Blog 2: Themes Reflection
Blog 2
After the outbreak of Covid-19 in my home country, Italy, I was self-isolating in my room in West London and since then I have been home trying to don’t let the situation overwhelm me and to reflect on my own perspectives about the pandemic and my future afterwards.
The unit of better lives, honestly, helped me over this difficult time to reflect or improve my way of thinking and working for the future. The most useful thing of this whole academic unit, during Covid-19 outbreak, was learning how to adapt to limited spaces, materials and resources to complete my creative assignment for Fashion Portrait photography. For example, I could not, of course, meet new people for photoshoot, but I have decided to use Facetime and take pictures of friends who have diverse epitomes. One of them is my friend Edoardo from Italy who actually is known as well as LoLa, he’s proudly part of the Drag scene of Milano, and since the beginning we have been working together to develop the character and aesthetic of LoLa. I really appreciated them for helping me with my project, but the best thing we gained from this experience was being all socially responsible on others and not leaving our homes to go and shooting pics around the city. Therefore, social responsibility is, in my opinion, the most relevant theme of this unite because it guided me and my peers to respect our society in this critical time.
Generally, my favorite theme among others has been Sustainability. This is because, In the recent months, I have been writing articles and curating the public relations of the new issue of MESS MAGAZINE called “Sustainable x Conscious”. This made me discover and meet real evangelists of the sustainable fashion wave of designers and entrepreneurs of the industry. Essentially, writing and researching about them, made me get to the conclusion that the whole industry might turn page after the Covid-19 crisis and become more sustainable. How, you can wonder…? This unit alongside my job, made me understand that being a vegan since almost 3 years now, is not enough to help our planet. This is because, Sustainability does not only refer to reduce the production and consume of clothes but in my opinion, it is more about the life and work conditions of the employees and the promotion of supporting local shops. Therefore, I have stopped buying in high street shops but now I usually buy in secondhand shops or in local and niche stores.
Overall, this theme of Better lives makes you reflect not only on the global unsustainable situation but more about your own footprint and how you could help to improve the environment and I found my way.
2nd May 2020 @ 2:11 am
I’m glad you’ve found productive ways to deal with the current situation. We’re all in this together and it is always important to see how others are doing or what they may be going through. You, as someone with family in one of the most affected countries in this pandemic, will obviously have a different emotional experience than me for example. Therefore, I was especially interested in reading that part of your blog post.
The Better Lives unit indeed is very relevant especially in this period of time and it’s a good thing you have detected this. This must have made it easier for you to go through all readings and lectures as you have been finalizing your reflection on this unit.
Personally, when I was writing in retrospect, I realized that I was focused most on the topic of diversity. For this reason, I found your post interesting to read as you seem to have done the opposite of what I did. I applaud you for seeing the topics in the current situation like social responsibility by acknowledging your own behavior and power in your actions.
I would also love to hear more about your involvement in the mentioned sustainability project. Here, too, you have highlighted the most important aspects to sustainability.
What I was missing in your text, though, was your reflection on the lectures and material on diversity. I feel like when you mentioned your friend Eduardo aka LoLa, you could have perfectly mentioned the lack of representation of people like Eduardo or something in this direction.
All in all, I enjoyed reading your look into this.