Hanwei MA

Better Live Unit gave us an excellent chance to learn something different from our inner primary. For this unit, my chosen course was Emerging Technologies in the Fashion Industry, which themes set up a virtual creative technology agency. It is very new and far dominant for me, I didn’t touch this area before, and I want to learn something new and different, so this is why I choose this course.

In the past session, we discussed potential new and emerging technologies such as Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain, and mobile technology. My favourite part here is cryptography. I think it is so cool. With the development of human’s life quality, people care more and more about emerging technology. It is also extraordinarily essential in the fashion industry.

And we discovered deeply in vintage trend. I learnt how to use the SWOT model to analyze it. The strengths in vintage direction are its good for sustainable; people can sell useless clothes, there has old fashion.

In the last term, I interviewed with Paul. He is the owner of Urban Trenches London where is a vintage Burberry store. What they do here is there are enough clothes on the planet to clothes everybody. We don’t need to make any new ones, so what we do here at Urban Trenches London is stylishly vandalize trench coats – existing coats. The fashion industry is the second or third biggest polluter. The average piece of clothing is worn for a year and then thrown away. We wear 20% of our wardrobe 80% of the time. So most of it’s not worn. So, we don’t need to make any new clothes there’s enough here. So what we do at Urban Trenches London is we vandalize stuff.

Paul also said, when I was growing up, in his generation, which is the mid-50s didn’t want to shop in charity shops. Because there was that feeling that the word charity was a Victorian word, people felt “well I don’t need charity”, and there was an old English smell of tea, and old people so people kind of avoided that. However. Now, smart young people are smart. They’re buying in sort of the vintage and charity shops. His generation had difficulty getting their tongues around the word ‘sustainability’. It’s a long word for them, recycling was washing milk bottles, and coke can pull. That’s not what it is, that’s not going to save the planet. What is going to save the earth is our generations. We generations who use what we have, We have resources here. Let’s use what we have to achieve sustainable development.

I think It is an excellent way for sustainability and putting the fun back into fashion. Can do to shape the fashion industry into a more positive and brighter future.

I have chosen to Suze Jessurun’s blog about themes reflection in nature. I also watched the lecture on which theme is nature. I have some perspectives that I want to talk about. After reading Suze’s blog, I felt so moved. She referred people to the destroyed ocean, killing animals, habitats, and coral reefs. And when Suze went to Australia, she found most of the coral reef is gone. I’m so sad to hear about that. Selfish humans for their interests, always in the unrestrained destruction of our planet. People often forget to think about the long-term consequences of damaging our nature or polluting the air we need to survive. (Suze, 2020) 

What makes me interested in Suze’s blog is she reflected herself link with her major Hair and Make-up in Fashion. The example she gave is the regular waste of ‘one-time’ items. There are l a lot of cotton, plastic, and paper they throw away after using it once in the make-up industry. It’s a particular and honest example. Cotton I can feel how unsustainable the make-up industry and how Suze wants to change this waste situation. It’s glad to hear that Suze will be reflecting on how she can use what she learned from Kate Fletcher and use it for future work.

I look forward to Suze could make some great solution to reduce the wast in the make-up industry in her future work. Also, Suze’s reflection pushes me to reflect on myself with my major Creative Direction for Fashion. It’s a dominant role in the realization of artistic vision used across the fashion industry to drive marketing strategies. It’s one of the most desirable among contemporary fashion opportunities in the fashion industry. With this power, it’s essential to let the fashion industry be more and more sustainable in the future. 

Human life changed a lot under the influence of COVID-19. Because of the situation in lockdown, we all quarantine at home. So online shopping increases dramatically in this period. But to some extent, it has reduced people’s demand to buy. Because we don’t need to buy too many clothes to wear at home, pyjamas are the best choice at home.

Most people felt too dull to stay at home every day. So online shopping has become a good entertainment for people buying stuff at home. Also, there are have much more discounts on online shopping rather than in reality stores. It let me think about people will get used to living at home and working from home. Even after COVID 19 is over, people are more likely to stay at home. Working from home may become a mainstream trend. So, developing sustainable online shopping is will be an essential point in the fashion industry. We have to think about it in advance, and it is not as same as shopping in the store.

Reference:

Jessurun, S. (2020) Blog 2: Nature. Available at: https://1920betterlivessmc.myblog.arts.ac.uk/2020/04/24/blog-post-2-nature/ (Accessed: 24th April 2020). 

After watching the lecture, I understand why collaboration is important in modern society. And I have to learn how to collaborate. For example, I’m doing a video interview on streetwear since this term. And I’m uploading it to Chinese Tik Tok. Let the Chinese audience understand about London style, streetwear style here, What is the difference between Uk and China cultural. I got a big process in this progress. I learned collaboration with my friends because I can’t complete it only by myself. When I was shooting, I needed a friend to host and ask the interviewees questions. Then we became a team, communication and learn from each other. 

What I’m doing here is promoting the culture and way of life in London, which is conducive to cultural communication and diversification. Also, I found an interesting thing here is about second-hand fashion, like a charity shop or vintage, is extremely popular in London. But lots of other places are not. So I want to let more people notice this appearance and join this team, for sustainability in fashion. I don’t know what can I do as a year 1 fashion student in the fashion industry. But I’m trying to use my way through fashion to let more and more people know the different culture and lifestyle.

With the development of society, science and technology play an irreplaceable position here. As Nick’s saying, technology allows us to do things that we can’t do before. It is huge progress in human history. Meanwhile, technology lets people work together, not only the individual anymore. It’s more convenient for collaboration, the Internet realized global resource sharing. But in general, I think whatever surf the Internet, or offline shopping fashion product. All the things exist here are for human desire. Let people live a better life.

My choice of Better Lives project choice is emerging technology in the fashion industry. We live in a time of rapid technological change. While technology brings us convenience, there are also a series of problems. I have to always remember. Diversity, social responsibility, and sustainability will always be three keywords in the fashion industry and it will be my duty to use my knowledge to make it happen and let the world be better.

Diversity, social responsibility, and sustainability are the keywords in Better Lives Unit. I was inspired a lot after watching a series of lectures. I need to know about how to deal with the relationship between culture, economics and our society in the fashion industry. We have to let fashion ecosystems to be better and better in the future as a fashion student. Two themes in the lecture that inspired me most were cultural sustainability and collaboration. They are interrupted and progress from each other. Let me think about diversity, personality, and desire behind them and how they influence each other.

To begin with. What does cultural mean? What does culture mean to us? To other people? And where does culture exists? These four questions are the beginning of Nick’s lecture. It catches my attention. And I want to provoke the thought about it with Nick. We all have our cultural background, they are innately part of us. Nick analyzed lots of pictures to let me know some representation in history and zeitgeist. London is a diverse city. All of us here are have a different cultural background. It’s interesting for me to learn about other’s cultures and it’s lovely to make friends from a different country. However, there are also some issues in the fashion industry because of the misunderstanding, like cultural procrastination. So, respect cultural differences and realize cultural diversity plays an essential role in the fashion industry nowadays.

With the before theme, sometimes collaboration with different background people is not an easy thing. So I going to watch Claire’s lecture which is about collaboration. Before collaboration with others, know how to collaborate and why we need to collaborate is more important. Define it firstly, just as its name implies, collaboration is a piece of work that has been produced as the result of people or groups working together. ( Collins) And, Claire said it is a way that working together to solve a problem or to achieve a goal. With the sharp development in the fashion industry, it’s hard to create great art for only individuals. So collaboration is becoming more and more important in modern society. 

It is an important ability for me to collaborate with others. Learn to listen, share, critical. The essence of collaboration is the relationship between people and people. To a certain extent, different characters and nature determine the success or failure of the cooperation. That is personality.