Blog 1 – Lecture reflection
I have had the chance to watch and attend a several number of lectures during the first week of the better lives project. The lectures focused on themes such as sustainability, diversity and social responsibility. The one that has had a strong impact on me is the very first lecture I have attended, where Julia Crew discussed the topic of power and how it is related to the fashion industry.
The lecture discussed how power influences every aspect of fashion industry. I have already notice this extremely sad phenomenon before I attended the lecture, but the further the discussion goes the more it upsets and worries me. Especially, when it comes to garment workers that work for fast fashion. There are too many things for us to look at when it comes to fast fashion labour problems, like working environment, child labour, workers’ safety etc. What fast fashion industry needs to focus on is reducing inequalities. “Unfortunately, paying everyone more is not as easy as we think. Solutions require nuance and understanding of the forces of both global and local economics and politics,” says Julia Crew, Course Leader, MA Fashion Futures at London College of Fashion. Politically speaking, raising wages may drive companies to produce clothes wherever it is the cheapest. Economists call this phenomenon “race to the bottom” where companies rush toward countries where prices are lowest regardless of the impact. Manufacturers claim that higher wages will destroy the domestic industry’s ability to compete in the global market and workers could end up being jobless.
In the lecture, Julia Crew also talked about the impact social media has on the world of fashion. Apparently, the influence of advertising is quick, cumulative, and mostly subconscious. Only eight percent of an ad’s message is received by the conscious mind. The rest is worked and re-worked deep within the recesses of the brain. So we process these images over and over again, mostly subconsciously. It is unfortunate that our media manly focus on advertisement, when there are so many more serious and important issues for a to look at. “The media is the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that’s power. Because they control the minds of the masses.” Says Malcolm X, Human Rights Activist. I do see some fashion related accounts are drawing attention to fashion labour issue on social media, which is a good start. But when I talk to people in real life, I realize that most of the people still don’t know much about what is happening in the fashion industry and how poorly garment workers are treated.
After watching to all the lecture, I think there are a lot of issues deserve our attention. Of course it is very difficult to improve the whole industry in a short period of time or even change it in the future, but that doesn’t mean we should just ignore it and not try at all.