Blog 1 Lecture Reflection
After two weeks of lecture study, I have benefited a lot from it. Among them, I think what impressed me the most is the first lecture from Julia crew speech. The topic theme is Power connected with sustainability, which surprised me because I never imagined that power has any connection with fashion. Julia suggested that it has been Fashion to convey power visually for many of years. Then she started with six aspects to talk about their link, that is Royalty, Military Power, Politics, Business, Media, and Music.
“The media is the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that’s power. Because they control the minds of the masses.”(Malcolm X, Human Rights Activist) This is a code Julia talks about media. I think this sentence really reflects the development of modern technology and the portability and speed of information communication. This reminds me that in the days of our parents, it often took a few weeks for them to communicate by writing letters, but now a simple message is posted on the Internet and even millions of people see it in seconds.
In the fashion field, the increase in information exposure does have a great advantage in spreading fashion. As Julia mentioned, people tend to learn to imitate their favorite influencer outfits on various social software. It must be mentioned that the Kardashian family has influenced many people specially in the fashion industry and they have a lot of fans. Regarding influence, this reminds me of the latest news. Because of the epidemic, the US government requires that everyone stay at home not to go out. Later, the people did not pay attention until Kardashian persuaded everyone on Instagram.
I have to admit that in this era of information explosion, various media have an indispensable role in the development of fashion. However, it also exist a bug: People love to share their different outfit everyday. However, it must be said that under the love of sharing their new clothes, fashion products will tend to be unsustainable, because people do not want to wear the same clothes. As Julia mentioned, young people are more willing to wear new clothes every time and present a “perfect” life online, which is actually not conducive to our mental health. In my opinion, as consumers, we should still learn to buy items that are suitable for ourselves, and we should not throw them away after one use.
This lecture really let me learn a lot, and let me understand the problems that I have not been found before. No one can deny that studying art is a profession that wastes money and materials. As far as I am concern, we are aware of this problem now, and we should work hard to fix it and improve it. I hope that all our works could be sustainable in the future, and the materials should be as sustainable as possible. I think the protection of the environment is the responsibility of all human beings, including ourselves. Isn’t that what we who study art and fashion should do?