Seung Oh

The Better Lives unit has given me so much opportunity to not only explore my knowledge in fashion in depth, but also to help me develop my creativity as a student during this lockdown due to COVID-19. It was quite challenging because the time difference between where I am and the UK is 12 hours difference; the classes took place at 3-4 in the morning, which made me push myself even more. However, I am very satisfied with what I have learned throughout this unit. The various methods that were used and taught in this unit – class conversations, personal research, informative lectures that helped me with referencing and think outside of the box, and so on – have given me positive influence towards my final project outcome. 

As the final outcome, I have decided to expand my idea to create my own collage board, inspired from the last masterclass. The four main goals for my outcome were: (1) trying to use second hand clothings that were previously discussed during online class (2) using abode photoshop to create a creative board (3) keep thinking about the current pandemic, but still considering the 90s rave culture that was mentioned during lecture. I was quite anxious about this project because I do not own lots of colourful nor outstanding clothes or accessories in the first place, which make it harder for me to come up with outfits that are colourful. Also, creating the 90s rave vibe inspired board was quite difficult since I have never experienced the culture. However, I wanted to take a challenge and try my best. 

To briefly go through outcome, I have decided to put hand sanitiser as a must-have item, because it is so important nowadays, especially when going to the gym where hygiene is concerned. Also, I put together neon colour tennis skirt that gives sporty and ready-to-go look; the colourful accessories are the representations of the rave culture so I decided to add them. 

The three focused themes in Better Lives, sustainability, social responsibility and diversity have always been topics that I wanted to take a look at; as these issues can’t be changed by one person only, I thought this opportunity would allow me to think of what impact that these ideas could bring in the society and also the changes that could be made together when small yet continuous movement occurs in fashion industry. I believe that these three main concepts are such powerful and important topics that should be addressed and be taught in the future as well. 

The one theme that I was particularly interested was diversity. The reason for this is because as I am a university student in London studying fashion public relations and communications, I have never seen this many people from such diverse backgrounds in London. Living in South Korea nor America has not given me this opportunity to explore different opinions and stories. However, one thing that I was surprised was that diversity in the fashion industry was still lying in an indefinite boundary, where the improvement for diversity was often taken as tokenism. From this unit, I was able to take away lots of informative information, but most importantly it has been a huge turning point for me to really think about what creative I would want to become in the future. 

One of the changes that I had personally during and after Better Lives was that I wanted to challenge myself and think about how I, as an individual, could encourage diversity as a young creative- make positive changes for future generations that will be facing these issues. 

Also, as a student that comes from a diverse background, I was always into looking at different perspectives and opinions made by the fashion brands and by media platforms. I believe that it is extremely important to respect and understand “diversity” as there were numerous cases in fashion that showed lack of diversity and respect towards minority. Even though there are continuous effort put in towards the idea of diversity in recent years, I believe that we still have a long way to go. It is vital for me to understand the different perspectives that people have, challenge myself to understand those differences, seek for positive changes that are still being made by minorities and the effort that are being put in in order to make such changes. Also, instead of having to only understand these ideas, I want to encourage these conversations between people and keep the industry going to the right direction.

Potter, Cher. (2020) “Perspectives” [Lecture]. Better Lives, London College of Fashion, 14 February.

For Better Lives Unit, I had a chance to take various lectures and out of those, there was one lecture that I would love to share – the cultural sustainability lecture by John Lau. 

Throughout the lecture, lecturer John Lau has shown a picture of a Japanese painting. He pointed out that this picture could be seen and interpreted differently depending on Western culture and Japanese (Asian) culture.  

Taking a close look at the picture, mountain fuji is in the back and 23 people riding the boat in big waves. Japanese people usually read from right to left, when western culture is based on reading from left to right. From Western perspective, the waves are coming from left to right, which make it seem like the fisherman are riding the waves; on the other hand, from the Japanese perspective, the waves are almost crashing into the fisherman. 

The meanings become very different from those perspectives. Lau added, “challenging yourself,.. whether you are seeing is a true representation of what it is intended form.” 

My overall experience of cultural sustainability lecture was quite amazing as lecturer Lau has pointed out how one simple thing could be interpreted so differently depending on what culture a person is raised from. As a Korean-American student, I thought I was eligible of switching on and off western perspectives and asian perspectives quite quickly and easily. However, through his lecture, I came to the realisation of the importance of understanding various perspectives and even what could lead to cultural sensitivity. 

After the lecture, I had a chance to think about the idea of misinterpretation and how some behaviours that are meant to represent the culture could possibly lead to cultural appropriation; this left me a question of ways to discontinue this continually occurring idea of misinterpretation in the fashion industry. As lecturer Lau has mentioned in his lecture, misinterpretation of fashion in well-known brands such as H&M, Dolce and Gabbana or Katy Perry could possibly lead to forming/creating misconceptions. And in the future circumstances, I want to make sure that I respect and have a deep understanding of the cultures beforehand.