Blog 1: Lecture Reflection
It is safe to say that I have now watched a handful of diverse lectures (no pun intended), each amazingly in-depth and well presented, so I’d have thought it would be rather tricky to choose which one would win the honourable spot in my reflection blog. However, this was not the case, because one of the lectures really stood out to me, and I often found myself thinking back to it and even re-watching it. This was Laura Salisbury’s Inclusion lecture, which was so informative to me that I wrote four A4 pages of notes. In particular, it was one of the examples she gave that really stuck with me, which was as follows: imagine you are designing a fashion garment for someone with limited arm/hand use. One would automatically assume that the person or audience they are designing for is somehow disabled. But in actuality, there are other kinds of people who would benefit from your garment and could provide insight as well as feedback during the product design process. These people were separated into three groups:
- Permanent condition: someone with an amputation or born without an arm
- Temporary condition: someone who has broken their arm
- Situational: parents carrying a baby, or someone busy who carries items in hand
By gathering information regarding how they dress, what fashion is available to them and how they construct their identity in society, one could potentially create an entirely inclusive fashion garment.
After hearing what Laura said, I came to the realisation that prior to this lecture, I didn’t truly understand the meaning of inclusion. I had never thought of it in the ways that she presented. I merely thought of inclusive fashion at surface level, for instance using models of all races, genders and age in adverts. But it is so much more than that. It is about the practicality of fashion. Fashion in real life. It is about people’s abilities, preferences, style, identities, lives, jobs, families, environments and all that is to do with the human race. Everything is much easier said than done. This was another message in Laura’s lecture: design fashion for real people. Not an imaginary target audience. Speak to people you know or work with or can at least get in contact with to get real feedback and information. An exact quote by Laura Salisbury during her lecture was “fashion is very human-centred, we can’t get away from the fact that it involves people” and this rang true.
Essentially, inclusive fashion boils down to having choices. If someone needs something, they should be able to have and use it, which ultimately enhances their life. It is not about designing for a certain demographic like disabled or elderly people. It is about designing fashion for the whole population.
References:
Salisbury, L. (2020) ‘Inclusion’ [Lecture]. Better Lives, London College of Fashion, 12 February.