For this blog post, I concluded to write about Kate Fletcher and Jekaterina Rogaten’s lectures.

Fashion and Nature

Overall after the presentation, I felt engaged, committed, motivated but also upset and sad. The delivery of the speech by Kate was so captivating to me as well as the stories she told. I love to watch nature documentaries and respect David Attenborough highly. He has helped these generations through his informative documentaries and spread awareness. As nature already means a lot to me, I found it heart breaking that over the years in the fashion industry sustainability hasn’t been practiced more. There are no excuses as to why we shouldn’t look after our planet other than for people’s greed. I had never considered sustainability in anything in my life until this unit, it has opened my eyes. I learned the correct definition for sustainably being the process that enables people to realise their full potential and improve life quality in ways which protect and enhance earth life support systems. This is a heavy statement and benefits all.

When Kate quizzed us on the species of plants and animals, I found myself shocked to not know all of the answers. It was starling to then know a huge number of the brands she showed us concluding that the human race is more concerned about what car they have over how long they have left on this planet. I strongly believe that previous generations have learned to not care about the future of this planet through ignorance and their belief of it won’t happen in my life so why should I worry, which is a scary notion. I will forever remember this presentation and keep sustainability in my mind always. I will even visit charity shops and car boot sales in the future to become a better person than those who didn’t before me.

Fashion and Well Being

This presentation was something I’d have never considered had a connection with fashion. The term ‘well-being’ to me was something that was thrown around and misunderstood. As Jekaterina stated it is an individual own definition of what makes them happy. An alarming figure of $4.2 trillion spent on making happiness is a substantial amount but if you have the money and work hard for it why wouldn’t you spend it on you? It becomes a problem when you don’t have the money in the first place and result in debt. I confidently understand the connection of fashion making one happy and I do this every day. I tend to stop wearing clothes if I have had them for a period of time, if I wear the better top, I feel happier in myself.

To link this with sustainability, Jekaterina said the more choice you have the less satisfied you become. Going to a charity shop, car boot sales could end up with better satisfaction as the choice is limited and this would help myself and the planet which is a definite win.

Due to my chosen Better Lives unit being relatable to my hair and makeup course, it has benefited me with key makeup aspects for the future. The unit went in-depth about how to determine the correct foundation colour for a client. This is imperative knowledge for a makeup artist. I discovered it quite valuable to learn about the undertones of the skin. The skin can have warm tones which are reds, yellows, and oranges. Cool tones like blues, greens, and purples. Or neutral tones indicating your undertone and skin tone match or are very similar. Before this unit, I struggled to understand the undertones of the skin nevertheless I can now determine the appropriate foundation shade benefiting me as a makeup artist.

Additionally, I found the lesson on how to produce a smoky eye effective. This is also something I struggle with furthermore, this unit gave me the skills required to be able to perfect this look and practice it to perfection. I didn’t comprehend which products were satisfactory to create a smoky eye.

It has made me think outside of the box for makeup application techniques and I enjoyed learning about colour theory which I can implement into my collaborative project incorporating complementary colours into my designs to look more appealing. I found myself pairing up complementary colours throughout other tasks in my daily life. The knowledge gained from my lessons especially creating the smoky eye and the lesson on how to recognise the undertones in an individual’s skin will continue to help me in my practice.

The Better Lives project has encouraged me to think more creatively when completing a project. I was delighted with the final outcome and glad I chose the makeup break down unit. I enjoyed creating sharp, clean cut edges using techniques unlike the techniques I was using to do theatrical makeup in my lessons. I struggled and had to attempted the makeup a few times to get perfection.

For my personal development, I was able to improve my skills when producing designs digitally and have a face chart I can work with. I produced my face chart with text boxes where I could write down the theme, colour scheme, and accessories to help me keep on track. In the future, my development in drawing digitally and colour theory will help me in my industry. My chosen makeup course is completely different from what I learned in this unit allowing me to be freer and express myself. I enjoy creating makeup looks for social media and after the lesson involving the fashion mistake theme, I can develop and create more looks to do with that. I like the theme idea as it expresses nothing and nobody can be wrong in the world of makeup and that is the kind of theme that is perfect.

I chose to compare my final design with my classmate, Red Gardener.  I think that both of our themes were very well thought through as I went in depth about colour theory with two complementary sets of colours and her very unique fashion mistake look with her using waste items to express damage to the environment. Overall I think my design had a nice clean cut look where hers was the opposite with a lot of concepts happening to express her fashion mistake. I do think that Red’s theme was better than my theme but I personally like clean cut makeup, therefore, I think the theme I chose benefited me more.