Vittoria Gavazzi

Raquel Braz Da Silva’s final work:

Looking through the final designs of my class, Raquel Braz Da Silva’s project described in her third blog captured my attention the most. She took the theme of Personal Identity related to Social Responsibility and focused on the important topic of psychological wellness. 

Her idea was to transform mental health, an abstract issue that is just visible from the inside, into something of evident positioned right in the middle of the face with a contrasting colour. The pattern of the makeup is deteriorated, underlying the frailness provoked by this illness.

But what I found extremely intelligent in this project was that the pigments could be seen just by the person itself, it symbolized how extremely personal it is and it was important as a reminder for the character itself that our mental health is an issue that we don’t have to omit or it will worsen up. 

I like to believe that the wellness is personified and trapped inside of the mind and the blue and purple colours on the face are caused by it trying to free himself desperately from the inside, but he can’t and ends up just creating bruises.

I would have looked forward to see this project adapted to different people that manifest their mental wellness in different parts of the body, based on which part they consider more sensible or vulnerable, a sort of heel of Achilles.

I think that Raquel’s character well represented the awareness that we should have about this phenomenon that is typical within our generation. Mental health is an issue that many people live with and it’s important that society knowledges that it is real. This project aims to make the character see what is happening to herself and help her realize that she must get help from the start.

My course “Developing a Character” introduced me to theatrical make-up techniques to then be able to create and develop identities that were grounded in their own reality.

This project was very practical and it involved the model being the canvas of the artist. We had to ideate the outcome starting from the characteristics of the actor, keeping in mind that we worked with people of different gender and with different face shape, skin tone and age.

Because it was all focused around developing a character with a story, the human person and his actions, feelings and thoughts were central in this discipline. Therefore Diversity and Social Responsibility were the two main themes in this course. Performance is a small representation of the world, it should be inclusive in gender, size and age to represent the ‘real’ people, the ones that are sitting in the audience, creating a deeper empathic connection between them and the characters. The performers need a makeup, that doesn’t have to look just aesthetically pleasing and it has to have flaws. The actors physical appearance should communicate their story without them saying anything, the looks should speak for themselves and their appearances should convey their identity.

Unfortunately, due to the COVID19, our learning was limited to makeup so I decided to develop a character using the aging technique but reinterpreting the lines of age into expression lines. The subject had to be in a grounded reality so I decided to talk about my friend Umberto’s reality, a member of the lgbtq+ community to raise awareness that homophobia still hasn’t died. An unfortunate event took place when we were outside a bar in Central London and a man came up to us to ask for money for his family, he saw that Umberto was wearing high heel boots and assumed he was “one of them” and proceeded while insulting him on his sexual orientation. Even if we told him to get lost he didn’t stop but no one else outside our group of friends did nothing to stop him.

I wanted to describe the homophobic discrimination that happened to him by just using his face as a canvas, focusing on the contrasting emotions that he felt in that moment that were shock, anger, containment and annoyance. With my final project I wanted to give voice to a negative event that happened to an individual of the lgbtq+ community, no one should go through this experience.

The fashion industry and the performance world have different outcomes but at the same time they are parallel, they both have people at the centre of their projects and their creative message is intended for society. After Better Lives I hope to bring back to my degree of Creative Direction for Fashion the concept of realness and humanity in the type of people portrayed in the theatrical industry.

The Three Better Lives themes have been fundamental in shaping my thinking as a creative and also to become a better person. The main topics in this unit were taught by people who went in great depth in the industry’s issues and, by broadening my knowledge about them, made me more confident to face these subject areas in the future. 

I personally think that the key word between the three was ‘respect’: diversity and social responsibility underlined the importance of being respectful to every person we encounter in our journey, while sustainability to the planet. 

All of the themes have informed my creative practice but the humanitarian ones influenced me the most. Social Responsibility was the most significative in changing my personal approach to my future works because it introduced me to new concepts I never actually reflected on in great depth. Fashion and society are two words that have always gone hand in hand, they depend on each other. But how can we make fashion a medium to not just influence society with an aesthetic or message but to actually help people, especially the more unfortunate ones, to have a better life? 

Inside our university people have raised this question and started projects to try to overcome social issues but, before the Introduction by Claire Swift in the first week of Better Lives, I wasn’t aware of the existence of the Social Responsibility Program at London College Of Fashion. Hearing the stories of the projects Making for Change and Beauty’s Inside Magazine, made me realize how fashion can break boundaries by connecting people. We have to use our skills to create empathy around these issues and our privilege to be able to help people find their way back into society.

These themes have made me reflect on how I can imply my skills and my degree to make the fashion industry a better place. It’s not just about my creative growth, but it’s also about thinking how can our projects contribute positively to the society’s growth.

The three themes in this unit have been fundamental for me to engage on a deeper level with the fashion world. They have not only informed my creative practice but also my vision. These key concepts have been assimilated by me and now are part of my core values and thought process. Diversity, Social Responsibility and Sustainability will be not limited just to the creativeness within my works but they have also been life lessons.

All of the lectures within Better Lives have influenced the way I think in a positive way, but the one that made me change my idea of the fashion world in society was titled Collaboration by Claire Swift.

The lecturer started by explaining that collaboration is fundamental for creatives because as a group we challenge each other to elevate our ideas and while doing so, we also broaden our world vision and viewpoint. She described which were the principles to effectively teamwork and she supported her speech with theories like Group Genius. In the past I’ve always felt intimidated by group works and having a technical lesson on the dynamics of it made me feel more confident about participating in one.

But what really triggered my full attention was when Claire Swift started talking about collective working in a more personal way, relating it to her experience in LCF’s Social Responsibilities. She introduced us to their project “Rethinking rehabilitation: Connecting communities through craft” that was a design collaboration between LCF students and staff, Bethany Williams, women in Downview prison and a rehabilitation community of San Patrignano. This teamwork aimed to create menswear outwear coats while contributing to a better society by reaching out to these people considered outskirts, and giving them a possibility for a better future by teaching them work skills and empowering them as individuals. The team of Social Responsibility used fashion as a space to raise the voices of people who have never had one or that lost their self-esteem in this dark period. The collaboration wasn’t limited to our university or just to insiders of the fashion world, it was also an occasion for the people who would have never thought of ending up in this industry and were having a hard time to get back on their feet.

We students, thanks to our creativity and privileged position, have the possibility to give a ray of sunshine to these people who find themselves in dark times. Helping communities takes more time than working with people who are already experts in the field, but the end result is more fulfilling for both sides. It’s a life changing experience. The fashion world has been until now an exclusive world, but slowly some designers have started changing it and we can be part of this. Are we willing to collaborate with someone who needs help?

What I learnt is that collaboration is a win win for everyone who participates actively, you just need to find the courage to put yourself out there. When we think of our practice, we have to think bigger outside it. If you want to be a change maker you have to be open to teamwork and also keep in mind the impact that your actions will have on society.