Blog post 1
Through the better lives project, I have been able to develop my thinking about the connection between fashion and the world around us. I found particularly inspiring the lecture about empathy, firstly as a strong connection to my critical design project and secondly as personal enrichment.
Nowadays, we are all used to think and behave according to our personal interests. Even though we are usually taught to be nice and caring, as we grow up we develop a strong and “natural” egoism. In our society, empathy is often considered a looser behavior. If you act for others’ good, you will never achieve your goals. However, the lecture really opened my eyes and showed me how important empathy is and it showed me that it is possible to relate it to fashion and art.
Empathy is not about forgetting about ourselves and our needs, this is a completely wrong interpretation. Being empathic means making available everything you have to the others. And it is not about material goods. It could be a talent, as art and fashion are. Empathy is all about how you can reach people’s lives and needs. Thanks to the lecture, I found out that this is something that fashion can do really well. I was particularly interested in the process that an artist as a fashion designer has to follow in order to create something empathic. At first, I didn’t understand the “detachment” they must take at the end of the process. However, after a while, I really interpreted it as a symbol of something you do and give to someone else. This process reminded me of an experience I had some years ago when I was in Milan with my classmates. We visited the Blind Institute and they gave us the opportunity to experience the blind’s life for an hour. We went inside a dark room and we really felt everything like them. Anyway, at the end of the experience, we all went back to our everyday lives. After the immersion we had in this world, we were forced to detach ourselves from it.
Empathy is not part of our everyday lives, but it should be. We are so focused on our own wellbeing that we always forget about how beautiful and fulfilling it is to share our love whit someone else.