Giulia Palmerini

For my final post, I decided to review Chisun An’s third post which definitely caught my attention. I decided to review this post because I attended the same project and I found really interesting to see how another student interpreted and developed it. They described firstly how challenging was to connect the project to a fashion communication theme and then how they found an interesting “wicked problem” related to fashion and to our current life. 

By reading this post I found some similarities to my own project and some differences that definitely enriched my experience. When I was choosing my wicked problem I didn’t think about a connection between it and fashion. I was really impressed by how they found such a current theme as new technologies in fashion and how they can affect our future, especially after the period we are living. I also appreciate the fact that they improved their project by following all the advice and feedback they received during classes. It is not easy to accept criticism and to start thinking about how to improve the project again. I found helpful the feedback I got as well, and I think it is a great way to share opinions and to learn from the others. As far as the project is concerned, the idea of a post-apocalyptic reality was really fascinating. I loved how they developed the theme of the new technologies in fashion and how they could become part of our everyday life after this pandemic. It really made me think about how our lives will change after this historical period and I wondered if we will ever have our everyday life back. I really appreciate the project because it raises awareness and it didn’t answer the issue and this was the main aim of critical design. 

In conclusion, I would say that, through their post, I understood how fashion can always be related to the world around us and can be used to develop huge issues such as technology and a global virus. I am also happy about how everyone found this project really interesting and how it changed our ways of analyzing a problem. After this project, we will be all aware of how important is to share a problem with other people and to raise awareness about it. 

Last Monday I attended the last class of my Better Lives project: critical design. Back to November, I remember I immediately chose this project because, even though I didn’t know what it exactly was about yet, I found really interesting the idea of using images and clips to analyze a problem. 

However, it was when we started that I really understood what we were asked to do. Our teacher Fabienne explained us that we were supposed to create a trailer (and a presentation about it) about a “wicked problem” we were interested in, with the aim to evolve this problem and not to solve it. At first, I found the idea really challenging, since I realize this was the first time I was creating something just in order to raise awareness on something without expressing my opinion.

After I understood the real aim of the project and I started feeling confident with this new kind of creative process, I started thinking about the problem I wanted to develop. Actually, the choice of the problem has not been the hardest part. In February, the better live lecture about empathy really inspired me and I was really interested in realizing something that could give importance to our relationships and the way we behave toward others. The connection with how people were behaving during the pandemic was immediate. My theme was then “egoism and how it affects our society”. I started my research by downloading some of the most touching clips from the internet. I found videos showing people fighting for food in supermarkets,  people escaping from red zones, Heads of State announcing ridiculous measures, and so on. I decided to edit these clips one after the other and to alternate them with some sentences about the fact that we are usually taught to be nice and caring. The aim of my trailer was to create a contrast between how we are taught to behave and how we actually act, without a personal opinion or a final conclusion. 

When I finally completed the project I felt I really understood its meaning. The various themes the Better Lives unit proposed us are all problems without a definitive answer. Through the lectures, we were all supposed to think about these huge issues and try to develop a personal opinion and a personal way to solve it. The best way to solve a problem is to push the largest number of people to be aware of it and to constructively think about it. And this is what we were asked to do through our projects. After I showed my trailer to the other members of the group, I got lots of interesting feedback about it. They all told me that thanks to this trailer they would have started to think more about their own egoism and their behaviors. Thanks to this project I feel that my way of thinking and creating are enriched and more positive.

The better lives unit helped us to understand the importance of sustainability, diversity, and social responsibility in our everyday life and mostly in our fashion studies and careers. The connection between these themes and our way of thinking is fundamental for the future of fashion and gives us the opportunity to change a world that is not always equal. As a journalist, I feel that it is my duty to give a voice to everyone and to find and highlight every diversity in order to connect people and communities. The aim of journalism is to inform people and to raise awareness by proposing more than one point of view. This is why I think that diversity and social responsibilities would influence the most my way of working.

Diversity is something that belongs to us. Our society is made of differences and gives us the opportunity to explore a large variety of situations every day. Diversity is something that we see in our everyday life and that gives us the freedom to be who we want to be. However, the world in which we all live is often not represented in by fashion. The fashion industry is still rooted in the obsolete idea of a “perfection” which doesn’t exist, a dangerous concept that brings a lot of people to have a wrong idea of what beauty is. But what is the real aim of fashion? 

Fashion can reach everyone everywhere, and inclusivity would be nothing without diversity. Fashion is for everyone and as a consequence, everyone should be represented and understood.

This is why I think that diversity and social responsibility are directly connected. The fashion industry has the responsibility to represent the real world, the real girls who would wear a dress and the real beauty which is represented by the differences that characterize us. 

As far as my journalism career is concerned, I find important to be able to write to everyone. I don’t want a girl to keep from buying a magazine just because it doesn’t represent her. There are so many differences to discover that can enrich and help us, we should just open our eyes and appreciate the world around us.

Through the better lives project, I have been able to develop my thinking about the connection between fashion and the world around us. I found particularly inspiring the lecture about empathy, firstly as a strong connection to my critical design project and secondly as personal enrichment. 

Nowadays, we are all used to think and behave according to our personal interests. Even though we are usually taught to be nice and caring, as we grow up we develop a strong and “natural” egoism. In our society, empathy is often considered a looser behavior. If you act for others’ good, you will never achieve your goals. However, the lecture really opened my eyes and showed me how important empathy is and it showed me that it is possible to relate it to fashion and art. 

Empathy is not about forgetting about ourselves and our needs, this is a completely wrong interpretation. Being empathic means making available everything you have to the others. And it is not about material goods. It could be a talent, as art and fashion are. Empathy is all about how you can reach people’s lives and needs. Thanks to the lecture, I found out that this is something that fashion can do really well. I was particularly interested in the process that an artist as a fashion designer has to follow in order to create something empathic. At first, I didn’t understand the “detachment” they must take at the end of the process. However, after a while, I really interpreted it as a symbol of something you do and give to someone else. This process reminded me of an experience I had some years ago when I was in Milan with my classmates. We visited the Blind Institute and they gave us the opportunity to experience the blind’s life for an hour. We went inside a dark room and we really felt everything like them. Anyway, at the end of the experience, we all went back to our everyday lives. After the immersion we had in this world, we were forced to detach ourselves from it. 

Empathy is not part of our everyday lives, but it should be. We are so focused on our own wellbeing that we always forget about how beautiful and fulfilling it is to share our love whit someone else.