Right or left brain?

I finally got round to trying my hand at something I have always wanted to try -- fashion design. Yes, I mean actually designing clothes. I liked art when I was a kid and have always thought it'd be great to design a collection of clothes I can call my own. Except, what you imagine yourself to be may be quite different in reality... 


The truth that I come to realize is that my left brain really has a much louder voice than my right. And at every step of the way, it yells down poor little right brain, inadvertently thwarting the entire creative design process. For example, when choosing colours for the collection, I could not help but think about what colours consumers would actually wear, rather than draw colours from a picture that we are supposedly inspired by. When coming up with the collection, I could not help but think about what market this would serve and whether there was a suitable gap in the market for my collection, rather than answer the simple question - what would I like to design and what inspires me. What does it matter if I am inspired by or like designing in a particular style or colour? Isn't it more important to think through the designs to see if it makes sense? Ah, very commercial, says my design teacher. 


The thing is designers are artists and they do not think through their designs. They are inspired by art, nature, buildings, anything in fact that surrounds them and draw greatly on these visuals in producing their designs. To analyse their work the way I did would run the risk of producing designs that will sell in the high street but simply lack any creative genius. Yet for the many hedge funds that own today's fashion labels, they would argue that the only concern should be about commercial viability. 


I do not think there is another industry where the arguments between left and right brain are so violent. This industry worth billions of dollars churned daily through formulaic processes is in fact precariously poised on a handful of creative ideas and it is a difficult to say which is more important. But I suppose the moral of the story is a simple, cliched one -- we need both left and right to function. And more importantly, whether on the creative or business side, it is important to understand that at the other end of the room, there is someone whose thought process is completely different.