Sustainability, Diversity and Social Responsibility.

Reflecting on Sustainability, Diversity and Social Responsibility within my own practise.

After rewatching and listening to my recent Better Lives lectures I encouraged myself to honestly assess and consider my responsibilities as a creative.  In terms of my own practise and how I have explored and taken into account the theme of ‘diversity’ I have an ongoing project called “SUSURO” in which I make clothing inspired by traditional Japanese techniques and more modern streetwear inspired patch-working then photograph models wearing these pieces. I try to predominantly use mixed race models focusing on my friends and peers who are half Japanese mixed with another half. This casting idea spoke strongly to me because although the amount of mixed race (half black and half white) models is significantly increasing, the representation and use of models who are ‘wasian’, ’measian’ or blasian (white and asian, middle eastern and asian (oriental) and black and asian) is barely changing in east asian countries such as Japan and South Korea. Throughout the aforementioned project I cast my friend who was half Japanese and half Nigerian and another who was Chinese and french. I had cast street twins who were also of Nigerian and Japanese descent however i wasn’t able to use them. The idea of this shoot was to empower and promote this quite often under represented mix and I believe that I was successful in doing so. 

 Previously I wasn’t well versed on the importance of Social Responsibility within fashion however after my lectures and further personal research and reading into the project, a quote from the New York Law Journal stood out to me. ‘The relevance of social responsibility to brand valuation for investors and other stakeholders is increasing exponentially year after year’ consequently it became apparent that as creatives we are our own brand and our reputation is of the utmost importance to our career. Ways I have implemented social responsibility into different parts of my own life vary from making sure to recycle and by free range organic food items to cutting down the amount I buy clothes and shoes and completely stopping going to fast fashion retailers.  I have practised sustainability for many years by mainly making my garments out of fabrics found at charity shops or bought from smaller sellers on online marketplaces as well as, before throwing out an old pieces of clothing, seeing if can rework or mix it with another piece so that I can continue to wear it.  An example of this is a hoodie that I made for a previous project where I had a hoodie that was too short so combining it with another hoodie that I grown out of, I sewed them together then patchworked different t-shirts from when I was a younger to make a new hoodie that was aesthetically pleasing and still held a lot of sentimental value for me.