A fashionable Mr Jones.

 

I have a sneaking feeling the fashionable Mr Jones sells a lot of gear.

Who is he?

Well Mr Jones is often your neighbour with the double glazing just going in.  It is fun to see who is keeping up with Mr Jones when you walk down the street.  Whole groups of houses take on a similar appearance until there is a firebreak either because of financial constraint or individual expression a house breaks the pattern.

Mums on school runs don’t need 4x4 people carriers but to not have one is nearly a social crime.  All manner of justification will be trotted out as to why the monstrosity of the road is needed.

But the fashionable Mr Jones is more subtle than you give him credit for.  It is easy to laugh at others persuaded by his sales patter, it is not so easy to laugh at yourself having been gulled into it.

In a world of a myriad choices you need Mr Jones to help you focus and make sense of it all.  Given two choices it is easy to make a decision, given a million it becomes bewildering.

Mr Jones is a tool, don’t let him turn you into one.

Spot the Mears-a-likes in their olive drab labouring under Karrimors bulging with survival gear with maybe a copy of an alarmingly expensive knife weighing them down.

A knife is the most important thing in bushcraft is the general message.  It has certainly sold a lot of knives and as these things have a certain sex-appeal Mr Jones need not be too persuasive.

Spot the Walts.  These chaps are festooned with SAS equipment with flinty 1000 yard stares, maybe with cheesewire hidden somewhere on their bodies.  About as far from the heroes they imagine themselves to be as it is to get, they are suffering a media overdose.

The SAS and Ray Mears labels get attached to some very weird and wonderful ebay items.

Then there are the hardcore charge of the light brigade, the Jardineites, walking sandals crippling them and the nth degree of a gram removed from their waterproof stuffsacks which have rendered them useless.

Tee-hee-hee indeed.

I try to keep in mind, form should follow function, and as many functions as possible should be embodied in the simplest of forms.

Trying to lower the “keeping up with the fashionable Mr Jones” function of an object to is a constant struggle.

I am just as much in the thrall of the fashionable Mr Jones as anyone else.  His influence is so much easier to spot in hindsight.  How I chuckle/cringe at my past self under his influence while I stride out purposefully not noticing his current.

Not sure how much fashion plays in decision making?  Ask how long a successful manufacturer of outdoor equipment takes over colour choice on a product range and how much it occupies your own.