Ryan Lewis

Concluding The Better Lives project we were set the task of peer reviewing other blog posts. The importance of peer-reviewing blogs is vital and very effective as both students get to expand on touched upon subjects. While reading multiple peers’ blog posts I came across one that really caught my eye and this was Fiona Chernavskaya’s blog post 2. This blog was surrounding how diversity, social responsibility, and sustainability will change how she works in the future and some really good points have been made. I chose this blog due to Fiona being on the same course as me, Fashion Styling and Production, and some mutual points were made in both her blog and mine. 

She first touches upon how the project so far has helped her realize that diversity is an imperative part of the fashion industry, especially within the models. She progresses into looking into examples such as project runway season 18. This was a good way to back up her argument and really put it into perspective. Progressing on, she started talking about social responsibility, and that the use of sustainable designers would be used in her work as much as possible in the future. She brings up sustainability within the third paragraph and Stella McCartney came up for an example, although this is a good example, I would have liked to see other brands brought up as Stella McCartney has been at the forefront of sustainability for a while now and she is nothing new to the sustainability aspect within fashion. Within the second paragraph, the use of a rhetorical question was very effective because it gives the reader a question to think about while reading the rest of the blog. Within the last paragraph, Fiona said “As most brands are beginning to transition to different versions of sustainability it’s important to encourage and highlight their strengths, pushing them forward towards a future where we can replenish what we take from the earth”, I think this is a very strong ending to the blog and leaves the reader to really think about the damaging effects of the fashion industry.

Overall I think the changes that Fiona will make in the future will make a difference and will really show positively in her work. In Addition, I think she has successfully understood the Better Lives themes and incorporated this into her work. 

Throughout this better lives unit, I have expanded my knowledge based around these key themes that include, sustainability, diversity, and social responsibility. For my project avenue I explored fashion journalism, within this we were directed to complete a 500-word feature which had to be written for an audience of our choice. Progressing through we had to write about one or more of the better lives themes. Within this, I chose to do my feature based on social responsibility and sustainability written for vogue. The topic was surrounding the impacts of how Covid-19 has impacted different parts of the fashion industry especially the factory workers. It is safe to say that there is no shortage of factories in these third world countries that are used by major fashion brands that lead the highstreets. The topic I chose really opened my eyes to the problems they are experiencing in this unpredictable time. In Addition, I think a lot of people forget about who makes their clothes and I really wanted to highlight this with my feature. 

Within the task that Liz set us she talked us through how to write a successful feature and what to include to make sure the task was very clear. After uploading our features we commented on each other’s features to look at what other students had written about. This was a very interesting task as each student chose a different topic. I think it is important to look at peers’ work to have an insight into what they thought of the task and how they portrayed it for their chosen audience. 

In my opinion, I think the better lives themes played a big role in the task set as the key themes are vital to the fashion industry for them to progress into a better time. In Addition, I liked the broadness of this task as we could speak about any topic that interested us to try and help bring light to major problems within fashion. Hopefully in the future people will think more about the factory workers that get paid next to nothing to make garments that are then being sold for 100x the price and sometimes even more. 

Sustainability, Diversity, and Social responsibility are the key themes that should be on everyone’s minds when thinking about fashion. The lectures that I attended intended to teach more about these themes and widen our knowledge. As fashion is one of the leading polluting industries in the world it is imperative that I and others should start incorporating these themes within our work if we aren’t already. Diversity could be incorporated in my field of work by choosing a range of models from different backgrounds. Being in the styling sector of fashion, sustainability could be shown by using brands that are sustainably and ethically friendly. I have always been interested in sustainable brands but progressing through this unit we have touched upon how important this is within the industry. Although this may be on some people’s minds, there are still many major brands that have not adjusted to these themes. Diversity is something that should be thought about in all industries as well as fashion because everyone deserves the chance to be portrayed in a positive way. The key problems are being touched upon by the industry more and more by thinking about race, gender, sexual preference, sexual orientation, and more. Social responsibility fits perfectly with the other two themes as all three themes combined would progress the industry into brighter times. I definitely will incorporate all key themes into my work and make sure sustainable brands are being used in the process and using a wide range of models and not only representing a small minority of people. I enjoyed learning about these themes more in-depth and everyone who is involved within fashion should integrate these into their work. Being a stylist opens up a wide audience and by showing that the job is still effective still while using these themes will hopefully inspire more people to include sustainability, diversity, and social responsibility within their work. 

Blog post 1

By attending all the lectures regarding the better lives unit there were three lectures that I enjoyed the most which was lecture 1, lecture 3 and lecture 10. These covered a range of topics within the fashion industry and has consequently helped my view broaden wider. 

The first lecture in which I enjoyed was lecture 1 and this outlined power within the fashion industry. Within this, a major question came up about who holds the power in the industry. Progressing through the lecture power can mean a range of things and can be portrayed in different lights. Power could mean fashion, money, media, consumer, protest or you. An example is fashion has always been a symbol of power within culture and how people dress can symbolize a range of things such as how much money they have or what their job involves. This has changed my perception of power as power can be identified in everyone, not just people with high paying jobs or known people. 

The second lecture in which I liked was lecture 3 and this outlines emerging technologies in fashion. Technology has become a very important resource in everything we do as fashion gets vital information from technology to progress through the years. It helps with interaction, communication, and collaboration on a huge scale around the world to further improve collections and more. On the other hand, technology can destroy techniques that have been used in the past and proven to work, an example of this is that the iPhone has overtaken the place of big camera companies and will continue to reduce sales within camera companies. Overall this lecture has helped me realize that technology can be a good and bad thing but overall will help the widespread coverage of fashion around the world and connect communities in a diverse way. 

The final lecture I enjoyed was lecture 5 and this outlined nature. Nature is a huge part of the world we live in and fashion is one of the leading pollutants to nature around the world. Exploring the links between natural systems and fashion products within this lecture has highlighted that more and more brands are trying to become sustainable but some of the major fast fashion brands need to progress with sustainability immediately. All living systems are now in decline and many species have become extinct. Some of the problems that have occurred due to the fashion industry include deforestation and intensive agriculture. This has opened my eyes that nature is under tremendous stress from the fashion industry and I will continue to not buy into fast fashion companies and prioritize sustainable brands when shopping, and so should you!