Good taste can take a joke.
Schiaparelli's strange ideas worked because someone took their construction seriously.
A shoe-shaped hat makes it difficult to argue that good design must behave itself. Schiaparelli and Salvador Dalí made one, and someone still had to work out how to keep it on a head.
The V&A's exhibition guide identifies the Shoe hat, dating from 1937 to 1938, as wool felt and silk velvet. The Skeleton dress of 1938 brought padded, raised bones onto an evening dress through trapunto work. The oddness was built into the objects through specific materials and techniques. V&A exhibition guide.
The construction carries the idea
A recognisable shape placed somewhere unexpected can be funny, unsettling or both. Its proportions still need to work. Poor execution can obscure the idea before anyone gets to enjoy it.
That gives humour a demanding role in design. The maker has to preserve the surprising part while solving the ordinary problems that allow the object to function. “Delightfully surreal” is unlikely to get an unfinished seam past inspection.
The same applies to a brand identity. If a lively headline sits beside an entirely anonymous design, the copy is doing all the flirting. Character should have a place in the shapes, imagery and behaviour too.
Protect the idea through its awkward stage
An unfamiliar proposal often looks least convincing before it has been made. A safe alternative can borrow reassurance from existing examples. That makes it easier to approve, even when the brief asks for something distinctive.
Test the strange detail properly. Make a sample, try the crop or build the interaction. Ask whether it belongs to the idea and whether the audience can understand it. Removing it simply because it sounds a little daft can remove the reason to remember the work.
Restraint has its place. So does humour, when it is part of the idea and made with care. A serious standard of execution leaves plenty of room for an object that enjoys itself.
