Blog 2

As PR and communication student I find it is vital to consider better lives themes such as social responsibility, inclusivity and diversity when communicating the brand into the masses. 

Fashion industry still has a long way to go in perfecting those three elements. Unfortunately we can still see that even big brands such as Prada (monkey keychains), Gucci (blackface sweater), Dolce and Gahanna (eating pizza with chopsticks campaign) get involved into racism scandals because of either their product designs or communication campaigns. All of that is the result of poor education of PR and miscommunication between design and PR teams.  Due to different communication channels (for example Diet Prada) that attract attention of the masses to the issues of inclusivity  people started to pay more attention on these issues and demand from the brands a greater work on inclusivity and diversity. 

When it comes to discussing  social responsibility we can still see big issues regarding the immoral use of cheap labor from the companies such as H&M, Primark, Zara etc. who would normally offshore they factories in the poor countries to keep their expenses and prices low. Which leads to another big problem – sustainability. However, it would be wrong to blame only fast fashion companies for promoting throw away culture as demand drives supply therefore consumers are also responsible for the environmental crisis. Consumers  need to understand that producing clothes involves a lot of creative work and physical labor therefore clothes should not be cheap. 

As a future fashion industry practitioner I believe that the only way to overcome the said above issues is through education of consumers and fashion industry workers.  We must acknowledge the old fashioned structure of our industry and modernize it to become a more sustainable and socially responsible. Better lives lectures made me more aware of those issues and more than that showed the ways of how to work on them.