Better Lives Blog 3: Project outcomes and personal development reflection
The outcomes produced throughout the project have been really experimental especially as it was a very collaborative project where we worked together in groups to finalise our concepts – it has also been really interesting as we are in the middle of a pandemic which has forced us to work differently and in different ways. It has been a productive project due to these circumstances and one to remember alongside my new learning to do with styling and production.
Regarding the themes, it meant learning every week about these subject matters and how they may be different in each other’s lives in the classroom. As a classroom, these themes affected us really differently as we were from a pool of different backgrounds which was obvious in our ideas and execution of what we wanted to portray.
I had never massively done styling to a concept before it was usually personal styling but with conceptual styling I found myself thinking in a lot more different ways due to how many ways you can interpret a single concept. I also learned a lot about producing fashion shows with our lectures that addressed past careers and previous work teachers had presented to us, opening our creative brain to a sector of the fashion industry some of us haven’t touched on yet as we are on different courses that haven’t covered the subject in depth. Because of this learning, I’m much more interested in production as a lot of it ties into Creative Direction which is, of course, my course.
When styling, I was uncomfortable at first when creating looks because I didn’t know very many ways to transform a garment but with the help of tutors I was shown expressive ways to distort the look of a piece of clothing and how to use it in more ways than one – that a jacket didn’t only have to have one shape. Alongside the clothing, props were something we could use to highlight the Better Lives themes which is actually a big part of styling when it is on the conceptual side.
I think my learning can be easily applied and transferred into my course as it taught me about lots of different perspectives and to be flexible in your communication when working with others. It was also interesting having to work in the conditions of this pandemic, styling at home was quite free but you could be limited in diverse clothing as you only really have your style wherein working in groups meant you had access to pieces that were out of your comfort zone which ended up being something positive as it gave your styling diversity.
Overall, I massively value my learning throughout the project and hope to be more involved in collaborative styling projects whether that be styling the looks myself or capturing them with a camera. Production has become something I’m interested in too so there is definitely that aspect I appreciate learning about within my project. It has been a very memorable project.
10th May 2020 @ 7:55 pm
For the final task of the better lives unit, we had to choose a blog post from another student to review. After reading many blog posts, I found that Jieanne Parungao’s 3rd blog post really stood out to me because she was trying out Styling and production, which is my BA course. I was very curious how her experience was being introduced to styling, her final project outcome and how she connected it to the better lives unit themes: diversity, sustainability and social responsibility. I was glad to hear that the diversity of the her peers’ backgrounds in her class opened her up to a new perspective and to different ideas, but she didn’t mention how the themes of sustainability or social responsibility was incorporated in her better lives unit study or project. She mentioned how challenging it was to style with only her own wardrobe because it limited her choice of props and variety. This would have been a suiting time to mention sustainability, and how styling with limited amounts of clothes and reusing them multiple times differently is a great way to be sustainable, not only for conceptual styling but also for dressing yourself everyday. She could have looked into relative’s vintage clothes or clothes they don’t wear anymore to branch out your styling options (if quarantined with others). Sustainability in styling is key and can be a major eye opener when you realise how many ways one item of clothing can be used, just like the in class activity she mentioned with the jacket. I also would have loved to hear a bit more about her final project and it’s outcome. Overall, it was interesting to hear someone else’s experience on the styling and production course, and how enjoyable it was.