Blog 3
Influence on project outcome
In ‘Navigating Through Clothing’ I feel there are many ways that I could use the Better Lives themes to inform the decisions I make about my outcome.
I wanted to use Africa as my continent for inspiration, I felt I could use what I learnt about appropriation and appreciation from Teleicas lecture to help guide me.
I went to the British Museum to source information and inspiration. In the African section they have lots of fabrics and describe how different tribes in many countries have different meanings for their fabrics. They are used to communicate important religious, historical and social information, the list went on. The importance of these fabrics was clear – I was originally going to use colourful fabrics and samples I found in the museum for my design. It was obvious that I could not do that, because I would have been taking something that didn’t belong to me and appropriating it to create a design.
Doing that very small research into the meanings of various fabrics, was enough for me to know I couldn’t just ‘copy’ parts I liked, as easy as that would have been. It made me think of brands who have appropriated cultures in the past, and wonder how they were produced in the first place? Telecia talked about outrage marketing in her lecture, and how brands will purposely use racially motivated or culturally insensitive clothing to draw attention. This still happens, and even if they deny outrage marketing, there is no excuse for appropriating a culture, when all it takes is research and consideration.
As I still wanted to use Africa as inspiration, I asked my tutors to ask what they would do if they wanted to use inspiration from a culture, what they would do to not appropriate it, and make sure it is done right. Matt and Jess both agreed that always having a good amount of research that is very specific to a time and place ensuring it is factually accurate. Matt also spoke about his experience, and how he was fortunate enough to have someone on his team with a lot of knowledge on the subject and was from there – this obviously doesn’t mean she could speak on behalf of everyone’s experience, but it did ensure that it was done right.
I realized I would have to pick something broader – as the Better Lives unit isn’t long, I wouldn’t have the time or resources to research into a culture or a specific area. I decided I would use mask performance; this is seen a lot across Africa and is used in many cultures for different reasons – usually for a performance piece. I took this forward for my design, ideally, I would have liked to use more inspiration from African culture, but I feel it wouldn’t be right and wouldn’t want to start taking parts of someone else’s culture for my gain. I will continue to be conscious about this now whenever I need to create a design.