Blog 1. Reflection on the lecture Inclusion

Before the start of the better lives unit, I didn’t think of inclusion in Fashion as anything more than a diverse media representation of ethnicity or body sizes, since the fashion industry has always been criticized for using tall, white, thin, and underage models that put women in an unrealistic beauty standard. However, the lecture Inclusion by Laura Salisbury changed my view. Inclusivity can start much earlier: from the conception of design.

The first concept that subverts my view of the Fashion norm is the extreme user circle, a model established by Jeremy Myerson from Helen Hamlyn Centre. This model explains how the fashion industry is always designing for the average consumer in the target of the circle—white middle-aged male with a salary of 100000 pounds. They are not the sole members of the society, yet the diverse greater range of population on the outer ring: pregnant women, elderly people, differently-abled people, and so on are overlooked. Why aren’t we designing for them? Indeed, it will be more difficult to design for people who have special needs, but at the same time all the inner circle would be automatically covered. The question “Who are they designed for” put the criticism of mainstream fashion industry under a new lens: the exclusivity does not only lie in how fashion images are presented, but also in the root of the design. It creates fashion that people desire but cannot choose, while inclusive designs enable the consumer with more choices.

So how do we design with inclusivity as a purpose? Laura showed us examples of adaptive clothing, such as magnetic strip replacing buttons for disabled children. But with more consideration, this is not a truly inclusive design. 1. The branding is targeted: adaptive clothing for disabled children to look normal. Why not just say easy to wear so it automatically includes all children? In the same way that new parents, people with arm amputations or temporarily injured arm all need something that frees their hand. Another good example is the soundshirt that helps the deaf to feel a concert, while the non-deaf people also want to experience that. 2. It limits the choices for the wearer as we don’t usually button all the way up, but the magnetic strip prevents that freedom. She continued to explain that when we design, we should step back from the brief to dig around the target: Who is it for? What influence this target and why? Then we can expand our scope and really understand the context around our target. Observation is how we gain knowledge in the next step, without our interference. To my understanding, great designs are empathy-driven, the designers must understand in the full scope how their product will act in a target consumer’s life; to achieve that, they should first understand the context the consumer is in. This relates to me in the same way my discipline costume design needs to analyse the script and background of a character before we design for him. After this phase, gather the information and find out the gap of knowledge, then rediscover our focus. The next step prototype and testing on the participant will inform how we can design better because designers can’t dictate how people use their products, we should test the reactions out.

Laura’s design process enlightened me, for I see a practical and positive influence that her work is bringing to her audiences. That is why I wanted to study design in the first place, and where I want to be in the Future.