Better Lives Blog Post 1
In this blog post, I will be focussing on Anna Fitzpatrick’s Better Lives lecture ‘Culture’. I chose this particular lecture as I felt it had a wide scope, and discussed issues that I feel strongly about, ranging from sustainability to consumerism. Culture concerns the meaning and practices of everyday life, including ideas, customs, and beliefs. Culture will obviously differ from area to area; however, culture will always be split up into 2 types: material, or non-material. Fashion is an expression of both types of culture, as it concerns identity, emotion, and relationships. Fashion sustainability is also concerned with material and non-material forms of culture, as it is an issue that is relevant to both the physical manifestation of fashion, from textile sourcing to the actual garments themselves, and also mental, in the sense that the wearer is concerned with how on-trend they may look, or to put it simply, whether they like what they are wearing.
Kawamura argued in 2005 that fashion and clothing are two distinct concepts; fashion is immaterial whereas clothing is material. Whilst I can see where Kawamura is coming from – clothing is simply material, and fashion concerns the mindset, I am inclined to disagree for the most part, as fashion and clothing are far too intrinsically linked to ever be called distinct from one another. Fashion is made from nature, dependent on Land, Air, Water, and Animals to function. Without clothing, fashion would not exist in the way we know it today, if at all. In recent years there has been a much larger uptake and interest in the idea of ‘digital fashion’, with brands such as Christopher Raeburn and Fabricant gaining significant press coverage for their innovative, AI-based collections, as well as the recent pop-up ‘HOT:SECOND’, which was featured in Vogue and Business of Fashion, focussing on digital fashion, and the idea that clothing as we now know it was becoming obsolete. This is a sustainable option for the future of fashion, linking back to the lecture’s themes.
Fletcher states in the 2008 book ‘Sustainable Fashion and Textiles: Design Journeys’ that the challenge facing sustainability is that we must overhaul what is seen as normality in today’s society, stating “Business as usual, or more to the point fashion as usual, is not an option”. The current consumer culture of spend, spend, spend needs to stop. A single kilogram of cotton takes an average of 10,000 to 20,000 litres of water to create. This is not the answer. Digital fashion is maybe a solution to the issues of sustainability, but as previously discussed, it is not fully formed just yet. In the wake of COVID-19, people must reassess whether they really need the products they are purchasing, as change needs to happen soon. In my opinion, the short-term solution is to create an ethos around buying clothing infrequently, but with a focus on quality. Whilst fast fashion is an affordable option for most people, the frequency at which people consume clothing needs to lessen. We need to work on being more sustainable or the issues of climate change, inequality, and social justice will continue to affect us all.
In conclusion, I greatly enjoyed this lecture and felt that it was an informative look at the issues surrounding the culture of fashion today.
References:
- Fitzpatrick, A (2020) ‘Culture’ [Lecture]. Better Lives, London College of Fashion, (accessed 16th February)
- Fletcher, K (2008) ‘Sustainable Fashion and Textiles: Design Journeys’
- Kawamura, Y (2005) ‘Fashion-ology’