Yinhua Chen

Yinhua Chen

10887246

Blog 4: Peer review

From reading through most peer’s reflection of their project, Ernest abrokwah’s blog gives me a sense of resonance and attraction because I faced the same situation during my project like her. The theme of fashion activism offered me a lot of ideas, for instance the creative directors inspired me because creative directors played the leading role in the whole team and creates a blueprint for the project.  For Ernest’s blog, three aspects interest me. The importance of teamwork and brand building, respectively.

To begin with, Ernest had the same problem as me to struggle in teamwork. In the brainstorming process, everyone takes different stands, which requires us to discuss ideas and accept each others’s ideas. In the operating process, we take in charge of what we are good at and then share our outcome together. As the result, if we elaborate on our thoughts and veto others, teamwork loses its meaning. By requiring sharing and discussing with each others effectively, cooperation broaden our mind and elaborating our project. 

Also, I share the same though with Ernest on the successful branding, which requires the branding have a unique style, logo, design, advertisements. The logo is especially important with the perfect example used was the Burberry logo. With the progress of the times, Burberry has a different design of logo, and it got changed completely; however, it maintained the Burberry look with the colors. It’s not just the logo that gives a brand its soul, and the more profound way is to attract  more customers with good-looking. Combined with mine and Ernest’s point of view, the creative director also plays a significant role. Creative directors focus on diversity their most advertising campaigns because this is their representative. Also, creative directors focus on sustainability to fulfill the profound meaning of fashion. 

Thirdly, fashion activism is a theme that brings inspiration when I did the project. Among the suitable positions in fashion activism, the creative director take the leading role because they need to endow creative concepts in our project, take visual shooting, and find an innovative team. The creative director should have many thoughts and have the ability to control the overall picture.

To sum up,  Ernest and I share the same idea on how to learn to communicate effectively with the team, greatly elaborating my future work have proper development. Also, the establishment of a brand needs tons of requirements, such as logo, style, design, advertising, and so on. We not only focus on my own domain, but I am also allowed to explore every corner in fashion.

Ernest’s blog: https://1920betterlivessmc.myblog.arts.ac.uk/author/19022354/

Yinhua Chen 18007246

– Blog2 : How the better lives themes might change the way you work in the future?

Firstly, I believe that the theme of better lives will occupy in both my recent study and future career. Due to the undivided relationship between the sustainable development and the fashion industry, well-being would be improved through fashion innovation, further stimulate the overall happiness in the society. From learning about this theme, I was motivated to consider about certain aspects of fashion industry that required us to create and develop.

The theme of inclusive design offer me the most inspiring ideas. The inclusive fashion not only focuses on fashion design itself, but also inspire people think the functionality, materiality, and visualization for those fashion products. To be more specific in my probable future career, the inclusive design will play a significant role for my creation progress. The first step for me probably is to complete the inclusive design process, including understanding context, design research, discovers needs, map insights, translating briefs, scenario building, user feedback, and resource building. The whole steps can help me to sort our ideas and then finish work well. For example, a deaf person can regain his hearing ability when offered a sound shirt with special textural material. However, searching the smart materials is a difficult thing for us to tackle with. For example, for material used in extreme climates, we need electro-active textiles with heated balaclava hats to accommodate such unusual condition. All in all, adequate research in the inclusive fashion design will be of great help to my future work.

Also, the fast developing technology can offer me inspirations in my future career. “trying to predict the future is like trying to drive down a country road at night with no lights while looking out the back window” form Peter Druker. Specifically, the Artificial intelligence can predict the consumer’s preference before the company design the products, which makes the deign become more focused and effective. Also, We need to think that when we road to the singularity what we should change and exploits it as an opportunity. The technology enrich the consuming possibility by creating platform online, because just as Peter Druker said, “the best way to predict the future is to create it.” People can shop in places that don’t exist, like Amazon, eBay, and so on. The whole fashion product market is expanded by Technology, which further facilitate the improvement of fashion itself. For me, I would cater into this main trend for my career.

Finally, society needs diversity and diversity in fashion industry, like online shopping, creative clothing material for well-being purposes. We need to think about them, do research on them, and finally bring them to reality.

• Blog1 :Reflections on one or more of the Better Lives lectures and how they have influenced your thinking

In the lecture by Anna Fitzpatrick, I have learned about what is sustainability and culture that related to fashion. The main concerns come of what do we need to keep doing, protect and change from fashion industry’s perspective. The sustainability of fashion not only matters how the fashion industry develops but also matters the environment and consumers’ behaviors, so we should realize and correct the aspects that undermine the sustainability of fashion and make a better relationship between fashion and future sustainability. 

Firstly, the development of fashion incurs significant problems for the sustainability of environment.  Fashion elements derive from the nature, where they dependent on land, water, air, animal ,etc. These minimal resources are normally used for producing the fashion products like garment, so when a garment is discarded so too is the oil, water, cotton, and labor used to produce it.( McNeil 2000 ) As the result, resources would be wasted due to the human activity. The issue of how to dispose of used clothes properly, how to balance and reduce waste of resources are urgent to keep a sustainable future. In my opinion, people haven’t realize the problem of discarding clothes is a kind of waste, so I will devote my effort to appeal people to reduce the waste of natural resource when pursuing fashion aiming to reach a sustainable society. 

In addition, the overconsumption from the customer and the overproduction of fashion industry have substantially weakened the sustainability. Kawamura (2005) argued that fashion and clothing are distinct concepts, where fashion is immaterial, while clothing is material. Due to the development of the technology,  lowering production cost lead to more clothing production. Also, the prevailing of the consumerism encourage people to consume more to gain the happiness, so there are more demand and supply in the society.  According to the report, from 2000 to 2014, the average consumer purchases clothing by 60% each year. It is highly possible that clothes they purchased may not be suitable for them even if those clothes are over-consumed. The consumers should consume rationally and make reasonable use of resources to get a sense of happiness. In order to seeks profits, clothing companies produce clothes unreasonably which make the waste of resources. Making money just a part of fashion, but the critical meaning is to maintain sustainability.

After this lecture, I have learned a lot of aspects of how to develop the sustainability of fashion, including reasonable production and rational consumption. Changing the sustainable development of fashion is a way to make fashion develop longer-term and give fashion a deeper meaning. In this way, fashion represents not only unique and beautiful products, but also an important manifestation of social, cultural, and interpersonal relationships.