Sung Won Park

I chose Taanya Garg’s Blog post 2,3: Reflections on how the better lives themes might change Taanya’s work in the future and Reflections on how the better lives themes have influenced her project outcome and how she developed: fashion PR.

First of all, I truly agreed with  Taanya’s opinion that we as young creatives we can use our fashion abilities to give positive influence to the world and suggest ultimate alternatives for fashion sustainability, ethical and ecological.  As I wrote my reflections above, I am a person who believe the power of fashion.  And we can virtually change our world. We can create an image to make people think more seriously about our mother nature, environments, and diversity through races, shapes, and LGBTQ.

Second, as she mentioned on blog post 3. To complete our successful projects ( assessments or personal works) we have to work more collaboratively and accommodative with our team members. Especially in this global pandemic season. We all know we can’t have a big practical meeting at least for several months, what we can do at this moment is to believe each other’s abilities to make more joyful and amazing works.

Overall, Taanya organised a great insight into her Better Lives journey, as fashion journalism student. And I can find myself along her relfections. Furthermore,  she has the strength to show her opinions and not shied to say the right things. Taanya shows great awareness and knowledge of current matters in the industry. She is not afraid to motivate others. Her reflections made me want to start my actions as a young fashion creative.

I chose navigating through clothing for better lives workshop and I am deeply satisfied with this (costume design) course. Now I am currently in fashion styling and production course to be a stylist but I would like to call my future career as an image maker. As an Image maker I want to show a story through images or videos with using fashion as method. 

When I have a shoot for my personal work, designer friends work or fashion brand I usually like to add some storylines. Or at least write a main sentence for it. When I put a story line for fashion shoot I can feel that image qualities are being upgraded. It’s because story lines make big synergy with garments and sometimes it touches consumers’ heart. To create a storyline I have to characterised a character(model) and have to guess what do they like to do, how do they gonna wear clothes, and what kind of attitude do they go to show through images or videos. 

During my 2nd class with Jessica, we characterised a real life person. Jessica gave us life-style portrait images and asked us to imagine their name, age, job, favourite music, and secrets. I have got a young male portrait photo who looks like very artistic and calm. I named him as Aidan shore who is 31 years old, life style magazine editor, like to listen old French pop music, love to wear womenswear and stole some garments form his sister. We also did re-characterised  a fiction ‘Hansel and Gretel story’. I was especially attracted to the role of Hansel and Gretel’s stepmother. It’s because every time when I watched a movie or series I truly believe that all villain have a hidden story.  To re-create a character Jessica gave me some tips. Think about 1.how do they describe themselves, 2, how others describe them, and how story tell who they are. So she was reborn as a woman with hidden children by me. Thus to show her grief I would like to dress her up with deep purple tutu, velvet black cape and various rings.  It might sounds like I justified her misdeed, but the beauty of costume design is I can show new characters by fashion.

Like these kind of activities, we experienced how to make a character with various elements.

These taught me a precious and fresh lesson which I can adapt to my shoot storylines. And also can show characters’ personalities with proper creative objects. 

The main 3 themes from better lives lectures are Diversity, Social responsibility and Sustainability which we always talked about and sensitive. I think learning somethings new ( which we didn’t know it before) is fun and fresh, but learning somethings that have often been talked about can seem boring. However during last few weeks, I have not felt bored. It’s because all the lectures were deeply analysed and developed.

Anyway even we had  high quality lecturers the main point is how do we go to adapt those things to our life styles and fashion industry. I usually wondering ‘Do we really 2 times of ready to wear( spring and summer, autumn and winter), 2 times of haute couture( spring and fall), and resort collections in a year?’ What I mean is do we really have to show those amazing pieces and looks with massive scales of virtual show. On the ecology view, it caused tremendous carbon foot prints, more than a thousand people are taking a flight and train to come to main key cities and also taking a taxi to get fashion show location. Furthermore, on the sustainability view, designers from luxurious brands are consuming all the materials just once to show beautiful garments. For instance, Raf Simons used a million of flowers for 2012 Christian Dior haute couture show and Jacquemus shaved four rows of lavender fields to make a space for publics. I tried to find out how Dior handled those flowers after show and how Jacquemus controlled lavender fields after show but they never reveal these answers. 

  Now, as COVID – 19 happened students are taking their online class, companies doing their works at home, having a meeting through zoom and fashion brands are also doing their shoot through online materials. I was especially surprised at fashion shoot could be done at home without practical meetings. All we did at university and will do in the future are collaborations with various people. And as a fashion student sometimes when I had actual meetings with designers or photographers we could not reach to our own ideal and disappointed to each others. However, I have got lessons from Claire swift’s collaboration lecture. To go through our journey we have to building trust within our team and attribute. Even we really want to give up, we still have to remind our end vision in mind and maintain it. 

I don’t know about post covid-19 life, but I am sure that we might could not have a life we had before. And as a fashion student what I have to be changed is believing my team members ability and protect our end visions. 

Reflections on how better lives lectures influenced your thinking : 

During my CHS class Nick highly recommended Anna’s culture lecture. Honestly at that moment  none of better lives lectures helped me to think deeply or newly. So I watched her lecture with half doubt. And it made me feel that there are other people who think like me.  

In part of my heart I was always wondering  ‘Can fashion ever be sustainability? And ‘ Is it possible to put these two words ‘sustainable’ and ‘fashion’ together?’. A word sustainable means: able to be maintained at a certain rate. However from my point of view fashion couldn’t be preserving at specific level it will be worse every years. It’s because fashion industry is consisted of consuming and manufacturing. It means if no one buy clothes this industry couldn’t be run. So when Anna started her lecture with a word ‘Consumer culture’ I was very curious about what she would say.

 Especially last two years, big luxury brands (Chanel, Louis Vuitton etc) and people who are working in fashion industry are talking about sustainability more often and importantly. Regardless of how, I truly believe, main key is up to consumers. Anna mentioned that consumer culture can be loose defined as the desire and ability to live beyond basic needs. We are buying clothe and stuff which Anna called as ‘Totem’ to reward ourselves and to show I have very successful and life. And I reckon that the most easiest way to show our wealthy is buying luxuries, wearing those and posting it on instagram. And this point trig consumer to buy more and show more. 

Then if we are not able to stop people to consuming more what we can do as fashion producers.

I have got an answer from an interview with Stella McCartney (The sustainable Fashion handbook by Sandy Black: 2012: Thames& Hudson). Her brand is well known as using eco friendly leather and fur. Furthermore, she usually showing her ready to wear collections under sustainability theme. So that sometimes she is reflected as environmentalist. Anyway at the interview she emphasised that she is a fashion designer. Her role in fashion industry is make beautiful luxurious things. And she loves people walk in to store and don’t even know her clothes are manufactured with organic or faux leather. At the end when they already fell in love with her clothes they will NOTICE what it is made up of. 

Thus, as fashion producers we have to make people wondering and curious through our works. Create an image or a video which can draw consumers’ attention and spend time to read producer’s intention. Giving a revealed answer is not powerful but, if we using consumer culture and psychology in good way and showing proper creativity works which can work as trigger. They will concern harder than us.