Blog 1: Better Lives Reflective Writing: Reflection on Inclusion and Power Lectures.

My understanding of diversity stems from personal experiences. Diversity is more than a conversation, it’s quite a unique topic which involves understanding our differences as human beings and showcasing these qualities and characteristics. These can involve gender, religion, sexuality, race, age as well as physical abilities. Laura Salisbury’s lecture about Inclusion highlighted the fact that to be inclusive these ‘groups’ need to be at the forefront of every movement. All these differences represent our society therefore it needs to be a priority in all walks of life.

As Sailsbury said, ‘Why are we only designing for one type of person’ (2020) Enabled me to question whether society is doing enough. Being naive to think that the industry is making progress when in fact perhaps we are compromising, a ‘take what we can get’ approach. There is a major lack of representation and you don’t need to be a ‘person of colour’ like myself or have an ‘othered’ quality to recognise that. We brush the idea of inclusively off and downplay the effects it has on society.

I used to base my satisfaction with the outcome, whether that is a collection on a runway show portraying different shades of people, size and gender inclusively. I was satisfied with the change and growth of advertisement and representation from makeup to editorial selections. However, at the same time, it’s bittersweet as inclusively and diversity comes as a trend, as a passing discussion as opposed to permanent impact on society. 

Fashion being one of the major industries that contribute to the effect on society, the decisions made by the ‘pale, male and stale’ Julie Crew (2020) people in society transcends into our everyday lives and diversity needs to be addressed and altered to include every human being around all corners of the world. 

Never seeing yourself represented growing up can affect your mental health. Whenever I questioned my beauty, there was never that reinforcement of reassurance outside my immediate circle. Perhaps not everybody needs that external reinforcement however when you are repeatedly used as an example of being the ‘other’ this can continue to affect mental health.

I feel displaced and unimportant due to how the industry, for instance, can include a token ethic person and claim diversity and go back to creating content that purposely excludes a range of people. This does not make me feel confident in the direction that fashion is going in and makes me question the intentions of the fashion industry as they treat these themes as temporary trends and concerns. 

Taking the double diamond process into consideration when it came to be informing what I would like to do in the future. This was a process created by the design council in 2005. I want to create with knowledge. Discovering the issues and creating with purpose, questioning the briefs, developing multiple iterations and then delivering to the customer. Testing products with real people which enables us to deliver thought out content, business, brands, products at the end.