Wanlin Ying

Thanks for Julia Bialy’s blog, she share many meaningful opinions about the three aspects of better lives，and it makes me feel more about how to make better lives for the world.

In her first blog post, she addressed the issue of cultural consensus.This is one aspect of cultural and social sustainability, as the fashion industry has grown, the problem of cultural appropriation has become more apparent.Everyone deserves respect for their culture as well, it is also extremely important in a world of cultural diversity.But many designers may inadvertently ignore this point, resulting in cultural erosion.Julia realized that, it is important to respect other cultures while focusing on the diversity of fashion innovations, and make every effort to create more socially empathetic projects, bring consumers together to create more new possibilities.This is our younger generation of designers to pay attention to the problem,Julia pointed this out very pointedly in her blog.This is a good solution to the problem of cultural diversity, teaches us to bring cultural concepts into our works and to integrate consciousness. 

 Environmental sustainability is essential to the good life.Waste materials, such as cardboard and old newspapers, can be recycled for secondary creation, which is a good way to reduce material waste.Julia also mentioned this aspect, it is reflected in our course.However, for anyone, material waste is inevitable.Fashion plays a very important role in representing one’s identity. So it is inevitable that some old clothes will be discarded.Waste is also a problem in the cosmetics and skincare industries,Julia mentions that, overconsumption is prevalent in these industries, this means a lot of waste packaging.So what we should do is to avoid excessive waste and make our beauty routine as simple as possible while protecting our skin.

  Each person is unique, which is most reflected in the diversity of each person’s thinking, Julia’s words are very inspirational.As a designer, we should put ourselves in others’ shoes, so that we can create more satisfying works, this is the essence of diversity.It is the uniqueness of each person that leads to the diversity of the work, we should bring ourselves and others into the work.This is not only what Julia wants to achieve, but also what I have been working on.

  In her third blog, she mentioned one of your artistic creation processes, which enlightening to me.It is difficult to judge the criterion of right and wrong, good and bad in artistic creation, artistic freedom can have unexpected effects on every designer.

In the first fashion drawing class, we explored how to use points and lines to draw the human body in different positions, which reminds me of Gianfranco Ferre, who once served as the chief designer of Dior, Gianfranco Ferre has always been famous for his love of simple lines, elegant materials and bright colors. I didn’t know much about illustration before, but through the introduction of sue, I learned more about Illustrator. We also used different materials, such as fingers, sponges and so on, to create the paintings we wanted.

In the second drawing class，because of the novel coronavirus, we can only learn the drawing skills by watching videos. This course pays more attention to the proportion of human body, and the angle, for example, the relationship between the body and the head, the connection point between the arms and the waist, and I have tried to draw several pictures myself, because I can’t go out to buy materials. I use ballpoint pen and pigment.But in the process of painting, I found that it was not as simple as in the video. I drew carefully and not smoothly,I always can’t grasp her proportion, for example, the head painting is too large, or the arm painting is too thick ，but I believe that as long as I practice more, there will be progress.

In the third drawing class，the main purpose is to pay attention to the proportion of the human body, but at the same time, I also learned to paint a large area of color before painting the details. Before that, I like paints the part of the painting, such as painting the body after the head when is finished, but now I have learned to see a painting in a larger area, to draw the structure and proportion more accurately，I find it easier to draw like this. Even if the painting is wrong, it can be modified in time .

The last drawing class we need to  focus on drawing faces .First measure the proportion of the face, like the distance between the corners of the eyes, the proportion between the forehead, eyes, the bottom of the nose and the mouth. Then draw the shadow on eye socket, nose，make the whole look more three-dimensional.We also used the materials that every family would use, cardboard, which was originally to be thrown away as garbage, but after painting, it became a work of art.

Better lives unit will finish, I learned a lot of skills. In the meantime,, I really learned about sustainability, social responsibility and diversity of fashion.

 I know the main purpose of better live unit is to let us explore diversity, social responsibility and sustainability, as we all know, sustainable development is a hot topic now. Fast fashion has a serious environmental pollution. Through learning from better live unit, we can learn more about fashion industry.

I chose fashion illustration. Through these weeks of study, I learned that fashion illustration is an important part of the service industry. Thanks sue dray so much for being in better live unit I have taught us a lot of different illustration skills and introduced many different styles so that I can find my own painting style. To be honest, I don’t think my painting is very good-looking, but I still love it. For me, interest is very important. It doesn’t matter whether the painting is good-looking or not, as long as I have my own unique style. This is conducive to the development of the diversity of fashion industry.

In order to learn more about fashion illustration at home, I learned a lot about illustrators through instagram including a Chinese illustrator named Xiaoxiao, who graduated from CSM. I like her style very much. She can always make the real things around full of color, but at the same time, there are many people do not like her painting style. There is also an illustrator named Anna kovecses. She is a Hungarian illustrator. In my spare time, I often copy her paintings, which is very lovely. She likes to draw some local paintings, and she likes to use colors with high saturation, and the color matching is very comfortable，In my opinion, it’s very difficult to match a good-looking picture with a lot of high saturation colors, but she does it very well.

In fact, I clearly feel the diversity of fashion, After contacting so many illustrators, I found that everyone’s style is very different. The diversity of fashion needs everyone’s efforts and different styles Designers, illustrators and so on, so as to meet the different aesthetic and needs of customers.

In terms of brand selection, I chose chiveskella. There is only one garment in one style . They deconstruct and redesign the ancient style, that is Remade, which makes a lot of old clothes have a new face, so that each of our clothes is unique. I think, whether it’s out of the concept of environmental protection or to open up a way to show creativity, remade to a certain extent embodies the spirit of unrepeatable craftsmanship.

Thanks for sharing the connection between the fashion and the life of human. After attending the class, I realize now, that fashion can also create a lot of well-being for human and society, which forces me to think about how I can bring happiness into the fashion that I design.

 Well-being is a very abstract concept. Hedonic well-being and Eudemonic well-being are two theories of well-being. In lecture, tutor has also listed many factors that make well-being, they are, economic, physical, subjective and domain.

 Hedonic well-being is an extremely well method to use in fashion. Which means reducing negative affection and increasing satisfaction. So, it’s important for a designer to design something that can make people feel happier, in other words, to design something satisfying to prove the society. All we have to achieve is this: other people can take your work as treasure. And the new things can always make people happy.

 More don’t always means better. People want to have more choice, and freedom, I was greatly inspired by the lecture inclusivity. In order to satisfy consumers, we must design various types of clothing to increase consumers’ choice.

 I also attend the lecture about environment. It made me deeply realize the importance of fashion to the world. But fashion also causes a lot of problems for the world. This brings us to the two sides of fashion, and made me think about it more deeply.

 Laura’s talk made me understand how irrational some of fashion’s work is. Not only is it unpopular but it causes a lot of pollution. So I think we should consider the three aspects of practicality and environment when designing our own works. It is the real need for many people, also for the environment. We all should make a contribution to protect the world.

 Everyone is unique, which means that everyone had their own opinion, so appropriate communication and reference is necessary. The same is true of the cultural diversity of the world, it’s important for every designer to recognize this point, because as a designer, innovation in a variety of areas is extremely important, this is one of the criteria for the excellence of a work.

 All the better live lectures inspired me to become a better designer. I  am a student, majoring in fashion industry. These lectures made me realize how to do fashion better and how to spread fashion better. I’m looking forward to the change I made in the future.