Blog post 1: Lecture reflection
The first two weeks enter the Project Better Live, I had a brief understanding of what the project stands for and I personally very interested in the concept of sustainability as a young generation grow up with digital world, I think fashion industry urgently needs a changeover and this project is the perfect unit for the practice of this idea.
At the lecture of Power in Fashion with Julia, I had a very sarcasm feeling, as the most valuable net worth person in the Fashion industry is not a person who really into Fashion, but instead a businessman, a steak-holder. By this lecture, It reminded me as a creative individual who steps foot in the fashion industry, I need to use my platform well and resources to express my mind.
The lecture Design and Empathy to me is like a mental roller coaster, as I was lucky enough to actually visit the prison furniture exhibition in CSM in person, I wasn’t that impressed by the work, but after this lecture with Lorraine, I truly understood the importance of ‘participation’ in design, in my note, I put down ‘Lock uself in prison’, by experience the different perspective, the designer able to build a relationship with the target audiences, also it makes the design more ‘humanly’, this lecturer remind me one of my friend complained to me that all antique luxury Chinese wooden chairs in her house were so uncomfortable, and she doesn’t understand why it designed like that, now consider the time background, the craftsman who made that chair might very likely never got the chance to actually afford a chair like such, therefore its not hard to know why it is not comfortable, simply because it is a design without empathy; But overall, due to the time, in my opinion those design which lack of empathy is forgivable; But as a Chinese born young generation, during my life I realized there is a lot of design in China actually lack of empathy, they are not desirable, either handy or useful, you can almost felt how rush the product is produced, at China there is a lot of small designer brand who sell there works in TaoBao, a e-commercial platform which work similarly as Amazon, I always try to purchase my clothing on it as I consider it is the way to encourage growth of small individual designers instead of high polluting high street brand, but sadly sometimes after I spend more money invest in a garment, the quality sometime can be really bad, I even need to resew it to make it wearable, and to me that is fashion without empathy, and I hope I can discover a solution for this problem during this project.
Another lecture I attended is called Fashion and Well-being, on my note, I put down a conclusion ‘Human’s desire is endless’, I think fashion industry is a perfect sample why human’s desire is endless, because fashionable garments are so addictive, so everyone is working hard on approaching to it, it is a semi crowd psychology to me; I think it is very big challenge to break this circle and be able to find a way to let fashion choices to be more well-being, I will look more into it later in this unit.