Yangyang Wu

For this peer review, I would like to reflect on Jiyong Lee’s second blog, which reflects on “how better lives themes might change how you work in the future.” We are both in the same class. Therefore we might have the same interest in how technology would lead us to the future as creative directors.
In the blog, Jiyong mentioned her awareness of people is considering less of their consumer behavior than she imagined, as the word ‘sustainability’ frequently shows on the publics’ view. She takes ‘leather jackets’ as examples and offers a diagram from 2004-2020 to interpret the fact that people have raised more interest in leather jackets than fur coat recently. It is good to see the evidence she gave, which contains the technology and experiment we have in the class; it also reminds me of the truth that there are large numbers of consumers are lack of knowledge to how sustainability can impact our future lives.
It is interesting to see that experience that she can not find any advertisement and sustainable collection of H&M online, while they claimed they had to produce an exclusive line for it. It occurred to me that even though a lot of brands is catching up the ‘trend’ of sustainability, no matter if they do care about our environment or people’s working condition, there is a possibility that some fashion companies could use the sustainable slogan as part of their promotions or strategies. For those fashion brands that take their benefits in the first place and unwilling to lose their existed consumers, they may keep their producing process and add a ‘sustainability’ line as another way of extending their audience group, at the same time be political right and catching up the trend.
As a creative direction students who work on media, I realized we are a transmission of fashion brands to consumers in some way. I agree with the point she brought up that ‘it might be lack of advertisement.’ It seems like our responsibility to educate and convey the impact of ‘sustainability’ and the social responsibility we shouldered to the public, as media have a phenomenal influence on public opinion and view. It would be great to use the technology we introduced in class such as ‘blockchain’ ‘google trend,’ bring them to public eyes to make them realize there is a way to supervise the fashion brands’ commitment and to convince people to concern about sustainability and the fact that their behaviors can impact fashion industry in a significant way.
It is an excellent blog to read about. It elicits my thinking of troubles we have inside of the fashion industry and reminds me of the obligation we media students have while working in the industry, although it would be really good to see more details about the author’s proposal of using technology in his or her future work.

In this term we continued the better lives session online, as a creative student, the combination of technology and fashion always attracted me, based on the infinite possibilities they reclaimed and the new trend and aesthetic shows when they go together. Before I took this session, I only have a plain understanding of the technology used in the fashion field. For example, I saw designers do VR runways, some of them do virtual figures instead of using real models and clothes for their promotion, and I admire designers like Hussein Chalayan who use technology directly in his garment design, with fascinating outcome and performance in the runway. They caught my eyes visually, but there was never a chance for me to open the door and go deeper to know the process.
In the session ‘emerging technology in fashion’, it educates me with the trending technology we have that had or could have a significant impact on the industry, including fashion. We introduced coding, bitcoin, VR, and AI technology; it is fun to know the rationale and do a little experiment with them. I remembered in the session introduced Artificial Intelligence. Nick shared a website that AI analyzes and reflects on the sentences you typed, to create a virtual storyline interacted with people. The AI technology also allowed to gathered analyze thousands of runways picture to make figure estimate the fashion trend for a particular season and evaluate the next direction, which might be more accurate and certainly more effective than human-being. It both impressed me and made me a little worried about some people’s career status in the future.
For our outcome, we proposed several ideas like ‘vintage trend app’ ‘Green 3D’ ‘Local Demand’….We build a ‘SWOT’ form evaluating the strength and weaknesses of each idea, which is a good opportunity for us to summarize our understanding of those technologies and do critical thinking about their impact on the fashion industry and our future life. We finally choose to focus on the vintage trend forecasting app, as we agreed the extension of the second-hand clothes market has a huge contribution to sustainability at the same time, not necessarily had a bad influence on current designers’ benefit. This app allows people to see the former and forecasting the next trend, also offers a good way to promote vintage clothes and transmit ‘sustainability’ to a broader audience.
Through this process of proposing final decision, I have a better understanding of how to convey my creative ideas by using the technology; When it comes to the fashion business, I learned ro analyze the proposal by different perspective, and make more teamwork engaged for better opportunities and solutions. In my future study and work, I am looking forward to using the knowledge and skills I caught in the better lives units.

During the lecture session of ‘better lives’ from the past two weeks, I’ve been building up a complete construction of understanding what sustainability, diversity, and social responsibility is. It is our obligation to convey those elements when we communicate and produce creativity since we students are a crucial part of the fashion industry.

Sustainability has been mentioned rapidly by the fashion industry as people realized the fashion cause a significant pollution problem. Vast numbers of people have reached an agreement to reduce the waste of clothes by recycling them, reducing the purchase or buying second-hand clothes, as the power of a single person can have a huge impact on the whole industry. The retailers and fashion company are also being part of this ‘trend’, there are fashion brands share the concern and devote to sustainability, for example, Marine Serre realese a video of useing recycled and reclaimed material for their collection, with her questioning the overproduce phenomenon in the fashion industry and suggesting the use of recycled textile won’t change the final design at all. Meanwhile, some fashion company was doubted to use ‘sustainability’ as marketing strategies. For example, H&M claim that they start a sustainable collection while they keep overproducing, and consumer are not able to see the evidence to prove their statement. And it is also controversial if people are willing to buy the ‘sustainable’ label as similar design but a higher price than the regular collection. 

As I majored in creative direction for fashion, it occurred to me how we are supposed to convey the idea of sustainability? Media is the bond of transmitting the idea from brands to the consumer; it is our responsibility to educate consumers and get them aware of their behavior can have a significant impact on the fashion system. As a student, the simplest things we can achieve are, for example, reduce the waste of paper with producing more in digital as possible, think before purchase clothes instead of following the trend and pursuing lower price than quality, and transmit the importance of being sustainability and it impacts on our lives and environment to people around us.

 In the session of ‘Emerging technologies in Fashion’, I’ve been introduced ‘bitcoin’ and ‘blockchain,’ with it applying in the fashion industry, it is possible to create a transparent and impartial environment to urge the fashion brands devoting to real, sustainable action. Meanwhile, with the decentralized system, it builds up a community with inclusivity and diversity that offers more possibilities for people to cooperate. 

  With the knowledge I ketchup in ‘emerging technology in fashion’, I wish I can use those skills to practice, and remind myself all the time of the truth that we do not just produce creativity, we both shoulder the responsibility to educate people who are not familiar with sustainability. Therefore I am looking forward to the technology we learn and the proposal we come up with in better lives units to construct a better fashion system than what we have now.

From all the collection of lecture, the one attaches my attention was “ Emerging technologies” by Nick Almond. The lecture discussed how emerging technology impact industry, including fashion, it broadens my horizon to see how technology changed our life and fashion industry in the past ten decades.
Technology brings infinite possibilities to our life and transforms realization into real action. As Nick said, the value of technology is about utility, reflects on how to use it, and if people want to use it. Blockbuster video replaced by Netflix, the offline video renting system was replaced by the online platform in a short time, which is easy, convenient to use and got the most significant resources; Kodak invented the digital camera and was defeated by what they made in the first place, years later the digital camera was replaced by the smartphone. It happened so fast and always catch us by surprise, technology is about the trend, and if you can follow as it developed so quickly, so does fashion.
As the lecture goes on, I am interested in the field of bitcoin and blockchain, people mentioned this concept for several years, but I never got the opportunity to get familiar with it. Bitcoin, as a decentralized digital currency, provides a circumstance with open and transparent data that can not be deleted, the information would be shared, and there is no way to fake it. It provides anarchy that people can collaborate without a third institution, which I believe is efficient and fair. The concept of blockchain has been brought to the fashion industry. It allows people to track the supply chain of the fashion company, get direct information such as what is these clothes made by and where are they come from. Sustainability attaches importance to the fashion industry, fast fashion company like H&M claim they are devoting it and produced sustainable line, in that case, we are able to use blockchain to give brands more pressure and find out if their products are sustainable.
The idea of blockchain could be fascinating, but we are also facing the problem of current immature technique, and it is complex and challenging to use. As technology do not always offer positive impacts on our life, we need to pay attention to their negative side. The XR technology is trending nowadays, It allows people upload videos to make the clothes appear on the body, or try the makeup on your face or change your hair color, it brings the audience a new and exciting immersive experience in the fashion industry, but is it going too far in ethical principle? We are leasing our personal information to other institutions, our iris, face, and body is being part of the company’s database, there is no more privacy, and the technology like ‘Deepfake’ shows human-being can cross any moral line when they got the power. As technology is unpredictable, we never know what is coming next; this lecture is a big opening for me to embrace it.
I am looking forward to bring technology into the fashion industry as we intend to build a diverse and sustainable future.