Alyssa Gilbert

The outcome of my group’s Better Lives project was a 12 second video on the nude lingerie brand, Nubian Skin. For the project we decided to take inspiration from the company’s Instagram page, and edit it with illustrations, gifs, and typography. We had 2 illustration students, 1 photography student, 1 journalism student, 1 PR student, and 1 styling student in our group so we tried our best to have all of our skills involved in such a short video. The illustration students drew undergarments and line drawings over images that the photography student took. The journalism student wrote captions and the PR student helped make gifs. I gave the illustration student ideas on where to draw things and were to remove things to prevent the image from looking crowded, and ideas on the sequence of the final video. Because we did this assignment via group chat, it was hard to get involved because of my time zone. I couldn’t really use my creative practice to demonstrate the Better Lives themes, but I contributed to the demonstration of the Better Lives themes through other practices. For example, when putting together the final moving image, I gave input on the sequence of the video clips and the final images that were put together (from using my styling and coordination abilities). Overall, I found communication the most difficult because of the time differences as well as finding a way to add my creative practice into the process of making our project. I improved my collaborative skills, because there we’re times that I needed to wake up earlier to meet with the rest of the group, and try my best to give input and ideas when I where I could to make up for the fact that there wasn’t much styling I could do.

The option I chose for the Better Lives unit was Fashion Activism. During this unit we’ve begun to exercise the better lives themes and I have been learning how it can be applied to my main discipline. I am a styling and production student, and I think creative direction and styling go hand in hand when it comes to bringing a concept to life for an advertisement or other platform. I think that the diversity theme will change the way I work by allowing me to think of out-of-the-box concepts and concepts that connect with more than one kind of person. It can also be as simple as including different models or people from different backgrounds in my overall concept. The social responsibility theme will change the way I work by creating an awareness to what brands are being socially responsible and incorporating them in my work. Because my discipline involves clothing, I want to contact and source clothing from socially responsible stores and designers that can hold themselves responsible for the impact they create in the world due to the construction of their garments. Lastly, I think that the sustainability theme will change the way I work in the future by trying to make the most of what I have on hand, supporting and sourcing sustainable clothing from stores and designers, and simply limiting the way that I collect those items or the transportation/impact of a shoot. For example, if I needed to go on a shoot and needed to source a bunch of clothing, and take that to a shoot, I would have to consider the shipment or transportation to get the clothing, the transportation(s) to get to the shoot location and everything in between. Overall, I think that the better lives themes will make me more aware of the way I do my own practice and the people that I involve in my practice. 

The lecture about Representation in week 2 was the most memorable and relatable lecture for me. It was very well said, there was a lot of information, and there were a lot of things that I could relate to and things that I resonated with. Some of the topics in the presentation included what diversity is, why it’s necessary and what it can do for fashion. For so long, the fashion industry has only chosen certain people to represent it, and fashion fits all shapes and sizes and is involved in so many different kinds of people’s lives. Being a person of color, I think it’s really important to include representation and diversity in everything that happens in the fashion industry because you don’t want to make an individual feel like they don’t fit in a certain place when fashion is meant to be for everyone. Thankfully, fashion is progressing in the amount of representation that they have, but it can always be improved and there could always be more because there are still some people that may feel like they can’t see themselves reflected in the industry yet.

Teleica mentioned in her presentation that there are certain types of minorities that are put over others which I also resonated with. There was a slide about lighter-skinned people with longer or looser curls that are favored by society and I’ve seen that with my own eyes. I’m a bit lighter than most of my darker-skinned family members and I can see the prejudice towards them more than myself and that is heavily reflected in not only the fashion industry and entertainment, but the world in general. There are also a lot of racially insensitive clothing pieces and accessories being created by big fashion houses because they “don’t know any better”, but in 2020 they should know better. It should be common sense to know that certain people might get offended by things if you don’t have any research to back it and you don’t credit the inspiration that it comes from. This lecture has shaped my thinking on how fashion can create better lives by reminding me that although there is representation in fashion there is not enough, and there is more room for more people to feel included moving forward and that brands are capable of not offending people and their cultures with what they produce.