Lecture 9 Well-being

17/02/20 Jekaterina Rogaten

Overall I found this lecture on well-being extremely insightful and it made me look at well-being in a totally new light. As I am a fashion public relations and communications student, I am always researching into the latest trends within the fashion industry and beyond. Recently I have only ever viewed well-being as a trend and a sector, I now see that it is so much more than yoga classes, aromatherapy, veganism, lounge wear etc. Well-being globally needs to be seen as part of humanity and implemented into daily life so that it can be used beneficially rather than for profit. I think fashion has the capacity to improve everyone’s well-being in some way or another, for fashion students like myself we might gain self-confidence through the clothes we wear to university but for others it could be as simple as needing a coat in order to stay warm on the streets at night if they are homeless for example. Although these acts are very different they are both improving individual well-being. Jekaterina also mentioned that when linking fashion and well-being it is important to think of both fashion consumption (customers) and fashion production (employees) and the hundreds of ways that the fashion industry could improve both. This is a topic that I believe is more important in today’s society and the Better Lives unit proves this, we are the next wave of creatives in the fashion industry and are being taught how to pioneer better inclusivity, diversity etc. into our practice and subsequently in our professional lives after university. During the lecture I was particularly drawn to the Hierarchy of needs pyramid and the denotations of the layers. In order to be creative and problem solve, humans need so many foundations such as; confidence, friendship and basics like water or food which sounds obvious now that I am writing it but is something that I have never explored before. In my brain this reminded me of the iconic phrase used by drag queen RuPaul “if you can’t love yourself, how in the hell are you gonna love somebody else”, I guess I’m trying to say that as creatives, designers and so on we have to be confident in our own work and have good well-being in order to produce fashion that is both purposeful and will better the lives of the consumers and our employees. I do feel that this can be seen in the fashion industry already when designers such as Stella McCartney not only produce fashionable and desirable pieces but also dedicate so much of their work to making the world a better place. In conclusion this lecture has made me think differently about the connections I draw between fashion and well-being, it has made me more aware, and I hope that other students in other pathways that will have slightly different impacts on the industry also feel more educated and inspired to better their practices.