blog 2 theme reflection
The main themes in Better lives unit are diversity, social responsibility and sustainability. After watching the 10th lecture ( Cultural Sustainability), I know that the definition of sustainability is not only limited in environmental area, but also cultural area.
First of all, John talked about culture itself, culture can be defined as objective culture (food, clothes ) and subjective culture( norm, attitude, value). As a costume studied student, I think our duty is not only in bringing history alive through garments, but also convey the invisible information like the role’s character, the background of society development). The two pictures below are the portrait (image.1) and film costume (image.2) for Elizabeth I of England, which is a good example to demonstrate that costume design is based on culture but has subtle subjective design from designer.
Image.1 image.2
As a fashion studied student, we talk creativity more than history, but culture is the same important, because culture impacts a person and people dress themselves is defining a culture. To some degree, fashion is a carrier of culture expression. In the lecture John mentioned what is lazy fashion and took Katy Perry’s shoes collection (image.3 ) as an example, claiming “ her collection of shoes was misrepresenting black culture because it didn’t really have deep understanding of what that culture is about… they just look nice. His words remind of the offensive advertisement from Dolce& Gabbana (image 4), as a Chinese, we think this is insulting ( for the stupid, conservative Chinese character was shaped in the video), but maybe from designer side, it is just his outcome by taking Chinese inspiration. Its hard to define who is right or who is wrong, if the designer could have known more about culture, this kind of misrepresentation would not happen as well. Thus, culture reference is not just taking some images and create something good-looking, it is more about developing fashion, creating real atheistic by deeply understanding of cultural diversity, as a designer we should draw diverse culture to let our design be more insightful and should know that aesthetic is more than good-looking,
Image.3
image.4
The development of sustaining culture needs to build up cultural competence, which means the ability to think, feel, act in ways that acknowledge, respect build upon ethnic socio-culture and linguistic diversity.
With the belief “design work is the expression of culture”, before I set about to put make-up for my project (make-up and breakdown), I would think what kind of culture appeal I want to express and I would find some reference pictures, being different from before, I would find more specific information about the artist about the art work itself to obtain cultural competence.