Yi-An Chen

After reading through those blogs, I chose to write YING-TUNG YEH’s third blog “Project Outcome and Personal Development Reflection” for my peer review. The reason why I chose her blog to write is that I think she fully reflected on social responsibility, sustainability, and diversity.

In her blog, she first explained what she has learned from“ In and Outside of Fashion: Sportswear Fashion Language and Sub-cultures” course. And she mentioned that behind each look, there’s different value and ideas. They have to let the customer realized the meaning of it. I think it is quite similar to what I have learned from my course too. Before creating a garment, we have to search for the inspiration and give it a theme and story. 

For her second paragraph, she talks about her project outcome and the process of creating a look. The way she made for the project is really interesting and all based on the concept of social responsibility, sustainability, and diversity. She used the different elements to create a massage of genderless to the audience that yoga and fitness programs are genderless. Besides, I like the idea of reusing middle school uniform. I think everyone has the old school uniform but no one will wear it after graduating from school, so it is a good idea to reuse it.

In her conclusion, she shows how she reflects from this task and what she has learned from better lives course. For example, she said how this course makes her rethink of her daily habits and how to work with those themes in future work. And I agree when she talks about keep working can overcome difficulties. I think she combined the themes with her project very well and also shows the understanding of those themes.

Finally, we have finished our Better lives classes. Although Navigating Through Clothing course is quite different from the PR course, which I am studying in, I still enjoyed it a lot and have learned a lot of skills in designing a costume. During the classes, we have been introduced to many different ways of performance, such as circus, opera and ballet. And the importance of using the material to make the project.

When we were learning about the material to make a costume, we have been introduced to many designers and texture and fabric. Therefore, we can know how a designer picks the fabric to make the garment and how importance fabric can influence the performance. We have to consider the movement and appearance of the costume. After this, we can think of the way to make those garment more sustainability.

During the class, the diversity there is also an important element in the course. We need to consider the culture for the performance and get more information from the British Museum. Therefore, my friend and I went to see many different ethnic cultures in the museum.

I faced some problems while working on the final project, but also learned from it. For example, when we have to do a collage for the task, it is quite hard for me to create a collage that related to the character I chose to do. Besides, when we went to the British museum for doing research, I don’t know what kind of things should I find for my research. Compare to my classmate, they always know what they are doing and did it very well. When we were sharing the work we did, everyone explains their inspiration from the museum and they all did very well. From this experience, I started to know how to do primary research and how to combine it with my work.

In the end, I created a costume for the character “the little white duck” from Hansel and Gretel. I combined the element I saw from the National Theatre and the pattern I saw from the British Museum. Although I know that my design might not be very good, at least I tried. And I have learned a lot from this course too.

Diversity, social responsibility and sustainability are the main themes that I have learned from Better lives lecture over a few weeks. As a PR and communication student, I think it is quite important to know these three elements and to incorporate with them for my work in the future.

Inclusivity is a really important topic nowadays in society. People started to respect the different ethnic group and being or diverse. And because of the environmental awareness, people started to realize how the fashion industry has created many damage and waste of the resources on the Earth. Customers started to refuse to buy fast fashion product and live in a more eco-friendly way, such as bringing their bags when they go shopping or paying more attention to the material, which the brand used for produce the product. Therefore, many brands and designers started to be more responsible for the environment.

I chose to study Navigating Through Clothing for Better lives course. In this course, we have learned about different texture and fabric. When we visit the National Theater, I saw many different textures of the costume and how they designed it for the stage. I got more information on how important the material is for making a costume. Therefore, for my final project, I might think of some recyclable fabric for designing the project. 

After those lectures, I will not forget how diversity, social responsibility and sustainability are important roles nowadays. When I do work, I will focus more on those themes and pay more attention to that related news.

After watching those Better Lives video, I found that Kate Fletcher’s lecture “Nature” is very interesting and very important for human. In the lecture, she talks about how nature is so important for the Earth and also mentioned the relationship between nature and Fashion and how nature supports the fashion industry.

In my opinion, I strongly agree with what Kate has said in the lecture. Before I watched the lecture I thought everyone knows how nature is important for our lives and cares about something like climate change, polar vortex, and rate of biodiversity less…. But after she mentioned that people know brands more than knowing nature species, I realised that although people know that protecting the environment is important, we always think that someone will help us to protect it so we don’t have to do the action by ourselves. Everyone knows that nature is important, but only a few people really care about it even though we are surrounded by those extreme weather and climate change. For Journalist, they still barely mentioned how bad is the world becoming and how people can change the situation just because the audience prefer looking at politics or entertainment news. I also agree with her when she said: “Humans see themselves as the centre of everything.” There are lots of species that also live on the Earth but humans always see themselves as the most important one. Therefore, we waste a lot of natural resources and destroy the environment by getting more sources.

Everything is related to nature, such as fabric. Thus, fashion is also related to nature. Many designers started to use fashion to decrease the waste of nature. They believe that they can use fashion to join the world and take social responsibility. Besides, many brands also created eco-friendly packaging which is made of bamboo, sugar cane fibre, and woods. So it can make the world better.