcraft and "industrial" market production artistically sterile and historically absurd. By valuing designs only if they were created with "pleasure in labor," she believed, the Arts and Crafts movement ignored the product and its audience. Besides, pottery has used machines and molds for thousands of years.Whatever her theoretical dissidence, Zeisel was one of the few modern designers working in industrial ceramics. When Castleton China proposed tableware with the imprimatur of the Museum of Modern Art, the museum recommended her, retaining veto power over the designs. Shaped to express the concepts "dignified," "erect," and "uplifted," the Museum collection brings her sensuous modern design to a formal setting. Always meticulous, Zeisel considered the reflections the dishes would cast in low lighting, an effect MOMA's 1946 exhibition showcased by displaying the pieces in diagonals.spacer600450no1/123125/122967/2125340/2125341/slide6_revise.jpghttp://img.slate.msn.com/mediayesStandardImage1/123125/122967/2125340/2125341/slide6_revise.jpg600450http://img.slate.com/mediafalse200932714002PMFridayMarMarch133/27/2009 5:40:02 PM633737580024701551200932714002PMFridayMarMarch133/27/2009 5:40:02 PM633737580024701551200932714002PMFridayMarMarch133/27/2009 5:40:02 PM633737580024701551false20059973053AMFridaySepSeptember79/9/2005 11:30:53 AM63261847853000000020059973053AMFridaySepSeptember79/9/2005 11:30:53 AM632618478530000000(Left) Image courtesy Eva Zeisel Archives. (Right) Pieces from the Museum Service, installed at the Museum of Modern Art, April 1946. Eva Zeisel, 1942-45. Image courtesy Eva Zeisel Archives and Hillwood Museum & Gardens, Washington, D.C.200591104021AMThursdaySepSeptember109/1/2005 2:40:21 PM632611680210000000200591104021AMThursdaySepSeptember109/1/2005 2:40:21 PM632611680210000000spaceryeshyperlinkThe Museum collection brought Zeisel professional acclaim and many commissions for more popularly priced products. (At $45 for a teapot, the Museum pieces were too expensive for the artist herself to buy.) In America, she moved away from what she called the "compass and ruler" rigidity of her early years to her mature lyrical style of "poetry and communicative line."Her lyricism is never an excuse for imprecision. Zeisel's designs not only invite the hand and delight the eye as individual pieces but are calculated to create harmonious, evocative sculptural arrangements when combined. She does not reproduce natural forms but abstracts them, allowing the viewer's imagination room to play.Shapes that conventionally look like petals or leaves may also recall very different natural phenomena, observed at the proper scale.spacer600450no1/123125/122967/2125340/2125341/slide7_revise.jpghttp://img.slate.msn.com/mediayesStandardImage1/123125/122967/2125340/2125341/slide7_revise.jpg600450http://img.slate.com/mediafalse200932714002PMFridayMarMarch133/27/2009 5:40:02 PM633737580024701551200932714002PMFridayMarMarch133/27/2009 5:40:02 PM633737580024857800200932714002PMFridayMarMarch133/27/2009 5:40:02 PM633737580024857800false20059973053AMFridaySepSeptember79/9/2005 11:30:53 AM63261847853000000020059973053AMFridaySepSeptember79/9/2005 11:30:53 AM632618478530000000(Top) Eva Zeisel, Hallcraft/Century platters and bowls, c.1957. Photograph by Ira Garber. (Bottom) Harold Edgerton, Milk-Drop Coronet, 1936 © Harold & Esther Edgerton Foundation, 2005.200591104021AMThursdaySepSeptember109/1/2005 2:40:21 PM632611680210000000200591104021AMThursdaySepSeptember109/1/2005 2:40:21 PM632611680210000000spaceryeshyperlinkAgainst modern design's preference for pure form, Zeisel has always defended color and decoration as sources of delight. She complains that "we do not allow ourselves to accept the validity of our present aesthetic yearnings, to admit to our preference for ornament and the compound curve."Yet museums, and even Crate & Barrel, display unornamented versions of her work. Tomorrow's Classic, whose distinctive gravy boat doubles as a vase, was originally sold with decorative decals designed by Zeisel's Pratt students, among others. When the set was released in 1952, the patterned pieces commanded a higher price, $9.95 for a 16-piece set versus $8.95.The choice to display only plain versions of Zeisel's creations is understandable, if unfortunate. While the forms remain classic, the decorations often date the objects to midcentury, as a tour through the Zeisel offerings on eBay and collector sites reveals. Precisely because color and adornment are so emotionally powerful, they more easily pick up, and later convey, specific, time-based cultural associations. "When in doubt, buy white," Zeisel herself advised consumers.spacer600450no1/123125/122967/2125340/2125341/slide8_revised.jpghttp://img.slate.msn.com/mediayesStandardImage1/123125/122967/2125340/2125341/slide8_revised.jpg600450http://img.slate.com/mediafalse200932714002PMFridayMarMarch133/27/2009 5:40:02 PM633737580024857800200932714002PMFridayMarMarch133/27/2009 5:40:02 PM633737580024857800200932714002PMFridayMarMarch133/27/2009 5:40:02 PM633737580024857800false20059971145AMFridaySepSeptember79/9/2005 11:11:45 AM63261846705000000020059971145AMFridaySepSeptember79/9/2005 11:11:45 AM632618467050000000Eva Zeisel, "Tomorrow's Classic" gravy boat with spoon in Bouquet pattern (left), and dinner plate in Fantasy pattern (right), 1952; manufactured 1952-57. Images courtesy Gene Grobman.200591104021AMThursdaySepSeptember109/1/2005 2:40:21 PM632611680210000000200591104021AMThursdaySepSeptember109/1/2005 2:40:21 PM632611680210000000spaceryeshyperlinkIn 1984, a retrospective exhibition, "Eva Zeisel: Designer for Industry" began a five-year tour through museums in North America and Europe. Presumably intended to look back on the designer's entire life's work, it came just as she was beginning a new phase of intense productivity.In 1983, at the age of 77, Zeisel went back to Hungary for the first time. Working with the Zsolnay Porcelain Factory, famed for its iridescent glazes, she created vases and pitchers that combine expressive, organic forms with rich colors evoking Art Nouveau. The fruitlike shapes and glazes are unmistakably new, yet the objects fit into her oeuvre."What kind of person must the designer be to have fun originating a lifetime of pleasant things and not to dry up midstream? One has to learn not to take oneself too seriously, not to overly respect one's own designs," she has written.spacer600450no1/123125/122967/2125340/2125341/slide10AB.jpghttp://img.slate.msn.com/mediayesStandardImage1/123125/122967/2125340/2125341/slide10AB.jpg600450http://img.slate.com/mediafalse200932714002PMFridayMarMarch133/27/2009 5:40:02 PM633737580025014049200932714002PMFridayMarMarch133/27/2009 5:40:02 PM633737580025014049200932714002PMFridayMarMarch133/27/2009 5:40:02 PM633737580025014049false200591104021AMThursdaySepSeptember109/1/2005 2:40:21 PM632611680210000000200591104021AMThursdaySepSeptember109/1/2005 2:40:21 PM632611680210000000 Images courtesy the Orange Chicken, LLC.200591104021AMThursdaySepSeptember109/1/2005 2:40:21 PM632611680210000000200591104021AMThursdaySepSeptember109/1/2005 2:40:21 PM632611680210000000spaceryeshyperlinkWhen James Klein and David Reid started their ceramics studio in 1993, they dreamed of working with Eva Zeisel. Six years later, they were introduced and invited her to work with them on any projects she might like. They also gave her one of their vases. Her eyesight dim, Zeisel turned the vase in her hands. "Oh," she said, with admiration. "You're trying to make things perfect."By then, production ceramics had moved from modernism's austere geometries to the opposite extreme. Designers made their work "look as handmade as possible," says Reid, even if that meant including phony throwing lines in the molds. He and Klein, by contrast, wanted to emulate their midcentury inspirations by producing precise forms.Zeisel does not evoke emotion simply by playing with clay. Rather, she writes, it is "the clear formulation and control of the sweep of the line, the modulation of shade, the disposition of mass … that brings the object from the sphere of purely sensuous pleasure … into a spiritual sphere."spacer495450no1/123125/122967/2125340/2125341/04KleinReidEvaTeapotand1DA.jpghttp://img.slate.msn.com/mediayesStandardImage1/123125/122967/2125340/2125341/04KleinReidEvaTeapotand1DA.jpg495450http://img.slate.com/mediafalse200932714002PMFridayMarMarch133/27/2009 5:40:02 PM633737580025482796200932714002PMFridayMarMarch133/27/2009 5:40:02 PM633737580025482796200932714002PMFridayMarMarch133/27/2009 5:40:02 PM633737580025482796false200591104021AMThursdaySepSeptember109/1/2005 2:40:21 PM632611680210000000200591104021AMThursdaySepSeptember109/1/2005 2:40:21 PM632611680210000000Image courtesy KleinReid.200591104021AMThursdaySepSeptember109/1/2005 2:40:21 PM632611680210000000200591104021AMThursdaySepSeptember109/1/2005 2:40:21 PM632611680210000000spaceryeshyperlinkIn 2000, Zeisel visited the now-privatized Lomonosov Porcelain Factory, where she had once rationalized tableware for the Stalinist state. Over the next several years, she worked with Lomonosov's talented young model-maker, Georgii Bogdevich, to create molds for a new tea service in delicate bone china.Released last year, the exquisite, expensive ($4,950 for a 21-piece set) service is among Zeisel's most beautiful work. Nearly translucent, the cups recall elegant calla lilies, while the teapot and creamer lids look like belly buttons—a favorite Zeisel motif—or splashes of milk. Elegance and playfulness, nature and artifice are in harmony.In a new era, the Lomonosov set exemplifies the ideals she has maintained throughout her life. Designers, she says, should not be ashamed of surface beauty. The surface is, after all, what we see and touch and how we know an object.This latest in a long line of tea sets demonstrates another Zeisel belief: that there is no one best way to solve a design problem. "The designer must understand," she wrote, "that form does not follow function, nor does form follow a production process. For every use and for every production process there are innumerable equally attractive possibilities." Exploring them can fill a very long life.spacer600450no1/123125/122967/2125340/2125341/slide12AB.jpghttp://img.slate.msn.com/mediayesStandardImage1/123125/122967/2125340/2125341/slide12AB.jpg600450http://img.slate.com/mediafalse200932714002PMFridayMarMarch133/27/2009 5:40:02 PM633737580025639045200932714002PMFridayMarMarch133/27/2009 5:40:02 PM633737580025639045200932714002PMFridayMarMarch133/27/2009 5:40:02 PM633737580025639045false200591104021AMThursdaySepSeptember109/1/2005 2:40:21 PM632611680210000000200591104021AMThursdaySepSeptember109/1/2005 2:40:21 PM632611680210000000(Left) Image courtesy of Brent C. Brolin. (Right) Image courtesy of Talisman K. Brolin.200591104021AMThursdaySepSeptember109/1/2005 2:40:21 PM632611680210000000200591104021AMThursdaySepSeptember109/1/2005 2:40:21 PM632611680210000000200591104021AMThursdaySepSeptember109/1/2005 2:40:21 PM632611680210000000200591104021AMThursdaySepSeptember109/1/2005 2:40:21 PM632611680210000000truenotochyperlinkno20059114130PMThursdaySepSeptember139/1/2005 5:41:30 PM63261178890000000020059114130PMThursdaySepSeptember139/1/2005 5:41:30 PM632611788900000000designThe U.S. Army's New ClothesTom VanderbiltWhy has the Army redesigned its uniforms?noThe U.S. Army's New ClothesThe Army's new camouflage.noAfter years of study—and the field deployment of thousands of prototype uniforms in Operation Enduring Freedom—the U.S. Army recently unveiled a new uniform, dubbed the Army Combat Uniform, or ACU. It will become standard-issue for all deployed troops in the fall of 2005. You can count on one hand the number of major uniform upgrades undertaken by the Army in the last century, so this sweeping sartorial redesign begs further analysis. What does the ACU tell us about the state of soldiering?truenotochyperlinkno200498112005AMWednesdaySepSeptember119/8/2004 3:20:05 PM632302392050000000200498112005AMWednesdaySepSeptember119/8/2004 3:20:05 PM632302392050000000200311442710PMTuesdayJanJanuary161/14/2003 9:27:10 PM631781584300000000200311442710PMTuesdayJanJanuary161/14/2003 9:27:10 PM631781584300000000falsetruetruetruetruetruetrue20011018111443PMThursdayOctOctober2310/19/2001 3:14:43 AM631390436830000000200181561602PMWednesdayAugAugust188/15/2001 10:16:02 PM631334961620000000