Blog Post 2 – Creative Practice Reflection

It was not easy to find the theme of my project, but I was sure from the beginning that my feature for Fashion Journalism was going to be based on certain situations I was able to witness on the fashion industry from a manufacturing country, in this case Peru.  As I was writing the story, I realized that the themes from Better Lives: Sustainability, Diversity and Social Responsibility fit somehow with my culture and homeland background but not always in the good aspect.  I´ve always felt that no matter in which industry you work, you can help others. Social Responsibility and Diversity was two of the themes I was drawn to, after I saw the struggle of my country for many years to act on behalf of communities away from the capital which, during the years of terrorism, they were left behind and suffered abuse and indifference. However, I have been able to be part from the new generation who have learned that we are a multicultural society and should feel proud from our roots. Now, I do believe that the lectures about diversity, sustainability and social responsibility and access to relevant experience first hand, definitely, had an impact on the way I want to approach my way of work in my career in the future. The importance that everything matters, people, animals and our natural resources and if this is done in a sustainable and responsible matter everyone wins as a chain of reaction in which it could lead to build a better society where inequity and abuse will not affect people´s life.

Among the 3 themes, I would like to exclusively focus on ‘Sustainability’ in this blog post and reflect on how this particular theme might change my work ethic in the near future. I am never seen as that girl who decks out in beautiful pre-owned garments; vintage or thrifted. Guilty as charged, I have actually never been to one, with the exception of dropping off donations. It is not that I put on airs or despise the idea of wearing someone else’s’ garments. Truthfully, I just can’t seem to wrap my head around the fact that I could be wearing a dead person’s outfit. This might sound spoilt, but I am probably one of the last few people to get on board with sustainable fashion because I am so used to be able to get hold of the non-sustainable materials in a blink of an eye. But all the lectures on sustainability has got me thinking of our beautiful Mother Earth and the disturbing impact fast fashion has taken upon it. 

At this moment, I can see myself venturing into the fashion scene upon graduation. Sustainability in fashion is a hot topic right now, and I might jump on the bandwagon and be involved in eco-friendly fashion. Eco-friendly materials will also be considered throughout my academic years in LCF. Because of how niche the market is, and costly sustainable products can be, I think it will be a great challenge for me to think out of the box and create something with limited resources or even discover new alternatives. This could be an opportunity to push my creativity limits instead of sticking to what I was originally been exposed to. 

Having said that, I do not think that I will single out using real leather or fur entirely, for my creatives. In my opinion, sustainable fashion has a long way to go and to get everyone on board with it is not that easy. I do not believe in going cold turkey and eliminating all the least eco-friendly materials because like I mentioned above, not all sustainable products are budget-friendly and as a student, I probably would not have ready money to spend on. 

For every flower bloomed in a floristry, there will be stale flowers and plants unsold. For every processed poultry, there will be feathers remains. So, I would take my very first step towards sustainability by using materials like byproducts. With adequate research, I believe I can get the same satisfactory quality and also promote sustainability in my work by using byproducts. As the fashion industry proceeds to change every now and then, it is heartwarming to see a fashion trend like sustainability spreading awareness and educating people like myself.

Before having this ‘better lives’ lecture, I honestly have never thought about these three aspects which are ‘sustainability’, ‘diversity’ and ‘social responsibility’. This was a good experience to make me think about the problems happening nowadays in fashion industries and how I should act and what I should consider in the future. Some of those lectures really came into my mind and changed my attitudes but some did not.

To be honest, ‘sustainability’ part did not make me agree with what they are saying at all. Fashion is just one of the common extravagances that human does to make themselves feel happy and designer stand for to satisfy consumer’s desire. I can understand that there are some significant sustainability problems in fashion industries, and they urge people to be in the problem and do something together about it. But, until fashion stays there as an extravagance, sustainability problem will not be gone, if the problem gets solved, still there will be lots of new side effects occur by that, for example, fashion designers will lose the chance of earning money. However, it can be used as a strategy of some brands to make the brand different from others and attract niche customers who are interested in sustainability problems. I do not think it is a problem that every people have to take care of unless fashion becomes an essential thing just like it was in primitive times. So, I do not think that there will be any change in how I work in the future in terms of sustainability.

However, unlike sustainability problem, I agree that diversity problem is a big thing that we all should try to solve. It is provoking the discrimination on race, gender, age, size and more countless part. It is breaking the basic human right that has to be protected and ensured. It became way better than before but there are still a lot of exclusivities happening fashion industries, especially, there are still far to go on Asians and disabled people. If we have a look at top magazine cover or editorial, it is still mostly covered with the famous star, sample-sized models. We can see some of plus-sized models and old generation people, but it is really hard to see Asian model or someone who has disabled compare to another race or non-disabled. As a fashion media student who will work on fashion photography and film, I will consider more on people who are standing in shadow and need the light to light them. I will try to listen to their voice and try to narrow the gap between all types of people. We are all the same human who has little difference to each other. There should not be any discrimination on the chance to be lit.

Reflection on themes and my creative process

The Better Lives Unit informed us on fashion and its connection to themes such as diversity, sustainability and social responsibilities. 

My Fashion Activism classes highlighted those themes in relation to creative direction. These classes have made me realise aspects of diversity, sustainability and social responsibilities that I didn’t necessarily think would be needed as much in this practice. For example it has taught me that when brainstorming for a visual campaign it’s important to consider resources carefully, to be inclusive and to think of ethical production. This was new to me as I thought that sustainability for example doesn’t affect creative direction as much as other more hands-on practices where actual tangible products are made.

What I learnt in creative direction can also be applied to my creative practice as a fashion image maker and illustrator. For instance thinking of resources that are renewable and reusable is key. It is important to maximise repair, reuse, remaking and recycling products. This may mean that when I’m styling a model for a shoot or a life drawing session I will need to consider using upcycled, second hand or borrowed clothes in order to maximise the reuse of already available products. This will diminish the amount of waste created due to over consumption of fashion items. Also when creating illustrations I may start using scraps and recycled pieces of paper to draw on or create collages with. This will also help the amount of paper wasted. I’m glad our research journals where we record our developments are already digital as that decreases the paper waste too.

Inclusivity is also very important in the illustration field as it helps to show representation of different body types, races, ages…etc. I have seen students from the year above put that into practice as they’ve based their illustrations on various types of fxmme bodies, with stretch marks, rolls and skin conditions, which I found very thoughtful and smart. It is so easy to dismiss how our illustrations can contribute to inclusivity and representation in the media and how much it would mean to people who can relate or look up to that image. Just by drawing different kinds of people we are able to shed light on them and celebrate them just as much as the models we generally tend to draw without any flaws or not as varied. This makes me feel like we are as important and as much of a contributor to this cause as other fashion fields, and that showing diversity isn’t exclusive to catwalk or fashion photography, it can be achieved through illustration too.

Lastly, it’s important that I look into ethics as an illustrator. I don’t want to illustrate for brands that aren’t in favour of ethical production. And even the mediums I use to draw with should be ethically sourced or recycled. Whether it be natural paintbrushes or sketchbooks made of recycled paper. It should be ethically produced.

The Better Lives project will also inform my practice in an upcoming project for my Fashion Activism classes, in which we are going to create a visual campaign keeping in mind the themes of sustainability, diversity and social responsibilities.

Sustainability, diversity and social responsibility are themes of the Better Lives unit. After attending a number of lectures, my thoughts on fashion styling and production changed a lot. As a styling student and future stylist, I start to think about how these three topics play a positive role in my future work.

Before the Better Lives unit, I have finished the Key Concepts in Styling and Production unit assignment which is creating five styled looks with the theme of sustainably radical. In the initial stage, I did a lot of research on sustainable fashion. It is about nature, being green and eco-friendly as well as environmental protection. So, I took it for granted that these elements needed to show up in my five looks. I bought clothes from fast fashion stores and a great variety of props like plastic and food in order to perfect the styled looks. However, I did not realize how big mistake I had made until the Better Lives unit began. I only cared about my outcome and never thought about in this process, whether my behavior of using plastic met the theme of sustainability. And the worst thing I ever did was throw those props into the trash after I finished my work. Through this unit, I think it is an experience worthy of deep reflection. As a styling and production student, I know that stylist`s duty is creating beautiful images for the fashion industry. Some fashion enterprises often spend a lot of money, manpower and material resources only for some perfect photos, Ignoring the waste of resources, the destruction of the environment. Lacking awareness of sustainability has a bad impact on fashion industry. For me, as a future stylist, I should always keep it in mind and take actions for sustainable fashion. For example, when choosing garments and accessories, consider their materials and fabrics. In the future work, I prefer to use second-hand clothing or vintage or clothes borrowed from friends instead of buying new one. Many a mickle makes a muckle, I believe if everyone participates in sustainable fashion, the earth will become better.

In fashion workplace, diversity is a significant part. In Shahidha Bari`s lecture, it showed that Diversity is the measure of difference in a workplace. It is not about race, is also about culture and physics. I am pretty sure my job will allow me to meet models with different skin color, height and figure from all over the world. Also, I will be exposed to the culture of various countries. What is more, maybe my colleague have different religious beliefs. Facing diversity，my response is having an inclusive heart and embracing it. Most importantly, I think it is all based on a sense of social responsibility. In the lecture by Katelyn Toth-Fejel, there is a quote: ‘Each of us is a social being. we live our lives in a social environment. What we think, how we feel, and what we say and do all are shaped by our interactions with other people.’ (Hughes, Michael, and Carolyn J. Kroehler (2008) Sociology: The Core. 8th ed. Boston: McGraw-Hill.) I must always have social conscious, rejecting any form of discrimination, avoiding unnecessary misunderstandings that cause harm to others.

In conclusion, the best inspiration out of the three themes is that take into account the earth, the environment and the society firstly in my work and then, my personal side.

The three Better Lives themes are: Sustainability, Diversity, and Social Responsibility. These themes have become more crucial in the recent years in a lot of different fields. As a student in the Hair, Make-up and Prosthetics for Performance course, there’s a lot of issues in the cosmetology industry that could still be improved, that being said, the industry has come a long way in just the last couple centuries.

The better lives theme of ‘“sustainability” is not really very prominent in terms of the products being created, a lot of make-up companies use animal testing (even though this is slowly changing), they focus more on health and safety, and being sanitary. That being said, there are a lot more companies trying to become more sustainable, a couple of examples might be: L’Oreal, Circumference and Rituals. 

The theme of “diversity” has slowly become more prominent in the make-up industry in the last couple decades, this can be seen by cosmetics companies creating more shades of concealers and foundations for women with darker complexions as well as a wider range of representations in advertisements. That being said, there are still issues in some places, an example of this is natural hair discrimination, this forced independent natural hair companies to start competing with larger corporate companies. As a Hair and make-up artist, we should be able to work on anybody’s hair no matter their ethnicity or the quality of the individual’s hair. 

There are a lot of brands and companies to choose from when buying skincare products or cosmetics products, some of these companies are animal cruelty free, environmentally friendly and they dont take “short cuts”. This could often mean these products might be a little more pricey. In the more recent years the amount of people being socially responsible has increased but it’s important to bear in mind that due to poverty, some might not be able to afford the expensive products (they can still make more socially responsible decisions in different ways). 

The Better Lives project I am part of is “Mask Making and Politics”; all of the better lives themes can be applied to the project as masks are used for all sorts of purposes, ranging from rituals and ceremonies to medical reasons to political protests. There’s also so many different ways to go about creating a mask, with a lot of different sustainable materials that can be used such as paper mache, wax or clay.

Being in London at the entrance of my project, I looked at themes of social inequality, racial inequality and gender inequality. I found that these issues were due to characteristics of geographic, political and socioeconomics and for years, the government has paid little attention to under classes due to the recession and varying political parties coming in and out of power. I was fascinated with the Rothschilds family and wanted to include their global role in the way they control almost everything. I started to drift away from this topic due to the near mass I would want to cover and the ample time in order to do it, I found that instead I wanted to do something completely different. I planned on reclaiming a specific word as a point of pride and looked at styles of photography that were used by members of the Boston School. This would let me challenge the existing status quo through the themes of saying how words are continuing down a healthier path being similar to the Better Lives themes of Diversity, Social Responsibility and Sustainability. Eventually the COVID-19 pandemic caught up and I was fortunate enough to travel to my childhood home and stay with my parents. I started to think about my original themes around social responsibility and the under classes and began to look at socially responsible architecture as a new development in my research journey. As I had conversations with my parents and friends about this topic, I reflected on a disaster that I had gone through a few years back. I remember from the experience that we needed immediate shelter. This topic brought me to think of deployable shelters and how I could bring attention to them by making them my project. Many frequently hit natural disaster areas are home to more lower-class members of society who need these deployable shelters as soon as or before disaster strikes. The Better Lives themes have caused me to pay more attention to issues dealing with geographic, political, socio-economic and think in a socially responsible manner. I plan on working in the future with a focus on fields that overall serve the community. 

As we have seen throughout the Coronavirus pandemic, careers that remain strong are agriculture, medical and beyond. Having the knowledge that the common factor between these fields is that they serve others. Wanting to financially stay afloat during periods of economic turmoil I may go through in my lifetime, I am aware that my career will require me to serve others and I will always consider the greater impact my job should have.