Blog Post 3
Initially when I heard about this unit I was thrilled at the opportunity to study fashion journalism. I have been an avid reader of multiple fashion publications for years so the idea of studying this was really exciting. During this unit, I feel I was able to get a real feel for the realities of the fashion industry and what goes on behind the scenes. Overall this was a challenging unit for myself as due to the COVID-19 crisis, everything was turned upside down and the usual way of teaching was made impossible thus everything had to be moved online. Initially I was sceptical, very sceptical of how this would turn out. Depsite this, I was pleasantly surprised at the quality of teaching and the clarity that was immediately restored to this unit. Swiftly, I became more confident in regards to what was expected of me from this unit. We were assigned a 500 word feature to write, I chose to write this on social responsibility. In this feature, I focused on companies reactions to the COVID-19 crsis. I strongly believe that this crisis has shown us the best and worst of society, we have seen many people both and rise and fall to challenge. We have Burberry who swiftly closed stores, protected their workers rights and repurposed their Trench Coat factory to produce hospital gowns. Meanwhile billionaire Richard Branson, owner of Virgin Airlines asked his workers to take 4 weeks unpaid leave and millionaire owner of Sports Direct hiked up prices of home workout clothes by 50%.
In this feature, I argued that in times like this, it is really important to understand our social responsibility. Social responsibility is an ethical framework that argues that we, as individuals should act in the interests of society as a whole, rather than simply looking out for ourselves. This crisis has shown me that we as a society really need to stop being so individualistic and egotistical, from people bulk buying pasta and stockpiling toilet role so key workers who have just finished a 12 hour shift are unable to buy the bare minimum. However, it is has also shown me that we have some wonderful people in our society. This was shown when initially the government needed 250,000 volunteers to support the NHS, 750,000 members of the public signed up. This task really allowed me to reflect and make sense of the global situation that we are in.