Better Lives Blog Post 3

The Better Lives project’s three pillars are Sustainability, Diversity and Social Responsibility and they will all be included into how I work in the future.

We are currently in the middle of a Pandemic and the way that we work right now has already changed drastically.

And from seeing the reports of the news everyday (or every few days in my case, my anxiety threatens to kill me if I read more than two articles or if I watch more than one recap/update video about Covid-19) we can all tell that life is going to change drastically, either until they create a vaccine or forever.

That is all to say that with the lessons that we have learnt with the Better Lives project will hopefully help us to manoeuvre the new world that the Corona Virus has created.

Social distancing and self-isolation is something that has recently been implemented as is likely to stay implemented until a vaccine is created. This is going to change how we all work. For example; photo shoots require a lot of people to be together but with social distancing we are seeing new ways of conducting photo shoots. Bella Hadid did a photo shoot via face time for Vogue Italia, she was styled via face time too and had her lighting done by her self-isolation partner. Similarly her sister Gigi Hadid was sent a Chanel suit, from Vogue Italia, and had her self-isolation partner do the photography.

Another effect of the Corona Virus is that a lot of graduate shows have been cancelled. Now many graduates are trying to figure out how they can showcase their work, how they will be able to access potential buyers and employers and how they will be able to carry on their work.

With all of this uncertainty in the air and these new ways of working looking likely to become the new way of working hopefully we’ll get to see a more diversity in the photo shoots, stories, styling and designs that will come from this.

Everybody is (hopefully) being socially responsible and following orders to stay inside and only go out for essentials.

I do not know if this new way of working is sustainable for those of us who aren’t wealthy, but I hope that people at the head of the industry will do whatever they can to help those us who don’t have the income to be able to carry on our work. Because that is what this all comes down to, those who have the money to carry on making their clothing, access to people to be able to do remote photo shoots and access to people who are able to spend their money on anything that isn’t food or rent, will be the ones who are able to carry on working in this industry.

All in all, the three Better Lives pillars are all being implemented into my work and the work that others are doing and hopefully that will continue during this pandemic and after it (in regards to how we will be operating when things inevitably change and enter a new normal. This is all a lot, a real real lot.).