Nicole Banke

I read through many different blogs these past days and finally Yi-An Chen’s blog caught my attention. Therefore, I decided to review her post. In her blog post Yi-An Chen reflects on her Better lives project called “Navigating through clothing”. I chose her blog post for multiple reasons. First, I am personally interested in costume design and therefore I very much enjoyed getting an insight into the topics associated therewith due to her detailed description of every step that was done in her course. Second, I really liked her transparent and honest approach when talking about her personal development and outcome. Finally, the last reason is that I find it very well done how she linked her project to the Better Lives themes.

Often when watching the opera or going to a theatre, I sometimes forget what immense work is done behind the scenes to create a costume that fits the atmosphere and the character of the play. In her blog post, she gave the reader an insight into the creative progress and the world of a Costume Designer.

To illustrate the work that is done, she wrote a detailed description by first introducing that there are different kinds of performances, such as circus, opera and ballet. When creating a costume it is fundamental to learn about the materials, designers and fabrics. Before, I did not really know that the fabric plays such an immense role and has such a huge impact on the performance. She explains that it is necessary to consider the movement and appearance of it carefully. It was very interesting finding out what a Costume Designer must focus on and how she must consider every detail for the perfect finished costume since I did not know about this process before.

During the course she has engaged with the theme diversity explaining that it is important to consider the culture for a performance. To do so she describes how she went to the British Museum to find inspiration.

After the description of her course project, she goes on writing about her feelings and personal outcome and development. I really liked how honest she was when she said that she had difficulties creating a collage on her character and felt as if she did not know what to research compared to other participants in her course. I found it incredible that she did not shy away from explaining her feelings and thoughts. Nonetheless, in the end she overcame her obstacles, showing that it does not matter if you sometimes feel to be confronted with many difficulties, in the end it will all fall into place. In her last paragraph she explains what she did for her finished project. There, she explains that she created a costume for the character “the little white duck” in Hansel and Gretel. To make the costume, she has used inspiration from elements of the National Theatre and patterns from the British Museum that she saw during her ‘research phase’.

To sum it up, I really enjoyed getting a small insight into the world of a Costume Designer and learning about the ways a costume is made.

I am convinced that every new experience leads to more knowledge and personal growth for every individual. I also believe that this was the case for myself during Better Lives. The course I have chosen for Better Lives was Fashion Activism. Starting the course made me feel both nervous and excited. Excited, because I could meet new people from different courses and nervous, because I did not know what the group work would be like. During our course I had the possibility to learn more about the role of a Creative Director. Creative Direction can be described as a process of interaction, where Art and Design meet Strategy. In essence, Creative Direction is visual communication.

The purpose of my course was to create a fashion film for a specific brand. Fashion videos are used to tell a story, which is communicated for instance through sound, effects, typography, style, clothes and more. For creating the fashion film our course was divided into groups and given a brand. As a group, we researched the brand’s aesthetic, ethos and positioning to develop ideas for our video. The brand of my group was Nubian Skin. Nubian Skin is a lingerie brand that was founded, because there was a lack of skin-tone choices for women of colour. The idea behind Nubian Skin is to empower and embrace women of colour. Before the holidays, we pursued the idea of filming the video outside, in nature. However, this idea turned out to be quite difficult to implement due to the current situation of crisis that made it impossible for us to go back to university and meet in person. Therefore, the only way to communicate was digitally. It was a rather difficult and stressful situation since the deadline for the submission of our fashion film was rapidly approaching. Finally, we came up with the idea of making a moving image. For the moving image we used neutral colours and images of models presented on the brand’s Website and Social Media page. Strikingly, for us, even though the brand focuses on diversity, there was a lack of male models in the campaign. This is the reason why we came up with the idea of creating a film showing men and women equally.

Working on the project in a group was definitely a great experience. I enjoyed meeting people from different courses, who not only had different ideas and views on specific aspects, but who also had different skills. For instance, one of our groupmates had great Photoshop and InStyle skills that were useful for creating the film.

As stated before, our task met with the obstacle of us not being able to work together, which is normally essential for group work. Overcoming this obstacle made me realize that every difficulty can be solved. I definitely believe that Better Lives made me grow as an individual and engage more with the Better Lives themes. Furthermore, through creating this fashion film I understood how to communicate these themes and create a story for a specific brand. All in all, it was inspiring getting an insight into the work as a Creative Director.

Here you can find our fashion film:

https://web.microsoftstream.com/video/a2542007-913f-4082-8a71-ddbc63d77b7e?channelId=490f8d2f-85d4-4daa-9b6d-cdc70dfe01c6&referrer=https:%2F%2F1920betterlivessmc.myblog.arts.ac.uk%2F

These past months were made up of informative lectures, where we discussed various fundamental themes: sustainability, diversity and social responsibility. All of this made me think more about the importance of using my voice to make a difference in the fashion industry.

The fashion industry has a big impact on people. People use clothes to express and communicate their identity. Even people who claim not to be interested in fashion are still purchasing clothes and are therefore exposed to fashion. Since the industry has such a huge influence, I believe that it should spread the right messages and emphasize the importance of sustainability, diversity and social responsibility. Some differences in terms of diversity have already been made in this past decade. During the 2010s there was a great number of models of different cultures, ‘races’ and sizes who were representing brands. Furthermore, brands who embraced these three topics are strikingly rising. However, there is still a long way to go.

When it comes to the topic of social responsibility, cooperation and listening are essential. I believe that working with different kinds of people is the best way to broaden your horizon by listening to what other people think and what they have to say- it also pushes oneself to think outside of the box.

Even though the industry is trying to change for the better, it cannot be ignored that it is one of the biggest polluters in the world, therefore contributing to climate change. Sustainability is essential right now to save our planet. Still, there are many consumers and brands ignoring this fact, even though being well aware of this.

Right now, we are living in an uncertain time, where not only the climate emergency, but also a virus is impacting our world and way of life. Just like other businesses, the fashion industry is also negatively affacted by this sanitary emergency, causing many fashion brands to close their shops and postpone or cancel major fashion events. It is unclear how bad the outcome of this virus will be, however, for the planet the present situation means a break from daily pollution. This can be seen already in some cities, such as Venice, where the water is getting clearer again and animals are returning to their old habitat. Consequently, this should be a wake-up call for everyone, since it demonstrates that the earth can get better if we become more conscious about it. It is unclear what the future holds and how the fashion industry will operate after this. However, some designers, such as Giorgio Armani have already reacted to this situation saying that fashion production needs to slow down.

Currently, I am studying Public Relations and Communication, where I would have to communicate the idea of brands to the public. As a future PR person, I think it is important to learn and engage oneself with these fundamental themes to communicate and spread those to the public to raise awareness. Furthermore, I believe that it is important to only work with brands which share the same values as me in order to push for changes in the industry.

During these two weeks I attended several lectures and Society by Katelyn Toth Fejel that discussed Society in relation to Fashion and Sustainability really stood out to me.

The lecture started off with the question: “What do you think of when you hear the words Social and Fashion together?” Most people would think of Social Media as it has become the most popular medium over the years. Platforms, such as Instagram, influence people on a daily basis. Unfortunately, Instagram can lead to greater consumptions as it can create pressure to buy the latest trends every season and consequently buying more clothes than actually needed.

Generally, the way we dress is based on experiences and how we identify ourselves in relation with others, therefore Katelyn Toth Fejel consideres dressing as a Social Act, since we create and express our identity.

When talking about a social issue that can be associated with the Fashion Industry Fast Fashion comes up. The increasing access to cheap clothing for consumers can promote a ‘throwaway’ clothing culture. The conditions in which those cheap clothes are made are horrible as workers are underpaid and being exploited. Specifically, fast fashion pollutes our environment and wastes earth’s resources. More and more people are aware of this model and try to combat it by shopping more sustainable or participating in environmental movements, such as Fashion Revolution. However, there are still so many people buying clothes for example from Primark or H&M, even though they are aware of were they are coming from. Obviously, it depends on the income as some people cannot afford to buy more sustainable clothing. In the lecture some strategies to resist fast fashion are mentioned, such as borrowing, sharing and swapping clothes through Social Media. Subsequently, Katelyn Toth Fejel discusses the issues society structures have. One scary fact was that 100 Billion garments were produced in 2015, even though only 7 Billion people are living on the planet. Because of this fact, I hope that there will be a limit for producing clothes. Additionally, the average person buys 60% more clothing than 15 years ago, but only keeps them for half as long. All of this, illustrates the scary truth of fast fashion and really underlines the fact that we have to change our lifestyle, because as Katelyn Toth Fejel explains we only have about ten years to change our lifestyle and reduce resource use and waste by 75% to 90%, otherwise we will face major disasters around the globe.

The lecture really shaped my thinking as it is shocking that we only have this short amount of time to find a solution. At the lecture we were suggested to calculate our ecological footprint. My result was that I would need 2 earths. This really pushes me to change my way of living. Throughout these lectures we have been told that we have a voice to push for change. Even though it seems difficult at first, I do believe that one voice can touch millions of people and as a consumer we still have the responsibility and the position to change our shopping behaviour. As a fashion student, I want to push for sustainability and hope to be part of the change in the Fashion industry.