because the obvious has already been explained...
BY ARISTOS PATSALIDIS
16 November 2025
THE CREATORS MIND:
​
A NEW WAY OF UNDERSTANDING TALENT
The fashion industry is experiencing one of the most rapid periods of creative turnover in its history. Creative directors are moving from house to house in what the media has dubbed “fashion’s musical chairs,” raising urgent questions about how talent is identified and hired. Central to this challenge is a persistent lack of understanding of the minds of creatives—those who will operate at the highest levels within luxury brands—and the insights that can be drawn from the historical performance of past designers.
​
Traditional methods of hiring and evaluating creatives, which focused primarily on technical mastery and craftsmanship, are no longer sufficient. Today, the industry faces a far more complex task: understanding designers not merely as skilled artisans or business-minded professionals, but as individuals with highly unique, often intensely operating neurocognitive frameworks. These minds frequently defy conventional assessment, failing to conform to interview formats, structured presentations, or standard portfolio reviews. In essence, many of today’s most exceptional talents resemble the profile of the “gifted underachiever”—extraordinary minds whose brilliance cannot be fully captured by traditional measures of success.
Every year, hundreds of graduates leave the world’s top fashion schools armed with polished portfolios, refined technical skills, and a well-rehearsed understanding of how to present their work. They arrive prepared for an industry that has trained them to curate their creativity into tidy rectangles: mood boards, sketches, final garments, digital renderings. In the corporate world, these polished outputs have become major signals of creative potential—measurable, comparable, easy to sort.
​
But beneath this neat system lies an uncomfortable question the industry rarely asks:
​
Would history’s greatest designers have survived today’s hiring practices?
​
Would Alexander McQueen—whose raw imagination permanently altered the language of fashion—have sat still long enough to assemble a meticulously organised academic portfolio? Would Yves Saint Laurent, a restless, instinct-driven thinker whose ideas moved faster than any classroom could contain, have endured the rigid tempo of academic evaluations?
​
If we look at history, the answer is likely no.
​
Saint Laurent lasted only three months at couture school before walking away, declaring it “too traditional, not enough action”—a glimpse into a mind that demanded immediacy, intensity, and freedom. Christian Dior withdrew from examinations altogether, suggesting a learning style that clashed with the formal structures of his time. Their brilliance existed outside convention. Their creativity did not fit into formats or frameworks. And yet these are the very individuals who shaped fashion for decades, setting standards the industry still follows today.
TRENDING ARTICLE
Why Rhode’s $1B Acquisition Is the Smartest Entrepreneurial Move of the Decade
This realisation led me to conduct the first study that looks directly at the neurocognitive mind of the couturier. My thesis,
“The Creator’s Mind: Mapping the Neurocognitive and Psychological Framework of Fashion Designers,” repositions designers not as “difficult personalities” or misunderstood geniuses, but as individuals whose minds function differently—often in ways that fuel extraordinary creativity.
​
Rather than viewing fashion designers as problematised figures, this work frames them as individuals whose neurocognitive uniqueness and lived experiences may align with broader constructs of giftedness. By doing so, it challenges long-standing stigmas surrounding the profession, expands the conversation around giftedness into an entirely new domain, and contributes to a richer understanding of creativity, identity, and cultural production within fashion.
​
My research seeks to rewrite fashion history, by exploring the intersection between giftedness and fashion design—a connection rarely acknowledged despite its obvious relevance—therefore outlining a new way of understanding the creative mind.
This challenge first crystallised for me while completing my Master’s in Applied Psychology in Fashion at the University of the Arts London—first through my own experience navigating the creative process, and then by identifying strikingly similar patterns of stimulus processing in the biographical and autobiographical accounts of some of history’s most influential fashion designers.
​
The development of such research, as well as the idea to create this innovative study, was particularly influenced by Christian Dior’s autobiography. A small but incredible impactful passage, alike a signal from the past into the future that resonated and flourish the idea in my very own mind.
​
“How then is a collection created? I am often asked where I get my inspiration from: but I can honestly say that I do not know. Perhaps a psychoanalyst- who was also a dress designer- would be able to make some useful observations on the subject by comparing my successive collections with my emotions at various stages in my past life.”
(Dior,2007 p.59)
​
With the founders of major fashion houses no longer present to shape their legacies, a deeper understanding of creative psychology may become the next decisive advantage for heritage brands striving to stay relevant in today’s ever-changing world. In a fast-paced industry, the acquisition of talent can no longer rely solely on traditional measures of skill or experience—it must shift to a more nuanced perspective grounded in psychological understanding:
How does creative talent actually think?
Within this series of articles, I aim to highlight the major characteristics identified in my thesis, as well as recurring patterns observed across some of the most influential fashion designers of the past—including Christian Dior, Alexander McQueen, John Galliano, Karl Lagerfeld, and Yves Saint Laurent. Understanding these patterns could provide invaluable insights for talent acquisition during this period of rapid change and uncertainty in the industry.