Better lives – Blog 1

  The better lives lectures has explored into several aspects in both macro and micro ways and conveyed the idea of fashion should be existing with a better world. The lecture discussed about how world is strongly affected by fashion activities and this made me think more about my own future practice as well. Although the awareness in sustainability of fashion has increased, there were little changes in reality. The social and environmental problems are still worsening. This leads us to think about the causes of all these issues and who should be taking responsibilities for. It could be the brands, the consumers, the producers, the stakeholder, or the governments. The issue goes across many topics such as global wealth, inequality, overconsumption, the power of media, politics and protest. According to Orsola de Castro, Fashion Revolution, “fashion is very individual but it is a manifestation of the culture that we live in and often of who we want to be, how we want to be seen by the rest of the world. And that is its power.” This suggested that fashion could linked with power vey directly and has been a medium to visually communicate power for centuries. For example, this could be presented in royalty, politics, business, media, music or even military power. Often power equals to finance, simply saying, the power is showed with the money. This could connect back to s previous concept – wealth and poverty. In this fashion industry, on the opposite of wealth, people who are in the lower “position” eventually are enslaved in some ways. According to the statistics, nearly six of the world’s twenty richest people run companies that sell huge volumes of clothing. What’s more, tens of millions of people are employed by the process of making clothes and do not earn enough for paying life’s basic necessities. In this extreme situation, it takes four days for a CEO from one of the four top brands to earn what a Bangladeshi garment worker will earn in her lifetime. After all, the chairman of Nike, Phil Knight has a net worth of $30.4 billion and Tadashi Yanai who is the founder of fast retailing has a net worth of $26.9 billion. These all explained the situation well and these are just a part of the examples of the chairman and CEO who are at the perky top of the industry. There are so many rich who are involved in this business. 

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  Other part of the lecture talked about the classic problem in sustainability in fashion – sustainability. This topic is clearly associated with our theme “Better lives” very tightly if we look into the environmental aspect. Fashion we make and consume is harmful to both people and the planet. Kawamura argued that fashion and clothing are distinct concepts – fashion is immaterial and clothing is material in 2005. Fashion is an expression of both the material culture and non-material culture because it’s not just about what we wear, consume or take with, it is about identities, ideas, emotions, creativity and relationships. Consumer culture suggests that people’s presence are displayed through self identities, relationships with others and selves, material objects and with nature. Practices and habits have become problematic in fashion because of the uncertainty related with cultural symbols. For instance, shall we maintain the cultural heritage, the craftsmanship and skills? Meanwhile, fashion is also made from nature. It’s dependent on land, water, air animal, in other words, our human natural resources. Overconsumption causes large amounts of waste in the fashion industry. 

  In my own future practice, I would definitely be cautious on the material I use and rethink about the waste that would be thrown away. This cause burden to the earth although it seemed that my individual effects could be minor but it takes every creative practitioners to make effort and put thinking to it. For example, how to achieve your result with more recycled materials and less waste of energies like electricity, water, or cloth? It is unavoidable to expend materials but perhaps rethink about whether the materials can be reused or transformed into other products or objects. Technologies and internet has great revolutionary changes in ways people interact, communicate and collaborate in a massive scale. Certainly to say, we can also utilize new technologies to alter how we work. Not just to increase efficiency but also with the saving of energy and natural resources.

Reference: 

• Fashion Revolution. (2020). Buy Fanzine #001: MONEY FASHION POWER – Fashion Revolution. [online]Available at: https://www.fashionrevolution.org/resources/fanzine/ [Accessed 29 Feb. 2020].
• Oxfam International. (2020). Richest 1 percent bagged 82 percent of wealth created last year – poorest half of humanity got nothing | Oxfam International. [online] Available at: https://www.oxfam.org/en/pressroom/pressreleases/2018-01-22/richest-1-percent-bagged-82-percent-wealth-created-last-year [Accessed 29 Feb. 2020].