Better Lives Blog 1: Lecture Reflection

The lectures throughout the past 2 weeks were a great opportunity to engage in important and arising topics related to fashion and our lives as consumers, designers, creatives and as even as basic as relating on a human level. I would say my most preferred lecture was the ‘Power’ by Julia Crew which covered the many layers of issues within fashion and its unbalanced power throughout its production stages and values. For example, most of us and hopefully all of us attending UAL especially the London College of Fashion are aware of the effects of fast fashion and its many violations to its workers against their human rights but I didn’t know specific statements lawfully published by prevalent institutions such as the U.N such as “Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of his family, including food, clothing, housing, medical care, necessary social services and the right to security”. The reason this very much intrigued me was that the statement barely holds any weight today with millions still living in poverty and being denied such simple needs despite this being declared 70 years ago. As someone from the Philippines, a developing country, this statement bored me. Aside from developing countries who haven’t been able to access so much of what’s written down as a ‘Human Right’ even Western nations  are struggling to do well by children and people in poverty that can’t afford housing – an example being the Grenfell Tower victims. The statement bored me because what is the point of declaring such a bold and hopeful statement when people are constantly being put in power who fail or prevent such promises?

This being highlighted to me in the lecture was new and important learning from me and I will most definitely carry on with this project with much more awareness about Human Rights and Power in our society today with an attitude that challenges where those who are in power lack today. Why is this still happening? What caused it to occur in the first place? Is there anything being put in place to fix and present this? And even more so, is there anything or anyone that is preventing such solutions? It’s also very difficult to think of the fact that people barely have access to physical health care which is usually down to finances and poor wage but also, equally as important, mental health care. More people are trying to raise awareness for the importance of mental health and how to deal with these issues, it now almost feels like a privilege to be mentally healthy which is contradicting to the fact that the fight is for making it normal type of healthcare which is the issue in itself – human rights will be seen as privilege to so many people in this type of world we live in, we are not fundamentally or humanely equal as of right now if the measure is the said statement of what a human has the right to. Will we ever be?

In conclusion, It’s hard to comprehend sometimes such huge inequality and hard to accept that this is the world we live in but this lecture really put into perspective that although it may make us fearful, there’s no fixing anything without addressing it first. I’ve walked away from these Better Lives lectures with more of a desire to be purposeful as a person and in my work.