Yushan Chen

After a viewing some blogs, I decide to pick Carlos’ blog about how she reflects and think about the themes she chose. The reason why I choose to comment this blog is she has her own unique views on better lives unit, and the development direction of combining social responsibility and diversity is worthy of my thinking. And she pointed out that in the development process of the fashion industry, the impact of certain problems has become increasingly severe, customers and creators began to realize that it is particularly important to reform the brand.

The fashion industry began to change its dynasty, and at the same time it begins to assume the consequences and social responsibilities it should bear. As a fashion photographer, I can also deeply understand that a good teamwork and exchanges with people in other fields are very important ways of learning on fashion. In today’s society where various cultures are in conflict with each other, tolerance is the premise of all reasonableness. Whether we want to express a critique of a social problem or an understanding of another culture, we should first ensure that there are no any unnecessary ambiguities, then try to understand and learn from each other, and exchange ideas with other people. The interpretation of diversity is also a commitment to yourself and the social responsibilities included in the works.

In addition, I strongly agree with a sentence in this blog: “The diversity goes farther than just male and female or white or black skin.” Nowadays, everyone advocates aesthetic diversity and cultural integration. The fashion industry is also trying to make itself more international. This is not only manifested in those high-end fashion brands, but also in the fast-paced industry. The brand’s look book is inspiring to use models with different skin tones, and the market for large and plus large sizes has gradually expanded. Everything seems promising, but in my opinion, this is just the fashion industry is broadening the diversity of staff and fashion budge the oversize body. The real diversity, it should be more like a collision and understanding between cultures and social attitudes, also a generalized cognition to different groups that we didn’t know before.

Social responsibility is not only the goal of the fashion industry to provide the public with a necessary correct concept, but also the change that takes self-examination as the first condition. In my opinion, social responsibility should be based on dealing with problems, establishing a correct concept for the public as the goal, and developing a concept of combining long-term work directions. Diversity is about understanding each other ’s culture, accepting and helping all kinds of disadvantaged groups, fighting against discrimination and providing more opportunities for people with different styles. At the end, just like Carols said: “We can all improve the way we work to change the bad parts of this industry, and we can start by changing stereotypes and creating more human art.”

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All along, in my opinion, fashion is not for the whole society or the general public, and it is not able to deeply involve social fields such as politics, but now I decided to change this view. Through continuous learning and exploration over the past few weeks, I am deeply aware that the development of a brand is also inseparable from its social status and the ideas it conveys to the public. Building a good and positive social image is like wearing a formal dress when attending a meeting. Starting from an objective first impression, the brand can get a certain amount of positive attention.

“Being in touch with the company’s audiences, creating strong relationships with them, reaching out to the media, initiating messages that project positive images of the company, assuming social responsibility, and even adjusting company policies.” As generating an increase in goodwill and brand awareness, Public Relations is the responsibility to build a trust between the brand and their audience, protecting their reputation. However, if a new brand needs to make a good public relation, the first thing for them is just to take a clear direction and find the right position in all the sides.

Therefore, when I chose House of Sheldon Hall as my brand, I released that is quite hard for my team. House of Sheldon Hall definitely can be said as a totally new brand, even it started a few years. Because of the one-year interruption, it also makes a big change of the brand style, but fortunately the interruption didn’t make it worse, actually advancing it a high level. When we saw the 2019 and 2020 seasonal, we just know how we could make a public relation for this brand. In the current public relation, fashion media need effective to deliver the message which wants to communicate with audience. As the traditional media is replacing by social media, collaboration is the main way to build a landscape. At the same time, having a cause or charity also a good idea to develop a brand, that can make more synthetical. House of Sheldon Hall is a womenswear brand, making fashion as arts, with the unique British culture and target market are women brave enough to live out their fantasy’s through fashion. Therefore, we choose Feminist as the cause, looking for a charity as a long team partner which is called UltraViolet, also can advertise messages by donating. 

In conclusion, in the Better Lives unit, Messaging Fashion class, I learned how to develop a brand effectively and knew the current connection with fashion media and fashion brands and the whole society. Fashion is not only about giving people the right to beauty, but also using various fields of fashion to examine the problems that exist in society and urgently need to be dealt with. The success of a brand is not only due to the annual sales and how to lead a new fashion style, but also whether the brand has fulfilled its social responsibilities and the unique brand philosophy it wants to convey to the audience.

In the Better Lives unit, there are three themes included: Sustainability, Diversity and Social responsibility. Through the lectures I ready have a clear cognition about these three themes. Also, Better Lives push me into a different viewing I had never seen before about the whole fashion industry, and I find there are a lot of issues still need to solution, whatever is about the nature, humanities or the whole society. Therefore, as a part of the fashion industry, working for the media community, I realize that I have the responsibility to tell public the truth, and using my technical skills, using the camera to show how is the fashion industry going nowadays. 

After I have a basic understanding about these three themes, they reflect me to think how I can progress my career or job in the future. Because the global disaster problem brought by the apparel industry is becoming more and more serious, sustainable development has become the signboard used by various company brands. It is undoubtedly worthy of admiration to study the new industrial structure, industrial prospects and characteristics for the environment and society. At the same time, it greatly increases the diversity of products and brings more choices to customers. But while we try to deepen sustainable development and diversification, we cannot ignore the social responsibilities we have to bear for this. 

Although many brands have begun to move toward sustainable development, outside of the industry, consumers still use fast fashion, which is replaced frequently, as the main channel for consumption. There is no stable balance between business and fast fashion in a short period of time. As a necessary way for sustainable fashion, slowing down fashion is the first condition, similar to social recycling of old things, moral fashion, etc. Activities are what people need most attention at present. So how to make the entire society aware of these top issues in the fashion industry, how to raise these to a global hazard is the social responsibility that the entire fashion industry needs to bear, only to find that the problem will not improve anything, also it need take people to act to solve the problem. In this regard, fashion media is the simplest and most direct transmission channel. 

As a fashion photographer, making images is one of the most important things in the work, and photos should be showed about what I want to tell the public. In the current era of electronic digitization, I have to admit that the influence of text is far less than the image. Fashion photography can convert various environmental and social issues into images that have a very visual impact, and then use advertising media with a widespread, communicate to the whole society. And in today’s special period, it is the best time for the media to convey to the public. Because of the spread of the corona virus, people are forced to choose to isolate themselves, and the fashion industry has been severely affected. It is conclusive that the fashion industry will bring about an innovation. Therefore, during this period, we should show the public the dangers of fast fashion to the environment and society, and call on people to consume rationally, not blindly, and let slow fashion begin to become the mainstream.

In the current society, have to admit that people care about fashion so much and also fashion always changes so fast. We can see fashion everywhere especially on the internet or any social media like Instagram. And think of the digital part of fashion, posting photos is the way that we can show others our styles, and how do we dress always influence our own experiences, like our parents, friends, maybe some designer or our culture backgrounds(religion, values, culture, brands, place) and all of those issues are the way we identity ourselves and relation to others as the social act. As we see, people are social animals, so they formed all kinds of groups, then these groups are then confused together to become a larger ethnic group. Therefore, if someone wants to make a change, first, this person needs to have a basic understanding of the environment which he/she lives.

Society + Fashion

“What do you think of when you hear ‘social’ and ‘fashion’ together?” on the Lecture of Society which was taken by Katelyn Toth-Fejel, she gave this question out at the beginning of the lecture, that make me think a lot. Most people might think several issues about the whole fashion industry like the fair wages for the workers, if them work in a safe place, whatever access to education and the equal opportunities. And the main problem for all these issues in the whole fashion industry is fast fashion. As Katelyn said, fast fashion is a phrase which was coined to describe inexpensive clothing produce rapidly trends, cheaply and expected to have a short life. Increasing access to cheap clothing for consumers is not only means that buying more short-life clothes, and low wages paid to garment workers, also promoting a ‘throwaway’ culture. Fashion also has a role in the social change and only have small changes in daily life, sometimes people easy to overlook fashion resources. 

And another interesting fact is people chose their fashion influenced by their behavior like the distance they living to the shopping center.

Social + Sustainability

Fashion is a way to understand how people behave about the issues they need to face. As Babbie said, “If one wants to change society, one needs to understand the logic of how it operates.” To recreate old product is an important way to make sustainability on fashion industry. The three-legged stool metaphor makes the ‘sustainability’ immovable, ‘environment, economy and society’. 

Society + Satisfaction

The form by Max-Neef, developed a taxonomy of basic human needs and they ways in which they can be satisfied. And strategies to Resist ‘Disposable Fashion’ is trying to make people enjoy fashion without buying new. Changing the conversations is a hard way to make fashion has a strong relationship with the complex issues.

At the end, there is an interesting project which is taken by Charlotte James and the Guardian/Clementine Schneiderman called Ffasiwn Source, which is really inspire me.