Better lives lecture post 1

As for fashion, I usually vaguely thought that fashion is just expressing myself, showing my personality. But through this lecture about Better Lives, I was able to think more deeply about fashion. Especially, I could think about Lorraine Gamman’s Empathy. In art or fashion, I usually start with ‘I’ when I’m inspired or working, and I realized it also has something to do with Empathy. The reason is that it is possible to be interested in something and inspired by something, and the act itself, only when it is “Empathy.” In general, people all have different diversity. But we recognize each other’s diversity and empathize with various things. Then we can balance out without being limited to a few. As a result, more consensus can help people work together to solve problems. For example, Hans Jorgen Wiberg is the inventor of the free app “Be My Eyes” (2015) that connects sighted people and blind people. There are roughly around 99,000 sighted people signed up willing to help and 8,000 blind people signed up seeking help. In the case of “Be My Eyes,” a free app that connects the visually impaired and the blind, it can also be seen as being created by empathy and involvement. The app allows them to find their way or get help in their daily lives. We can’t live without empathy in our lives. Through these Empathy things, one can empathize and understand one another more among people who have a lot of diversity in society. There are also so many things developed by empathy in fashion, and one of them is Hijab. Nike launched a hijab for Muslim women to wear wheel extract. Dolce & Gabbana and LMFW (London Modest Fashion Week) also launched collection. They empathized with women who had to wear hijab all the time because of religious influence and digested them into sportswear and fashion.  Also, Bezgraniz Couture hosted their show with people with various types of disabilities, and rather than promoting their products in Primark, they can understand each other and digest them in fashion, including selling products so that they can sympathize with each other by selecting people with disabilities as models. 

Focusing on these things, I think that society can develop more from mutual empathy, understanding experience, and empathy, and not only can the view of fashion be wider, but also help to become a better life that is balanced, not limited to a few such as religion or disability. Through this part, when I think or work on something, I think I will be able to get into things or the writer enough to see the work and better empathize with them. To empathize is to think that by understanding each other’s experiences, regardless of simple empathy, we can continue to create more and more diverse things through new ideas through it.