Themes Reflection

Better lives is a unique project, giving us the possibility to widen our horizon towards socio-political and environmental topics. There has been a need to understand and design future processes for the fashion industry, technical and mental, especially in the times of Covid19. I feel like the Better Lives Unit is there to pave our way of creative thinking, more than teaching us technical, hands-on ways to design.

The lectures presented within the Unit were as well informative as inspiring, giving me thoughts and ideas to base my future projects on. As I have written in my previous blog, Kate Fletcher’s lecture on Nature has had a big impact on me, but also Jekaterina Rogaten’s lecture on wellbeing, who discussed the importance of well-being and its influence in the fashion industry, amongst others.

I chose Make-up breakdown as the workshop for Better Lives, as I have always been interested in this medium of art and communication and as we only had a few hours of workshop within the Unit, I thought it would be more efficient to get into something practical rather than theoretical. Throughout this course, one main topic was the “fashion mistake”, a creative approach that leads us from allowing ourselves to make mistakes, to using these mistakes for our advantage in our work. We would “allow the accident to participate”[1].  This sentence really inspired me and gave me the push I needed to embrace my mistakes I made and will make.

I observed my thoughts during and after the Better Lives Unit and saw that the focus, when working creatively, has shifted: when thinking about the essay I need to write for the Cultural and Historical studies course or other personal projects, I try to incorporate and create my ecological and sustainable identity. Nature has always been a big part in my work, but now I embrace it even more and want to try harder, even if it means I have to take risks and make mistakes.

The corona virus forces us now to reflect on our times and create innovative, even revolutionary ways to design for a safe and productive planet. We have been ignorantly exploiting our planet, without planning to slow down. Only the virus made the world take a break, and with this break come catastrophic consequences, as we have only been thinking globally, not locally: our health care, production and food system is dependent on the rest of the world and not the own country and therefore crashing. The current situation will affect mine and hopefully all of our future projects and designs in a positive, effective way.

[1] Anna Nwanko (2020) ‘The fashion mistake’[Live]. Lecture2: Make-up breakdown. Better Lives. London College of Fashion. 02/03.