Better Lives: Blog Post 3
Throughout the course of this unit, I have been able to explore the key elements that have constantly surrounded my practice during this time. These themes are diversity, sustainability, and social responsibility. Myself, along with the rest of my course-mates, have been able to explore these core themes inside of our selected practice.
At the start of this unit, I was certainly intrigued by the multiple elements and techniques that go into the job of a fashion stylist. I was also confused about how this unit would unfold and what the result of my project would be. Now, at the end of this unit, I can certainly say that my views on the elaboration and the difficulty of styling have shifted as a result of my growing knowledge and personal development around the subject.
As half of the unit was done from home, during the co-vid19 pandemic, I was able to reflect on the basic necessities of humanity and how certain objects, like clothing, become practically irrelevant during such unprecedented times. It is not difficult to walk into your own closet and see how, as humans, we haven’t barely even scratched the surface of sustainable clothing across our daily lives. During this time, I have seen dozens of people buying more and more clothing, during a time when we should be cutting back on our consumption as a result of the global crisis.
For my project outcome, I was tasked to create two styled fashion looks, incorporating elements of sportswear as a base.
For my first look, I was able to style a few elements of my own wardrobe in London, as a team along with a couple of other course mates. For this styling piece, my team and I allowed ourselves the freedom to use alternative styling elements that greatly differentiate from common clothing materials. We were able to emphasize the fact that sustainability is a growing trend in fashion. By including uncommon materials like plastic wrap, aluminum foil, and recycled paper. We were able to create a very clear-cut styled look that clearly expressed the better lives themes that were focused on during this unit.
My second styled look was centered around the teddy-boy aesthetic which dominated Britain during the post Second World War 1950s. This style consists of a greased, pulled-back hair look, oversized blazers, drainpipe trousers, and highly buttoned dress shirts.
The necessity to create this look from my home during isolation greatly impacted the mood, aesthetic, and result of not only my final styled look but also my own personal development and growth. For my closing look, I allowed myself the creative freedom to change the common visual impact of the teddy boy by completely flipping the entire look to face the back of my body. As a result of this, the back of my head is facing forward giving the impact of a more haunted and enclosed look. I decided to style this look by using a black oversized blazer, a white pinstriped fully-buttoned-up dress shirt, and a greasy pulled-back hairstyle. Whilst my face is actually directed towards a wall, it gives the impression of a dark and haunted, isolated, and trapped experience.
My personal development during this unique journey has been substantial. I have been able to deeply connect with the better lives themes by including elements of each one of them into my final project outcome. Overall, I think that both of my styled looks especially reflect the sustainability theme by using recycled and unpredicted materials whilst creating them.