Blogpost 1
When visiting the Better Lives Lectures, I found that two of the lectures made a lasting impression in my mind and reflecting back on them, I have let some of the values and aspects from these lectures flow into my creative work. The first lecture that shaped my thinking afterwards was named “Empathy”, held by Lorrain Gamman and the second lecture was “Power” from Julia Crew.
As a SMC student I aim to integrate the audience I engage with as much as possible and to make everyone feel part of the conversation. In her presentation about empathy, Gamman introduced the importance of empathy in both, our society and as a significant component in the fashion industry. When approaching work emphatically the most important aspect is to be actively involved in the area that one wants to design for or to communicate in. I also find that the most authentic outcome of creative communication comes from actual engagement and own experience, hence empathy in terms of feeling into other individuals is a key factor for good communication.
In today’s media landscape probably the most important factor for a public person is to be a relatable representation of their audience. This is crucial to getting people’s attention, to communicate with them and to start the conversation about a certain topic. For example, social media platforms such as TikTok and Instagram are highly trending and even developed into a source of capital for some. Successful social media Influencers and public figures have shifted from being unattainable celebrity-like figures to obtaining their fans sympathy through highly relatable content and even through speaking for those who are underrepresented in the media and in the fashion world.
Fashion, as in textile fashion, but also in everything that’s trending at the moment has the potential to unite us as people and break boundaries and stigmas. Marginalized groups and minorities but also other individuals often feel left out from the fashion conversation, through lack of representation which can be contributed to the fact that fashion, even though it is a creative industry, is directly linked to capitalist powers, which usually don’t intend to display and represent every group of people equally. In the lecture “Power”, Crew explains that the controlling power over the clothing industry relies in the hands of a very specific type of businessmen: male, pale and stale.
One way of putting diversity into practice is to objectify empathy, which describes social innovation as in creating systems or services that can improve empathy. These systems often create objects, in terms of fashion that can be fashion in magazines, fashion on screen and fashion in real-life spaces such as runway shows. These “fashion-objects” can be heavily improved by putting more empathetic practices into place and therefore lead to a more welcoming and inclusive space.