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The make up course allowed me to be a lot more expressive and experimental in my final outcome than I usually would be on creative direction. My focus for the project stemmed from the idea of the ‘Fashion Mistake’ ; more abstract and innovative methods are undertaken to create a look. The freedom of this area of make up is what drew me in. This took make up away from just focusing on enhancing the face/beauty of a person and elevates it into a more sophisticated and free craft in which the standard ‘rules’ of make up don’t apply. As a creative director, my urge to create a deeper meaning for the final piece was prominent, to create a meaningful yet striking piece of work.

This was my initial experiment in which I explored some of the themes associated with the ‘quarantine queen’. The look was more prop based and mainly involved the tissue paper attached to the mouth. To develop this I decided to add more colour and form to the look and try using a brushed up brow, glossy eye and blush to accentuate my features and make the overall look more finalised and actually apply the skills and inspiration I gained from the make up workshops.

I chose to envelop the three themes for my project as the final outcome was a satirical piece based around the idea of a ‘Quarantine Queen’. This was intended to be a provocative caricature of the response to Covid-19 and lockdown. Typically, as a nation, we over consume, but never before have we witnessed such a panic in the public leading to empty supermarkets and having to ration items in store to be able to provide to everyone. The initial panic of the public was ridiculous! Though there was no need to hoard food and sanitation items in any way, shelves were empty, leaving the most vulnerable members of society unable to attain their regular shopping. This provided quite a wake up call, many pictures of elderly people staring at empty shelves began circulating online and soon, the ‘quarantine queens’ were publicly shamed. The final piece was quite successful in presenting these ideas in a more editorial sense as the set and make up was not necessarily typical. The make up course opened my eyes to realising that you do not always need to do a full face or use actual make up products to create a powerful look; sometimes less is more effective.

Overall, I am pleased with my outcome as I was able to experiment with a different medium while still portraying clearly the message I set out to convey. It was very liberating to work around the idea of the ‘Fashion Mistake’ and to be able to focus more on communication rather than the typical skills. If I could improve this piece I would develop it further into an editorial with various models and looks as I think it is a powerful and relevant topic which greatly emphasises the Better Lives themes.

For my final better lives blog post, I will be reviewing on of the previous blog posts of one of my peers. Upon reading through several blog post of other peoples thoughts on the unit, I decided that I would be reviewing the third blog post of Liv Carlsson title ‘Reflective and Personal Development Post’. I chose this specific blog post for my peer review as I felt that this individual fully expressed what she has learned from their chosen project and gave an informative insight of how emerging technologies can be a benefit in the future of fashion.

 I appreciate the sense I optimism she has for her chosen topic as she states that she chose a topic that she doesn’t have much knowledge or interest in. Having done so, she took the initiative to experience a different area of the fashion industry and also use the skills she already possesses to collaborate with others and create a final product that would potentially help to promote sustainability, diversity and social responsibility within the future of fashion. Liv also makes the point of working with others who she wouldn’t normally work with as well as individuals from different places in the world; I like fact that she is using the opportunity to get other viewpoint from her team members as they may provide knowledge and resources that she may have not been accustomed to.

Nearing the end the blog post, Liv explains the final outcome of her groups project and how they’ve designed it to be more suitable for the sustainability of the fashion industry. She describes how her group had create an app that could be used to analyse vintage trend forecasting around the world and doing this through a database that doesn’t drain on funds and is accessible to anyone and everyone. I like the idea of her groups final outcome as it is designed to encourage others adopt a more sustainable and diverse mindset toward fashion and the fashion industry, as well as providing the knowledge to individuals who wouldn’t normally have the privilege of getting access to.

To conclude my review, I feel that Liv has shown her full understanding of the better lives unit and has used the knowledge given to her from the lectures and collaborative project to reflect on the themes of diversity, sustainability and social responsibility and apply it to her own working practice in the future. She has also demonstrated the understanding of how these three themes will impact the future economy and environment around us in regards to not just the fashion industry, but all other industries that we considered to be vital to us.

Liv Carlsson’s Third Blog Post:

My final piece for my Better Lives classes called “makeup breakdown” is a video montage of my face being painted. Throughout our classes we were tasked with different objectives. The ones that stood out to me were our contouring class and the classes we had over blackboard during the corona virus lockdown. In those classes we were prompted to use unconventional materials for our looks and I immediately knew I wanted to use watercolours. I first heard of watercolours being used as makeup in a book I’d read when I was about 13 and I’d always wondered whether it could be done in real life. It is one of the few materials I have at my disposal. Being in quarantine at my boyfriend’s house I don’t have access to very many of my supplies but the one thing I do have is my paints which I have been using a lot to pass the time. 

I wanted to create a montage video of the look being created as an alternative to a makeup tutorial that gives step by step instructions to create a look. I wanted to create a video that looked fun for other people to do to entertain themselves in quarantine.

This piece was meant to embrace the idea of imperfection, letting the “make up” paint me instead of me being in control of where it goes, creating “imperfect” lines. I found that that meant the paint would naturally follow the contours of my face. Once dried, the lines on my face began to move when I talked, showing the natural highs and lows of my face. I found this really interesting as the watercolours had created a natural contour of my face by falling down it. 

The corona virus pandemic shifted our classes towards more practical approach for those without accessibility to makeup and tools. I found that I preferred these lessons as it pushed us to think outside the box and use materials that wouldn’t conventionally be used as makeup. It seems that everyone in our class recycled materials to create their looks with items like foil, hair bands and tape. I found it most interesting that the shift in class objective during the corona classes caused our outcomes to suit the Better Lives themes even closer than before. We were all creating more diverse looks, more sustainably with alternative materials.

I think that my makeup breakdown class taught me the very basics of makeup (cleaning procedures, skin care, colour theory) as well as the immense freedom that can be unleashed with the vast possibility of creations. 

Project outcomes and personal development reflection

My project involved experimenting with various and specific objects to use for a makeup look in order to convey a message behind it all. I chose to explore the theme of fashion mistake using objects found around the house and seeing how I can incorporate those items within my look. For the first look, I wanted to delve into the idea of ‘sharp’ and ‘round’ therefore I decided to use hairbands and hairpins to put together my look.  I started with a natural base and some blush, I placed the hairpins under my eye to mimic eyelashes and on the other side of my face the hair bands overlapping over each other. The main focus was to form a contrast between these two elements by using my face as a canvas. As I picked these two objects it made me realise and think about the consumption they intake. We constantly buy more since they are so easy to lose and be misplaced. This also raises an issue in terms of sustainability, as hairbands are made from rubber which is not environmentally friendly. Therefore the whole idea behind my look became more to inform about this issue and remind people to look after their stuff and place these in places where it will be noticeable. I then researched some artists and designers who used rubber bands to create something original. A Japanese designer Rie Sakamoto created a collection of clothes out of rubber bands.

For the final look, I definitely wanted to develop this idea further and take inspiration from the research found. The few examples of artists’ work found seemed to have quite colourful themes which inspired me to approach the final look with a bright and vivid colour scheme. Referring back to the initial concept of ‘sharp’ and ‘round’ I chose to do a blue line inspired eye look on one side, placing the hair clips within the lines. On the other side, I did a pink dramatic blush all around my cheek and placed the hairband on the side of my face. I used eyeshadow to shade the inside of the hairband and form an almost 3D like effect. The final look came together and it portrayed the idea well, even though the colours were quite bright it did not overpower the face and the objects used were still noticeable.

Creating these looks made me realise that makeup can have strong narratives behind the ideas and techniques. It can be a great way to express thoughts or issues you stand for and show your interpretation of it using the makeup.

Annabel’s blog had my attention for the 3rd blog post reflecting her project outcome when choosing fashion activism as for her area for better lives unit. I previously do not have a very clear mind on what the unit was about, Annabel explained that what the subject creative direction was about clearly in her blogpost. She also shared her interesting learning details and processes in her blog post, which she and her groupmates were not able to perform their original plan due to the COVID19 situation and still managed to completed the task without meeting up and made use of other platforms. I enjoyed her blogpost as she shared how they did not frustrated with the situation and able to achieve a satisfying outcome and congratulations for winning the best casting awards!

For the other 2 blogs that she had written about the lecture of Empathy and the other two themes, Social responsibility and sustainability. Annabel has a great understanding of knowing the importance of applying these 3 concepts into a brand / a company’s daily practices, which I agreed with her and had mentioned in my own blog post above. I felt like Annabel could include more contents about sustainability. 

I had the opportunity to read several different blogs and each student had a lot to say. For my final blog, I decided to review XiuyiJian’s blog. The blog attracted my attention because she put her makeup outcome in the blog, which happened to be my undergraduate major. And I think this way I have more say in this blog.

In this blog post, she starts with an overview of how the course uses makeup techniques to create characters. Secondly, it explains her analysis of the emotions she wants to express. She ended up creating what she wanted to create.

She was interested in Power’s talk on “fashion slavery.” I think in her work, she is very careful to use the knowledge and techniques she has learned to analyze the roles and makeup. What the whole makeup look wanted to express was “half happy and half sad”. Without the makeup tools, I felt that her makeup interpreted the meaning she wanted to express very completely.

As for “half happy and half sad”, my understanding is that the fashion industry is bright on the surface, but behind it there are a group of people who are suffering every day. Millions of women, children and coolies are being squeezed. In class, she simply designed what she thought of. Through the photos she submitted at last, we can see that she has made great changes to her makeup. It is proved that she did analysis and research on the role during the holiday to improve the makeup of the role. As for the design of sewing needle on wound, I think it is a very good combination of “fashion” and “slavization”. Fashion cannot be separated from sewing needle, while abuse makes people change beyond recognition. It is these “needles” that keep the “surface ”of the wound from being exposed to the public.

On the final of her blog, she details the story behind the characters. When these stories are combined with makeup to see, it can make people put themselves in the shoes of people in disaster and poverty. I think this character design helps to arouse people’s sense of social responsibility. As I said in blog2, it is only by adding commonweal content when culture begins to spread that people will naturally have a sense of social responsibility.

“fashion slavery” is a sad, serious and little-known topic. I think it’s only through constant promotion, performance and presentation that people can understand that there are such a poor lot of people on the planet. Don’t regret something only when it happens right in front of our eyes. Special effect makeup technology also played an important role here, realistic wound shocking, can play a role in warning people.

Thanks to Xiuyijian’s outcome, people can intuitively feel all this. I think she fully reflects the theme of “fashion slavery”. But I think she can combine the theme of “social responsibility” to make her blog richer and more layered.

the brand that I’ve chosen is Gucci, with Alessandro Michele. I was personally very impressed by the new Gucci’s aesthetic and multiculturalism. In the better lives units, under ‘Cultural Representation’, I’ve learned that Gucci was accused of creating offensive items towards the black community with its Black Balaclava sweater. It has drawn my attention towards the issue and found out that it is very easy for a brand to kill their own public image even though they did not intend to be offensive in the very first place. I’ve also learned that it is always essential to carry out deeper research towards one culture from the group’s own perspective before applying the elements onto the collections/campaigns. And I had come across on how Gucci had made up with the whole crisis – they deeply apologized for their mistakes, withdrawn the sweaters. After that, they’ve set up a culture awareness learning program for their employees, and also hired a chief officer for the inclusivity department. As fashion is still a growing market, I felt like this is the right way to deal with a PR crisis and improved. Gucci now aimed to ‘put culture – self-expression, and inclusivity at the center of what they do’.

My first illustration:

On the right side of the image is a model wearing Gucci 2016 Spring Summer Collection, which I personally felt that this outfit had represented the multiculturalism in Alessandro Michele’s design concept. In this Illustration, It represents Gucci’s Diversity while including different design elements from different cultures. The one fake eye that was grown on the model’s forehead, and the dragon standing on the model’s shoulder represents the minority group of people for being different from the others and how strange they could’ve felt being treated as ‘freaks’ in their daily life. The model on the right is also genderless. 

The skeleton represents that, even though we’re all so different on the outside, we’re all still human beings and it is right to treat everyone fairly no matter the cultural background or how we look. The olive branches the model was holding means peace, and anti-racism. 

My 2nd Illustration:

A girl wearing Gucci’s signature runway collection was lying on the floor reading Gucci’s <CHIME ZINE 01>, a publication funded by Gucci aimed to promote gender equality and self-expression, raising awareness for female rights, which I see as evidence of Gucci was engage in being socially responsible. The Gucci candlelight represents hope in the scene. 

My 3rd illustration:

During the researches, I found out that Gucci is the most environmentally friendly fashion corporation in the world for being entirely carbon neutral, with the support of the Kering Group. The illustration shows the model wearing Gucci pieces is holding a flag, facing her back to the audience. It represents that Gucci is one leading brand in the industry and they’re ready to go further. 

With the theme ‘Emerging Technologies in the Fashion Industry’, we got a perfect opportunity to explore the possibilities of technology Influenced the new fashion trend as the nowadays technology is skyrocketing but in most of the fashion industries we still keen on the old technique, it caused a lot of problems, including unnecessary material waste and mass manufacturing of high street fashion brand, I believed that fashion industry need radically change, and this theme is the perfect chance for us to explore that.

we had some initial open discussion on how mainstream technology such as BlockChain and Large Data Analysis affecting the industry, and we mentioned bitcoin and P2P finance, also how to google research trend can generate a model on how the trend goes based on the Large Data  Analysis.

To me, this is an absolutely new area to explore even though I’m very highly fully engaged with the digital-based fashion media, but I never interpreted ‘fashion with technology’ as data-based operations and marketing strategies, as a fashion illustrator I believe it is very important to carry out my own research on this particular topic as illustration doesn’t play a big part in it; But instead, if you interpreted technology as CG and more graphic-based technology, then illustration plays a very important part in it, virtual fashion is getting more and more vitals and visible nowadays as the result of technology evolves, in addition at the current time of Covid-19 outbreaks, with everything converted to the online, fashion industry is in some way been forced to convert into a new form.

At 2020, a new pandemic Covid-19 changed the life of everyone on the earth, also the fashion industry, the traditional paper media are urgently seeking a new way to produce front cover and promotion, such as Vogue Chinese International may issue and Paper magazine January issued showed the great potentials of full CG virtual fashion in the future.

In another filed, virtual online personality is also a big hit on the new era, Hong Kong virtual personnel Ruby Gloom is the perfect sample, as a creative person, she uses 3D software to establish her virtual figure as a ‘alter ego’, in the commercial aspect, as the technology evolves, the way of fashion promotion marketing can be turned upside down, a celebrity can be live stream appeared in a different location for editorial ‘photoshoot’, and the stylist, photographer, set manger etc. can be located in different area worldwide and work remotely meanwhile simultaneously.

Furthermore, as the climate change is affecting the world, we as a creative individual, try to stop or decrease the rate of wasting material or inessential wasting is something we should really think and reflect about, and I believe that virtual fashion is the best solution.

My undergraduate major is “Hair, the Make – up and Prosthetics for Performance”. The reason why I chose “Navigating Through Clothing” is that when I was doing professional courses, I used to have a lot of ideas about costumes. But since I only learned about makeup and didn’t know anything about costumes, it was difficult for me to improve my ideas. I chose this theme because I wanted to learn more about costumes, to get a complete picture of how the whole character is designed and executed, to improve and develop my ideas.

In the lecture of better lives, I came up with the idea of making costumes out of vintage clothes, which is combined with the theme of “sustainable development”. In the process of research, I found that a lot of clothes were discarded because of burning, but in my opinion, those clothes were exactly in line with the character setting of “poor and miserable” of the protagonist of my story. So I came up with the idea of using burned clothing to complete part of the costume. The costumes are made in this way, low cost and in line with the character image, and easy to make, consistent with the theme of sustainable development.

Then I made a collage of my character’s image, choosing some old clothes that had been burned as part of the costume, as well as some patched fabrics. But though the characters’ clothes are shabby, they are well-groomed. I think it’s part of the completion of the fairy tale. Throughout the fairy tale, the candy house and the end result are beautiful, so in my opinion, it is necessary to maintain some respectability in the costumes.

Due to the covid-19 crisis, people are isolated at home and cannot go to the fabric market or the antique market to select suitable goods. This special period made me focus on the fabric around me. Doesn’t the best “sustainable development” start with the little things around us? I looked at the fabric in my home and found that some textures were very suitable for the costumes. I think this kind of work is very special. I wouldn’t have been able to do that if I hadn’t been isolated at home.

The subject of “Navigating Through Clothing” has enabled me to do a lot of different things in my life today. Before I got into better lives, I had no idea how to complete a costume. When fairy tales really need me to design clothes, I feel a lot of pressure. Before that, I thought it was easy to design costumes, because many plays already had perfect costume models. But when I really began to research, I found that costume design can be imaginative, and all the fantasy can be completed here. Despite the pressure, my design is free and happy. And when we analyze the script, there will be a sense that the characters are really around, and we need to explore and understand their hearts, which is really different from what I thought before.

All in all, I think my course is very helpful to my undergraduate major and is a very correct choice.

From the entire collection of better lives lectures the One lecture that stood out to me was the LECTURE – INCLUSION by Lara Salisbury. When I thought about the word inclusion, it always meant to not leave anybody out but after attending the lecture I inferred the burgeoning demand of inclusion in the fashion industry. The way we live now is quite contrasting to the way we lived 20 years ago on any terms. This lecture made me think about one particular quote by Pablo Picasso

                                                       “There is only one way to look at things until someone shows  us how to look at them with different eyes”

One such particular example given by the lecturer was of the YVES BAHAR – POWERSUIT, designed to help the elderly with mobility. However, the same power suit had its disadvantages, one being that that the elderly would only use it till the battery lasts. One woman said that she could not use it because she had a baby and she was not sure about the material. This shows that the designer was giving the disabled choice in one element but excluding a whole range of fashion choice and styles. 

Designers need to keep in mind that they are not designing for the elderly or the disabled but for the entire population, that’s what inclusive fashion is. Fashion tells so much about our roots, ethnicity, gender and that can’t be ignored while designing. Specially providing for the disable, what does the clothing say – is it being worn underneath or is seen as the main form of clothing. By doing so what does the designer want the people to feel?  If it seen as the main form of clothing it will make them more noticeable and will stereotype the abilities that usually hidden. Cutecircuits sound shirt enabled the deaf to feel music, this not only helped the deaf community but also people who could hear wanted to know how it felt, it also helped enhance the experiences of the people. 

Designers need to find a way to make the people feel more comfortable and not make them feel out of place either it is through basic clothing or something different. They shouldn’t feel as if they were different.

The lecture was very insightful it helped understand me how Inclusion can be part of the fashion industry and how important it is for the brand to keep in mind, they are producing for the entire population as a whole rather than a certain group of people.