Meabh Page

The project I decided to do for Better Lives was ‘In and outside of fashion: Sportswear Fashion language and sub-cultures’. I was excited to study styling in relation to the better lives themes. It gave me an opportunity to examine the past and challenge the future within the practice of styling and production and how it can be made more sustainable, diverse and social responsible. By attending my project lectures it helped me to better my understanding of these core values and apply it to this project. I created two styled looks in response to subculture, sport and fashion in (for example hierarchy) and outside (for example politics) of fashion.

Relating styling to the themes I discovered more aspects of the role of the stylist- they are cultural translators ad have a point of view of wider interests and values like sustainability and culture, and must have a wide contextual knowledge and research of history, film, vintage, art and technical and sustainability skills to apply to styling and production. Some stylists who interested me who I think relate to these themes are Ibrahim Kamara and Max Clarke. I enjoyed learning about the different kinds of collaborations that happen within the industry to create projects and character transformation for example actors and musicians in editorials. We delved deeper into the language of clothes and explored the uniform and how it was adopted as a form of political protest for example the yellow vest protest. Representation can change over time through subcultures like how Burberry ,which was seen as conservative in the 80s, was taken over by celebrities in the 90s. Because our project involved sportswear and subculture, we looked into the history of athleisure and how the revolt against the corset in the second half of the 20th century led by Coco Chanel brought the move for comfortable clothes for cycling and tennis. Music and casual culture subcultures like 70s mod revival, 80s eclectic, and 90s rave scenes and Britpop has massively influenced todays fashion as we looks at designers work such as Virgil Ablohs’s Off White collections.

On fig 1 we decided to go for a sustainable sports-casual look using all vintage and second hand pieces. Fig 2 we channelled an 80s look with a sustainable slogan handmade skirt, futuristic boots and focus on the arm muscles under the comic top to create a ‘female superhero’. Fig 3 features British tartan combined with vintage sportswear on top.
All these looks were really fun to style and experiment with a small amount of vintage and second hand pieces and we were really happy with the outcome and the meanings behind the sustainable looks representing diversity and social responsibility.

Participating in this project really helped me to engage with the Better Lives themes and apply them to fashion.

Now that I have started my Better Lives project the themes of sustainability, diversity and social responsibility have really stood out to me and I understand how important it is as a fashion student to bring this knowledge into practice throughout my studies and in work. I have learned how important sustainability is especially through my better lives styling project- In and outside of fashion: Sportswear Fashion language and sub-cultures, a stylist’s job includes collecting and gathering a large amount of clothing which in turn is obviously contributing to the mass consumption of clothing which is a huge factor in pollution. We have explored and tested how interesting and challenging it is to create styled looks with a small amount of vintage and second hand clothes. I discovered it was actually a very fun and creative process. The growth of sustainable shopping has grown as people are more conscious of what they buy. I make a better effort now to buy from vintage and charity shops and use shopping apps like Depop to sell clothes I won’t wear again. 

As a public relations and communication student I have become more aware on how fashion brands have become more involved in promoting their social responsibility campaigns through social media and other platforms. This is a very positive thing that brands are also stepping up and people are leaning towards and supporting new ethical ‘slow’ brands as opposed to fast fashion brands that the majority of people would shop at, without being aware of where their clothes comes from and would buy a lot and dispose of a large amount. The current pandemic we are all experiencing has forced everyone in the world to adapt to a new way of living. Personally I think this will have a huge impact on the way the fashion industry will function in a positive way in relation to diversity, social responsibility and sustainability. Some fashion brands have already started using more local suppliers which in turn reduces their carbon footprint. This week The British Fashion Council announced that London Fashion Week will now be digital- and genderless. This will be the first of many developments in the industry and will pave way for more offbeat changes. What I really loved about the Better Lives lectures was that it opened me up to many diverse topics I could research in depth and gain more knowledge on the fashion industry outside of my degree subject.

After delving into further research about these themes I now see public relations and communication in a wider sense and all the things that it affects, not just simply PR. I think this will help me greatly in my future career and really enjoyed reflecting on it.

After watching a collection of the Better Lives lecture series one that stood out to me was lecture 8: Emerging Technology and the Fashion Industry delivered by Nick Almond. He discussed his knowledge on physics and technology and linked them to the fashion industry. This lecture opened my eyes to how much technology has evolved in the past few decades. Technology has transformed every industry in the world including the fashion industry. One thing which connected fashion and emerging technologies was when Nick discussed digital garments- this could potentially be a sustainable fashion practice which can help combat how big a contributor fashion is to pollution. I also question if these emerging technologies continue to grow they will become even more damaging to the earth? Learning about the rise of artificial intelligence in the fashion industry, the social impact of this will affect many people in the future career wise as this technology will be able to do a humans job at a faster and more efficient pace. However some creative practices such as design can benefit from these technologies in the future.

In the age of the climate emergency and devastating loss of species, the lecture delivered by Kate Fletcher explored nature and our relationship with it. ‘Nature’ defined by Michael Bonnett is the ‘self-originating material/spiritual world, of which we are a part, including the powers that sustain and govern it’. I really enjoyed this lecture and found it interesting as I have not really looked into how nature and fashion affect each other even though the two are hugely connected. The fashion industry is one of the leading industries contributing to polluting the Earth. Every stage of the fashion cycle plays a part from sourcing the materials to the consumer disposing of the clothing. I think people today are much more aware of introducing sustainable fashion practices such as brands sourcing materials which are eco-friendly as fibres impact natural systems. It has become a trend for consumers to ‘shop sustainably’ by buying vintage and second hand clothes and by donating or recycling clothes instead of disposing their clothing- more than 300,000 tonnes of used clothing goes to landfill in the UK every year, according to Wrap (2018), the waste charity. It said that 5 per cent of the UK’s total annual carbon and water footprint came from clothing consumption. As a PR student I know it’s important to communicate to the public how sustainable the brands they are consuming are. Something that enlightened me from Kate’s lecture is that humans tend to see themselves separate to nature and aren’t always connected- humans are part of nature and one only works with the other. Nature exists only in order to meet human needs; biodiversity has no inherent value. Inevitably nature is the enabler of the fashion system and nature is fashion’s limiting factor.

Bibliography

Lecture 3: Nick Almond, Emerging Technologies in Fashion

Lecture 5: Kate Fletcher, Nature