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For the peer review I chose to look at Gabija Pocuitte’s blogs and focus on the 3rd post where she evaluates her final project outcome with some reflection on the themes of better lives. Gabija is originally a fashion photography student but was alongside me on the make up course for Better Lives and it was interesting to see how differently we approached the idea of the ‘Fashion Mistake’ to create final looks. She used 3D objects as well as normal make up products to seam together an intriguing and experimental look targeting the idea of sustainability and the disposability of certain objects within the beauty/fashion community.

Gabija chose to focus more on the sustainability aspect and to use household beauty items such as hair bands and hair grips to design a look. She mentions further research into artist Rie Sakamoto who also created a collection made of rubber bands and this research gave the look context and development as she was able to create more iterations from her initial look. It’s important to have artist references and it’s something that I felt was somewhat lacking from my final outcome evaluation because it would give more context to my project. She draws inspiration well in regards to basing her colouring on the collections and trying to incorporate some of the same elements of boldness and contrast into her work which works well with the two statements made by the objects (sharp and round). She considers the overall composition with critical outlooks and determined that the colours used are not too powerful but bold enough to make a statement yet not overpower the piece.

She provides and interesting outlook on the theme of sustainability within the beauty community and fashion by utilising items that are viewed as disposable when really they are harmful to the environment and we should be more careful with the way we treat and take care of such items as many of them are not recyclable at all.

One area that Gabija could improve on is considering a more well-rounded concept or explanation of the final look as for this outcome, she has mentioned mainly just sustainability as opposed to reflecting on all the other themes of Better Lives such as social responsibility and diversity. Although she does go in depth about these issues in other blog posts, it would benefit the final evaluation of her project if she had mentioned them even briefly in the final outcome to tie together the project more.

Overall, Gabija’s blogs are thoughtful, insightful and well written, she has clearly done a lot of research and has engaged fully with the themes presented in the project which lead her to have a very successful outcome.