Lecture Reflection
Fashion and Society
One of the lectures that piqued my interest is the Lecture on Fashion and Society by Katelyn Toth-Fejel; sociology has persistently been an interest of mine so It was very interesting for me to explore fashion in that context.
Ms. Toth-Fejel talked about a small project she did several years ago, mapping out various local fashion resources available to the community surrounding. The case study she gave was WIlliam Gee in Dalston: William Gee is a family run haberdashery. It not only served as a place for people to purchase supplies if they needed to repair a personal item of clothing, however, it is also a staple amongst emerging designers who need physical samples for their designs.
Participants interviewed by Toth-Fejel noted that if such a store did not exist, most of the ‘self-repairs’ done by the community would simply not exist, as it would take more effort to source a single button or zip online/elsewhere, rather than simply purchasing a new item of clothing. Therefore, an establishment like William Gee could potentially be saving thousands of items from the landfill per year. This reminded me of a previous lecture I attended where Kate Fletcher described nature as an ‘ecosphere’, operating in a self sustaining cycle; humans have created local communities with infrastructure needed to exist as its own ‘ecosphere’, which I found to be very interesting from a sociology standpoint.
Following this, Ms. Toth-Fejel, discussed our current state of climate emergency and showed us a link to an environmental footprint calculator. After the lecture I did the quiz independently and my results said I was living on the equivalent of 2.1 earths and my earth overshoot day was 19th June; these results were quite shocking to me as I expected a better result. Most of my carbon footprint came from travelling, and a majority from air travel – which is likely from traveling from Hong Kong to London. Upon reflection, I recall doing this quiz a couple years ago and having a much higher carbon footprint, so I felt slightly better about my results. I have clearly learned more about my impact on the environment as I grew older, but I understand that I still have a lot to learn.
My favourite part of all the lectures is the Q&A portion, I make an effort to ask at least one question per lecture, and sometimes chiming in on others too! For this lecture I posed the question: ‘How can we expect the fashion industry to make the DRASTIC change necessary to prevent the oncoming climate crisis, without a societal revolution?’ Ms. Toth-Fejel’s response to this was that she too was ‘prescribing societal revolution’ and that brands have already begun changing the status quo when it comes to what we consume. I personally foresee the need for a complete overhaul of how we live and consume, and the technologies we use to create a sustainable planet for us to live on, and this can only come from systemic change, which only legislation and governments have the power to implement.
In conclusion I found these lectures to be very helpful in expanding my insight of the fashion industry, however, I appreciate that a lot of it was not directly related to fashion, but also the world of technology, sociology and environmental science. It gave me a great opportunity to learn more regarding topics I may not have the resources to learn about otherwise.