Fashion and Well-being
Blog Post 1 – reflective task
Over the first two weeks of the Better Lives unit we had the privilege to attend different lectures about really interesting and important topics such as sustainability, fashion, diversity, power and so on. These had made me reflect on the importance our generation has in order to help the fashion industry create better lives in the future. The fashion and well-being lecture by Jekaterina Rogaten definitely stood out for me in terms of how fashion has an impact on people and their being.Within the lecture she underlined how our well-being is not just influenced and determined by our physical health, it in fact comes from a wide range of areas.
She broke down well-being in two different theories: the Hedonic well-being, which is subjective, and the Eudaimonic well-being considered as psychological. The first one is connected to our emotions and feelings and how those are influencing our well-being, how satisfied we are with our life realizing we are the ones responsible to decide whether focusing on the negative or positive aspects of something. Maximizing those positive aspects increasing life satisfaction is a model the fashion industry uses quite well, making us continuously believe we need that last item or phone model to reach happiness and satisfaction. This made me reflect on how much nowadays that is actually true and how we make our happiness depend on those things. Although, more is not always better. Maximizing choices does in fact maximize our freedom but that also maximizes the decisions we have to make, and the choices we leave aside. The Eudaimonic well-being affects people who have a high level of self-acceptance, they are happy about who they are. In the fashion industry more and more people are starting to accept the diversity of beauty styles and body sizes and that increases the level of self-acceptance generally. This type of well-being is also connected to things such as personal growth, positive relations, autonomy and experiences.
Having a meaningful life means achieving aspects of needs like the physiological ones going forward to the safety ones, love, esteem and self-actualization. These can be applied in the fashion context. So well-being in the fashion industry is connected to happiness, in terms of wearing something that makes us feel confident and accepted by society, it defines our identity and social relationships. In terms of fashion consumption, clothing choices can enhance our well-being, wearing sustainable clothes make some feel better, consumers find clothing impression a source of happiness and for others creating new things improves their well-being, that comes then from creativity itself. In terms of fashion production, improving people well-being could mean motivate them, promote the environment they work in and increase positive emotions.
To conclude I think fashion plays an important role in enhancing individual and organizational well-being and that is something we need to remember in the future in order to create better lives for people who work in the industry but also for everyone else; fashion is everywhere, is in everyone and everything is connected so it is essential to understand that every little step could make the difference in a world that yet has a lot to learn and improve.