Blog Post 2

Whilst participating in the Better Lives unit I have become exceptionally familiarised with the themes of Sustainability, Diversity and Social Responsibility and how important they are in today’s world. 

After an online life drawing class for my Fashion Illustration project, I have realised how important it is to be sustainable by recycling as much as I can. Instead of using brand new paper, in the future I will aim to use recycled resources such as newspaper or recyclable plastic. This could also add to the uniqueness and artistic effect of the work. By doing this I am ensuring as least paper is used as possible throughout my experimentation process and can further this through taking photos and experimenting online through Photoshop which I have already done below. I used images from magazines to create the original design, then edited it to become a pattern.

In the current day, sustainability is becoming increasingly more of a focus within the fashion industry, and therefore gradually decreasing fast fashion. I aim to focus the fashion illustrations I create in this project on fully sustainable brands. Ksenia Schnaider create jeans out of old denim from the flea markets in Kiev and other donations, so I would love to look into this company further. 

Looking at the theme of Diversity, I have discovered that brands which are more diverse are celebrated much more, and for exceptionally valid reasons. The brand ‘Girlfriend Collective’ celebrates diversity through sizes and skin tones of their models, as well as making their clothes from recycled plastic. Their activewear garments are made in Vietnamese factories which pay a fair living wage to the employees as well as certified safe working conditions, thus covering the theme of Social Responsibility too. 

These brands have truly inspired me for my project and for my future career. In my project I will aim to move as much experimentation online as I can to save resources by advancing my Photoshop techniques. By improving these skills now, it will also provide me other options to make future projects more sustainable where producing lots of designs or drawings is essential. 

In my future career I am influenced towards using more ethically friendly makeup brands which also consider sustainability to reduce my carbon footprint. I am thankful for how much the Better Lives themes have shown me how significant all of us are on impacting the environment, and the little changes we can make individually which will make a bigger change overall. I will definitely put more thought into all the decisions I make from now on due to studying the Better Lives themes of Sustainability, Diversity and Social Responsibility.

References:

Ksenia Schnaider (2020) Ksenia Schnaider. Available at: https://www.kseniaschnaider.com (Accessed: 20 April 2020)

Girlfriend Collective (2020) Girlfriend Collective. Available at: https://www.girlfriend.com (Accessed: 20 April 2020)