The macro doesn't exist without the micro; that would make also make it amorphous, like an empty sack. The point is that the two co-constitute one another. I don't think any designers work top-down from vision/idea/sketch to execution, in a fully linear manner. The method is far more like the scientific method—a designer has an idea, often emerging as a question about a *detail* like fabric or cut, and then tries to work through that idea with the ateliers, etc. Some ideas succeed, some don't, but a collection is never some pre-formed, idealist unity. We're talking about craft, technique, and experimentation; none of those things come down from above. Rather, they come from trying to figure out how to do X with Y.
And even though I think the analogy with fashion is a flawed one, the "laws of physics," weren't "discovered" all at once—scientific "laws" come from decades, if not centuries, of mistakes and failures and hypotheses. So yeah, people did see the micro before the macro in that context, hence the whole story of the Apple falling on Newton's head.
