Better Lives – Blog Post 2
This week I started my first ‘Better Lives: Fashion Activism’ lecture. In this course I was to be a creative director for a moving image campaign – keeping in mind brand ethos and possibly change brand perception. Whilst keeping in mind the Better Lives themes of social responsibility, diversity and sustainability – the ‘pillars’. Which in todays world, are more important than ever. The Better Lives lectures have made me way more inspired, thinking of the possibilities and changes that I could carry out as a fashion communicator to better the industry.
As visual communicators, I now feel like I have a duty to shed light on the issues and spread awareness of how damaging some of these issues have on our world since fashion is our industry, so it is our responsibility to keep the issues concerned with it under control. After all, fashion impacts every single one of us on a daily basis. If we realize it or not.
The Better Lives lecture ‘Society’ – by Caitlin Tufail’s topics were still on my mind. As it made a point that we would have to investigate society to understand consumption, and change society to change consumption. I believe peoples relationship with clothes is so important to how we go about consumption.
I feel like there are definitely some Better Lives lectures (like Society) that are going to stay with me through all my practices from here forward. Its opened my eyes to many ideas/thoughts surrounding so many different concepts (from stereotypes and identities to fast past fashion retailers) that I want to work around more. As a fashion illustration student, for me I am thinking of ways that I can evoke emotion out of my audience (empathy is a good way to get people to connect and care) with concepts that are important.
For example, I want to base my Better Lives: Fashion Activism unit on people’s relationship with identities through clothes – with this project I am going to try push stereotypes and merge ‘cliques’ together in the hopes to open more people up to be more individual and defy the social ‘norm’. The thoughts that I want to imply through this will be what makes an aesthetic? What are stereotypes? Who’s opinions on fashion impacts you the most? What does this say about our society? Can we experience these aesthetics without having to buy anything?