Natasha Ravi Ghanshani

Having delved into fashion styling during my previous year in the foundation course and within my personal free time, I found Eloise’s blog post extremely interesting because it shed more light on the different ways we can connect the better lives themes of diversity, social responsibility and sustainability to everything we do within fashion.

I completely agree with the fact that the lack of knowledge contributes to the popularity of fast fashion, and the other reason being that not everyone is able to afford sustainable products as they are more expensive. Fast fashion brands produce items that are cheap and that have lower quality, which encourages consumers to buy more often and this is where the problem persists. Brands are unable to sell all the stock that they have produced, and these products end up in landfills and go to waste, which harms the environment. It is definitely important for brands to now focus on producing less and utilising sustainable production methods. Even though this might increase overall costs, the consumer base must understand that this is the correct way forward. The importance and rise of sustainability is definitely a threat to popular fast fashion brands such as Zara, H&M, Bershka, etc that create cheap clothing and have a high turnaround. It is interesting that Eloise, during her styling work, chooses to represent brands that have zero-waste policies, ones that use recycled materials and make clothes that last, because although that might make the process of sourcing clothing for her shoots way harder, she chooses to take that route so that she can spread the correct message to her audience. 

Additionally, she delves into the idea of diversity and lends an interesting view that focusing on diversity goes beyond just visual representation, but also involves the people within the team. Her understanding is vital as she mentions that she would like to work with different designers in the future, ones that are not as mainstream, which might make her creative process more fluid. I find that when we focus too much on bringing out diversity, it may seem very superficial to an audience. Hence, enveloping different people with new thoughts and ideas into the process might make it effortlessly diverse and original. She goes on further to acknowledge the role of a stylist and mentions how important it is for stylists all around the world to promote small brands and items created by minority groups, as stylists do influence the way people choose to dress. This connects to the idea of sustainability as well because smaller brands and minority groups create products on a made-to-order basis, which reduces the overall wastage of materials. Furthermore, the aspect of social responsibility connects diversity and sustainability as it is important for brands to promote fair working conditions and fair pay. Customers must be informed of the brands’ working practices and must only support a brand if they are focusing enough on maintaining corporate social responsibility. 

After reading Eloise’s work, I was able to look at these themes from a different perspective. Being a PR student, I have definitely looked at the three themes from another lense, and hence hearing her viewpoint definitely aided in my understanding of how we can make fashion more environmentally, socially and consumer friendly.

Throughout this unit, I have learnt the importance of diversity, sustainability and social responsibility and I have learnt how to apply it within my experiences within the fashion industry. For the project, my group and I were tasked with creating a moving image for the brand ‘Nubian Skin’. Nubian Skin is a brand that provides underwear, or rather ‘shape wear’ for all body and skin types. We decided that we wanted to focus on diversity as an umbrella topic, and since the brand ethos and values targeted body diversity as well as racial diversity we felt we could elaborate on the same through our moving image.

Our group consisted of six people and our idea creation process was relatively simple. We all researched and learnt more about the brand in general before we began writing ideas down on paper. The initial idea consisted of our group members being given different tasks in relation to models, set design, make-up, etc and we were planning to create a video advertisement/promotional campaign for the brand. This plan seemed appealing to us because we collectively wanted to create original content and our main aim was to create content that we could share with others, even beyond our classroom; hence we wanted to create something from scratch. Even though we had never worked with each other before, I found it surprisingly easy to suggest things or provide an opinion on someone else’s thoughts. We came up with multiple ideas and decided that we would all individually work on sample videos to see whether anyone had any interesting concepts of their own, and then go on to share and collaborate for the final video. Our process was very fluid and I was content with the way things were moving, we were not stagnant as a group. However, due to the interruption of our academic year and all of us having to work remotely, we felt the need to come up with something that we could all work on alone, and just have one person put all the pieces together. I definitely considered this to be a setback as living in different timezones made it slightly more difficult for us to coordinate and collaborate on this project. The fact that we were in different countries did play a part in our overall pace, because we were sometimes unable to connect as a whole group for 24 hours and that hindered the development process. During our initial brainstorming in class, one of our team members, a fashion illustration student, created a doodle and sketch on top of one of the photos from the brands’ instagram page. All of us really liked that concept and decided to emphasise on that by creating a series of similar images, and showing the process of the doodle within the GIF. We focused on bringing our strengths to this project, and I opted to create an Instagram layout for the GIFs so that we could have a clearer picture of how it would look on their actual Instagram feed. However, I feel that I would have been able to contribute differently to this project if we were not facing this current predicament, as I know that I would have had more equipment and space to create and experiment freely. Despite these many constraints, I personally feel that our group was able to communicate and emulate the better lives theme of ‘diversity’ within our moving image effectively.

The Better Lives theme that stood out to me the most was ‘diversity’ because it was interesting to learn more about how fashion brands continue to accumulate various cultures and ideals to portray themselves as more ‘inclusive’ and more ‘accepting’ for an audience. The 21st century has brought an increasing number of expectations for the fashion industry, as consumers are extremely vigilant and connected due to the various social media networks, therefore making it pertinent for each brand to portray strong values that align with the public. 

Nowadays, it is very common to see all body types represented in a campaign, or all skin types, or all gender types, but I find it difficult to understand whether people are following through with diversity because it is ‘trending’ or because they actually understand the meaning of the word ‘diverse’ and how different people make up a society. There is a thin line between respecting diverse cultures and disrespecting them. However, the main job of public relations managers in fashion, is to prevent brands from causing blunders by making sure they do not cross this thin line. 

Throughout these lectures, I have been able to further understand the importance of acknowledging every culture, every body type, every skin tone, and every aspect that makes a person ‘different’. Additionally, due to my own indian ethnicity, I have been able to look at every scenario with varied lenses. For example, when the Dolce & Gabbanna campaign was released in Asia, there was dispute over it led me to believe that certain people might not be aware of these lines, and might not consider certain actions or statements to be disrespectful. This could be because of the lack of exposure, or their own biased opinions that should not be excused. 

The main challenge the world is facing right now is making the idea of diversity normal, an idea that becomes engraved in every individual so that it does not have to be an ‘effort’ to be inclusive, just a natural reaction. Once this is surpassed, brands and consumers will have a much more fruitful relationship.  

The Better lives lecture that I felt influenced my thinking was the one on Sustainability & Power. During this lecture, I was able to further understand the benefits of power in relation to the fashion industry, the media industry and even industries promoting the concept of sustainability. 

As a student studying Fashion Public Relations and Communication, I am aware that being a social media influencer in today’s day and age allows one to sway the thoughts of thousands of people worldwide, just with one post. This is the most accurate example of power in the 21st century, as consumers have a herd mentality and spend a significant amount of time, money and energy trying to create a ‘perfect life’ on basis of what they saw on someone else’s profile. The one dilemma that was discussed during the lecture was that ‘who actually holds the power to make a significant change?’ and I personally feel that consumers and people in general look for a leader with strength, credibility and experience who can solve their respective problems or help them understand topics and concepts that they were not able to earlier. However, the only problem within the fashion industry is that the fashion model itself is extremely warped, and there is never an equal distribution of earnings throughout the supply chain. Understanding this complex scenario from a publicity point of view, raises a question in my mind: How do certain brands maintain their brand value and image while supporting unethical production methods, and even while producing unethical items? Do consumers conveniently ignore these facts, or have brands hired publicists to filter out and frame the facts to make them sound more ‘appealing’ to the consumer? Is the power really in the hands of the consumer or is it in the hands of the producer and the media? One can choose what to buy, but the media continues to play a huge part in influencing an individual. 

If one suggests to alter the current method of hierarchy, and focus on equal distribution of wealth, it is possible that the entire system will suffer. However, the process of deciding who the power should be handed to, is a tricky one because no individual is free of existing bias, which may impact important decisions and cause disruption within the respective system. In conclusion, The lecture provided me with the basic understanding of power in different contexts, and how important it is for people to know who they are giving power to, instead of blindly following trends and influencers.