United Nations Visit
The United Nations visit was a very self reflective, intrinsic experience. I first had to overcome the disbelief that I was sitting in the exact chamber that world leaders have sat in before and then listen to the ceaselessly inspiring individuals who had each challenged societal norms on massive scales. There were several meaningful moments laced throughout the speeches and overall visit but the more memorable instance was when fashion designer, Angela Luna, who graduated from Parsons spoke about the concept behind her clothes. As a fashion student in the same institution as her as well as being someone who is passionate about politics, her talk truly resonated with me. I admired her courage in turning her back on traditional high fashion and instead used her skills to create a lasting and significant variance in the world, although not a luxurious, glamorous line, her clothes veritably make a difference.
In regards to Ana Baptista, her talk revolved around climate injustice and impacted communities. On the topic on social injustice being aggravated by climate change. Her key points were that due to climate change there are social inequalities occurring such as caravan families fleeing from their countries because of drought, temperature change and more into the United States, yet the president Donald Trump calls them invaders although the majority of them are women and children. Moreover, her points revolve around the idea that climate change will cause extreme drastic living changes creating situations where lower income individuals become displaced because of their weak financial standings.
The main inspiration I drew from Angela was that she rejects the norm, glamour, and wastefulness of the fashion industry and sets out to accomplish an entirely unique, sustainable and selfless action through fashion. She challenges the lifestyle that the fashion industry is embedded in and instead creates an anomaly where fashion – instead of just being disposable, visually appealing, objects, it can also change lives.
I think I would like to inspire change in the fashion industry, I would be central in conveying the breaking of norms through culture. Multicultural and multi-ethnic people are often shunned or seen as lesser than as they are perceived as a foreigner of the background they come from. Although there is an ever growing diversity in the fashion industry there is still many changes that need to take place to truly diversify society. From both cultures I come from, being a multi-ethnic allows for discrimination and bias to take place. Through fashion, I aim to tackle that. I would like to create clothing that allows multi ethnic people to fully integrate into their respective societies and expand the minds of those who discriminate against them, not by masking their differences but by finding bridges between the two cultures they stem from.
After the UN visit, I left feeling concerned and relatively small against the grand scheme of world events. Although inspiring, the overwhelming idea of how positive change towards the environment is essentially incremental due to the extremely negative state of the present world left me both concerned and frightened. It was slightly discouraging to know that even the change we do cannot reverse what has already been done to the environment. Albeit discouraging, I found Angela to be the most inspiring, not only because our backgrounds related but because in how she used her medium to think beyond the superficial and instead create change.
