Natalia Wisniewska

I am currently exploring the topic of navigating through clothing, where we are looking at the process of costume design and have just finished designing our own costumes for our chosen characters from Hansel and Gretel.

In the navigating through clothing workshops it was made clear that in order to create a costume you need intimately understand the character, but you also need to understand the body that you are dressing and the desired function. By this I mean you would design a costume to sit differently on an opera singer compared to a ballet dancer. As I learnt more about the process of costume design I began to understand that our clothing really is representative of our identity and whether it is conscious or unconscious we made a decision to wear or purchase something and that is a result of our own character. This relates to a text by Lucy Orta titled ‘Questioning identity’ where Orta stated “I hope that the work of many artists is provoking us to look and think about clothing differently”. I believe this stuck out to me so much from the better lives readings because we need to start thinking about clothing as more than a socially expected norm and acknowledge it is a representation of your personality and your beliefs and therefore a more ethical practice of dressing should implemented in your daily routine. It is not to say that all members in society should become interested in fashion but become aware that even unconscious decisions to wear a plain t-shirt and jeans are a representation of them as an individual. Paying more attention to cultural appropriation should be an unconscious thought that should be embedded in our daily routine.

When I was designing my costume for the witch from Hansel and Gretel I firstly tried to understand what angle I wanted to present the witch from. Asking questions such as where she has come from, what drives her to do what she does, how was she bought up. The reason I questioned this was in relation to the diversity aspect of better lives as we all come from different up bringing’s due to our cultures and that has a large impact on what kind of people we become. For me to be able create a costume for the witch and portray her appropriately I wanted to fully understand the cultural background that conditioned her to become the woman she did. In relation to better lives and costume design looking strongly into diversity is especially relevant, fundamentally to ensure that everyone is represented appropriately in the performance.

In conclusion, I must admit that in my opinion my final costume design was not very good but I strongly enjoyed exploring the process and being able to learn about all the thought that goes into making sure a character is appropriately represented. I also thoroughly enjoyed the creative process of practising collaging and working with different textures during the course.

When speaking about my chosen career path I find myself using the term manipulation a lot and I hear the term cover-up being used frequently in relation to PR because publicists help sell the goods and services, contribute to building relationships with stakeholders and deal with crisis management. Studying better lives made me acknowledge what a key part ethics plays in my future career path. It has made me question what my professional boundaries within my chosen profession are.

After being educated on the theme of social responsibility it is given me more of an insight into what kind of publicist I would like to be when I enter the industry officially. I firstly want to state that I would like to be an educated publicist that is aware of how to appropriately represent and discuss other parties. In Roman Krznaric’s text ‘The empathy instinct’ he states “My point is simple: the vast majority of us have assumptions and prejudices about others. We are prone to stereotyping, (…).” I find this statement to be very a true and in support of my own ethics I believe we should be educated in the field we are discussing before we discuss it in order to make sure that everyone is portrayed in the correct light, with assistance of social media you will be held socially responsible for the what you say. Educating yourself on social issues will help you avoid saying the wrong thing as you become more socially conscious.

In addition, I would like to be an honest publicist which ties into earlier mention of manipulation. There is a lot of conflicting ideas about the role of a publicist, one of the most common ideas is that publicists help manipulate the public into purchasing a goods and service that they might not realise they need or want. For example, Edward Bernays encouraging women to start smoking by referring to cigarettes as ‘Torches of freedom’ in order to use the feminist movement to increase the sales of cigarettes by opening a new market. I believe that helping companies be more transparent and honest with their customers is extremely important in building customer loyalty in our contemporary society. As there has been a large increase in cancel culture within the fashion industry and companies are being held accountable for their actions in relation to social political issues such as diversity and sustainability.

In conclusion, I think that better lives has helped me realise how important it is to be practising our degrees ethically and how important it is to be educated on political issues as they weave into the fashion industry immensely. I think we should be striving to do better, better than we previously knew, better than the people before us knew as society is slowly becoming more progressive. I strongly believe we should all be striving to be part of the solution to these issues rather than being part of the problem!

My favourite lecture was the one which explored power in fashion by Julia Crew. The key reason is because I appreciated how the lecture was structured and how the aspect of power is extremely relevant in every aspect of the industry, yet it is key what you choose to do with the power. I especially enjoyed the fragment on power and media as I was extremely shocked by how much power advertisement has over our spending. In the lecture Julia said that power of media is important as it helps sell to others, however I question what if it is helping us sell the wrong things? In a text called ‘The whites of their eyes: Racist ideologies and the media’ Stuart Hall raised a few alarming points such as the fact media is never free because it is coming from an individual with an opinion there for it is skewed.  I think because of the fact media is always going to be skewed as people are responsible for posting/ sharing the media online we need to make sure we are being  socially conscious and ethical when we do so, and as people simply coming across the media we need to acknowledge that not everything we see/ read is a fact and that we must stay true to our beliefs and be open minded when we do so. Another key aspect of the lecture that I enjoyed was the idea of power and protest as I think as a consumer we have the power to make a stand for what we believe in and the a lot of the time we tend to do this through our clothing and how we dress. A key example of this is the mothers of plaza de mayo who in protest for their children going missing during the dirty war wore a white shawl over their heads. I think this related back to Julia’s lecture where she mentioned utilising the power of media.

Another key lecture that I was fond of was by Katelyn Toth- Fejel where she looked at sustainability and the society. I felt as though I really understood the metaphor she made about fashion not being a car or machine and that you can’t just change a singular part and hope the whole system works better. I think the aspect that a lot of people don’t realise is that you need to change the entire system. Carolyn Mair wrote a text on the psychology of fashion which in my opinion really related to the idea of consumerism as it discussed the social compensation theory which states that our success is based on where we see others as we aspire to surpass them. This makes us believe that sustainability is near to impossible when individuals have this mentality. Relating back to the idea of machine parts, if everyone’s mindset is a machine part the system is bound to fail as it is impossible to change all these people’s mind sets.

In conclusion, I found the better lives unit insightful so far as it’s given me perspective on ways I can strive to be a more ethical practitioners within my own field. I think its also expanded my knowledge of issues relevant issues in the fashion industry allowing me to form and strong opinion on said issues.