Yang Liu

Personally I am so interested in photography as well, because I think photo shooting is the final link in a fashion design system, which is the way to show the fashion production to audiences. I chose Holly Morris’s third blog (https://1920betterlivessmc.myblog.arts.ac.uk/2020/05/01/blog-3-project-outcomes-and-personal-development-3/) because my eyesight was caught by the photo a lady is surrounding by hands holding oranges in her blog.  

Holly analysed the connection between Better Lives themes and her contemporary portrait photography project by giving the example of Danny Treacy’s ‘them’ shooting project. she introduced what is the shooting about and how did Danny style the model and background in that shoot. The idea “investigates the precariousness and vulnerability of the forgotten and the voiceless while conjuring up images of the fantasised other, in other words, the monster” is the theme of the project. I have resonance when she mentioned that Treacy’s work reflected with social responsibility and sustainability and based on her analysation I have some my own understanding as well.  Treacy’s work reminds people of the forgotten group of people in the communities which  reveals a social issues and he uses old assembled clothes to do the styling work, which inspired me a lot— fashion photography is not just limited in the fancy garments, we also can use second-hand clothes assembled ourselves to express our theme and aesthetic, so from this point,  portrait photography carries sustainability as well. Holly gave a short statement on diversity, however she could given more statement about this point, I would be more clear about the how portrait photography refer to diversity.

In the end she introduced us her process on her project practice,  though her statement, I know the importance of post-production in portrait photography.  She used only one orange creating the surrounding background, and the color tone responses the blue background as well,  which is so  vivid and energetic. Whats more, her make-up corresponds to the background color as well, the whole make-up aesthetic is in a vintage style. It is really an amazing work under the lockdown situation. 

My project for the Better live unit was make-up and breakdown, as a costume performance student, we were mentioned so many time about the importance of aesthetics and I think make-up is a significant way to express aesthetics as well, whats more, make-up plays the important  role in fashion shooting, film and theatre performance and catwalk, thus I want to explore how does make-up influence fashion. 

At beginning I thought the only connection between make-up and better lives themes is diversity, for it matters with what kind of skin color , which gender of the model you gonna use,I think based on this point we were taught the principle of skin tone( image1) that we can know the suitable color tone towards different race of models.  

        Image.1

Then I found that make-up and breakdown also relates to social responsibility. According to Claire Swift’s lecture opinion, social responsibility is to raise the awareness of social issues, and our practice should have wider and greater meaning than ourselves, we should do something for other people, just like what they did for women in the prison. When we were asked to created two different looks based on the word —fashion mistake and imperfection, I was thinking that the definition of mistake and be understood as “contrary to mainstream”Thus I focused on “at-risk” young people and marginalised communities. Due to proper caring, some young people’s life were ruined by drags. I want to raise society’s attention through my work. I used needles as elements, and smokey eyes represent a morbid condition. (image.2)  Whats more, we were told to use diverse materials to put the make-up, like paper, foil, beads and gems, even small toy objects. Now I understood why Shahidha claimed that diversity is not only to race, minority issues. The objects used in fashion can also be diverse, just like we used a lot of non-cosmetics. (image3.) 

            Image.2                

                          image.3

My final design was still based on “at-risk” young people, death  aesthetics is  popular among this kind of people. And another reason I chose this as my theme is that death and blood is easier to raise people’s attention on “at-risk” young people group, so I would have more chance to let more people to notice I used Lucas’s paining works (image.4) as inspiration, referenced his character’s typical smokey eyes and red lips. I gathered all the elements in my final design (image.5) 

IMAGE.4

IMAGE.5

However I didn’t find reasonable connection between my project and sustainability, and I don’t think this is the end of better units, so I am still exploring how sustainability  affecting fashion make-up and breakdown in my further study.  

The main themes in Better lives unit are diversity, social responsibility and sustainability. After watching the 10th lecture ( Cultural Sustainability), I know that the definition of sustainability is not only limited in environmental area, but also cultural area.

First of all, John talked about culture itself, culture can be defined as objective culture (food, clothes ) and subjective culture( norm, attitude, value). As a costume studied student, I think our duty is not only in bringing history alive through garments, but also convey the invisible information like the role’s character, the background of society development). The two pictures below are the portrait (image.1)  and film costume (image.2) for Elizabeth I of England, which is a good example to demonstrate that costume design is based on culture but has subtle subjective design from designer. 

           

Image.1                                                 image.2 

As a fashion studied student, we talk creativity more than history, but culture is the same important, because culture impacts a person and people dress themselves is defining a culture. To some degree, fashion is a carrier of culture expression. In the lecture John mentioned what is lazy fashion   and took Katy Perry’s shoes collection (image.3 ) as an example, claiming “ her collection of shoes was misrepresenting black culture because it didn’t really have deep understanding of what that culture is about… they just look nice. His words remind of the offensive advertisement from Dolce& Gabbana (image 4), as a Chinese, we think this is insulting ( for the stupid, conservative Chinese character was shaped in the video), but maybe from designer side, it is just his outcome by taking Chinese inspiration. Its hard to define who is right or who is wrong, if the designer could have known more about culture, this kind of misrepresentation would not happen as well. Thus, culture reference is not just taking some images and create something good-looking, it is more about developing fashion, creating real atheistic by deeply understanding of cultural diversity, as a designer we should draw diverse culture to let our design be more insightful and should know that aesthetic is more than good-looking,

           Image.3    

                                          image.4 

The development of sustaining culture needs to build up cultural competence, which means the ability to think, feel, act in ways that acknowledge, respect build upon ethnic socio-culture and linguistic diversity.

With the belief “design work is the expression of culture”, before I set about to put make-up for my project (make-up and breakdown), I would think what kind of culture appeal I want to express and I would find some reference pictures, being different from before, I would find more specific information about the artist about the art work itself to obtain cultural competence.

Blog process

Lecture reflection— emerging technology

At beginning, the reason why technology develops is introduced. Technology allows us to do things we couldn’t do before. But not all the technology are acceptable, technology has affordance, which means that tools( technology) can change depending on who is looking at it, if that is too complex and difficult, it wont develop neither. As I understanding, the development of technology has to lead the new trend of public’s requirement, just like the example from the lecture, the invitation of Netflix took place of old blockbuster video industry, and Netflix invested 18 billion dollars on content this year, which turned out that they had the most content than anyone else, and of course the Netflix made watching films online a new trend and it is holding the most resources, taking the main place in video market. That is how emerging technology grows, emerging technology is very very new and catches people by surprise. However, some emerging technology can be disruptive, because it leads to the elimination of old industry. In my opinion, we should hold a positive attitude towards technology development, more emerging technology are involved in daily life, more convenient our life will be and the more developed the whole society will be. 

Technology also can be  applied to fashion industry, for example, XR— a new emerging technology, stands for a group of things that mixed reality, which is visual. Clothes are completely generated by computers and have never actually been designed by humans. Then people can try on clothes before they get to do it, with the support of AI technology, customer can take a video of themselves and clothes are superimposed on their body. What’s more, customers are able to use blockchain track where the clothes came from and if if sustainable or not.  l thought emerging technology in fashion industry is more about how technology is used in fabric development, but it tends to focus on the visual experience, so I think the main propose of technology development is profit, technology in fashion think highly of customers shopping experience by developing visual technology the fashion industry satisfy costumers new need and give costumers more convenience, happening with which is more consuming from customers. 

In the end of the lecture, a question was put forward—ln which ways technology is changing things and what new tools that we can put in our tools. This question embodies the affordance of technology, which is mentioned at the first beginning. Emerging technology can affect the direction how fashion industry to go, so It is better to develop something new with a view to market requirement. Nowadays, the way of shopping has been focused a lot, a matter of course, the visual technology is growing to support.