LP Post #5

I watched “The True Cost”. Before watching this film, I visited fast fashion stores really frequently. However, now I decided to limit the times I went to fast fashion stores. It is really difficult for us to to totally fix the over consumption in the fashion industry, however, we can change our own buying habits and shifts to more eco-friendly products.

According to Kaiser, “fashion is a labor-intensive industry”. On one side, mega multinational fast fashion companies ignores the human rights of the workers in developing countries. They were given 2 dollars per day, the working condition is dirty and dangerous and they are not allowed to have unions to protect their own rights. Hundreds of people died in an apparel factory’s accident in Bangladesh. Most jobs there are entry-level and cannot benefit the development of education in these countries. A lot of harmful gases and water are also polluting the environment of these countries. On the other side, these companies provide a lot of job opportunities to these countries. As the interviewee in “The True Cost” said, sewing itself isn’t very dangerous”. If the apparel manufacturing business decline, people in these countries will have to shift to even more dangerous business such as making chemicals, glass, etc. There will still be child labor and below-minimum wages.

I personally support fair trade in the fashion industry. However, in the market, price is one of the most decisive factor. It is impossible to persuade every customers to go for fair trade because not everyone can afford them. To improve the current situation, I think it’s important to improve the economy and fix the labor laws in developing countries. I have mixed opinions about fast fashion and I think it would be too subjective to define them as bad companies.

More importantly, the True Cost questioned people’s buying habits. People in developed countries like the United States keep buying clothes that they don’t need. The prices of food, shelter, and many other services keep increasing, but the prices of clothes are decreasing. The emerging of fast fashion companies make it possible to get a T-shirt at three dollars. There are dirt cheap clothes at street vendors everywhere. Therefore, people’s desire on new clothing get out of control. We buy the clothes, dump them after a year, and they rarely get recycled at the charity and usually get treated as trash, generating harmful gases in developing countries. The media also puts a huge influence on people. According to Kaiser in Fashion and Cultural Studies, “Fashion weeks became a common representational strategy. ” People are controlled by the media contents in fashion weeks in top fashion cities such as New York, Milan, Paris, London and Tokyo and grow desire to clothes that they don’t need. They place orders on clothes that will not look good on them. The social media influencers also give misleading information to people. And the constant big sales in-store and online also push people to buy more.

Everyone, from business to customers, has the responsibility to make our garment industry more sustainable. According to “The Earth Day, Green is the New Denim”, Adidas already starts to buy fibers directly from farmers to increase their profits. There are more and more companies participate in fair trade, although some of them are just “green-wash” marketing. Even H&M starts giving out there sustainability report and gives discount to customers who recycled clothes. Customers should consider more environmentally garments. They are more expensive, but they are better more our skin and our earth. We should look for organic fibers, organic dyes and limit our demand for cheap clothes that we don’t need. We should buy less clothes but in better quality and wear them longer. On the other hand, I think this is really a paradox for the current system. The True Cost shows the problem but doesn’t give solutions. If people really starts to cut their consumptions significantly, the fashion industry is going to drop and people in the fashion industry will lose jobs, which can leads to other problems. In the long term, if we don’t fix the economic system which encourage more and more consumption, we really cannot change a lot. However, at least people can be aware of their out-of-control buying habits and shifts to more organic, envionmentally-friendly products.

Bibliography

I visited “Items: Is Fashion Modern?” at MoMA. The piece I selected is named Robin from Skin Series. It was designed by Tamae Hirokawa, a Japanese Designer. The garment was made of nylon and polyutherane. According to the exhibition’s mission statement, it aims to “explore the present, past—and sometimes the future—of 111 items of clothing and accessories that have had a strong impact on the world in the 20th and 21st centuries—and continue to hold currency today.” The exhibition range swidely from little black dress to flip flops to 3D printed futuristic designs.

In my opinion, Robin from Skin Series isincluded because it was made with really unique techniques, explored the boundary of wearable fashion and shows the “future” side of the exhibition. The production and design of this garment is strongly based on computers. It’s a white bodysuit that covers the whole body, and was knitted three-dimensionally and seamlessly. It is groundbreaking in terms of technology because we’ve never seen such a bodysuit being seamless. The white knitted fabric looked thin and tight while MoMA described this piece as “halfway between tattoos and tights”.

In terms of fashion history and culture, Robin shows the increasing role of technology in our garments. In the past, people handmade all the clothes. Then, sewing machines were invented and more and more machines joined the game. Now we can actually design and produce the whole garment with computer-aided technology, and the result was seamless and beautiful.

This garment definitely has one of the closest relationships to body. In Fashion and Cultural Studies, Kaiser said, “Personal style enables a sense of subjectivity in a visual way – representing to those around us and to ourselves – some tentative idea about who we are and are becoming”. The exposure of body shows the society our personalities to some extent. Designers are constantly finding the balance of how much to expose and how much to cover up. In this garment, Hirokawa covered the model completely. I feel a mix of freedom and restriction at the same time. The fact that the model can dance in it make it seems like a tight sports suit which encourages freedom. However, the seamless technology means it’s impossible for the model to take it off without cutting it apart. The garment is so close to the body that it becomes a part of the body. It seems to suggest that technology can encourage freedom and motion whereas it will also weaken our personal identities.

Post 2 images from your last assignment, the Dress Practice Log, and post a final overall reflection to your LP. Your final overall reflection should answer these questions:

• What themes emerged in your dress practice log?
• What did you notice about daily dress practice that you hadn’t noticed before?
• How did the dress practice log impact your understanding of the relationship between clothing and the body?

After completing the dress practice log, I found some themes that were almost in all of my outfits. For color, deep blue and black are my favorite. In the first picture, I am wearing a deep blue patterned dress. I also wear deep blue denim jacket and deep blue top in my other photos in the log. In the second picture, I am wearing all black. There are two more outfits where I wear all black in the log. Deep V neck is another theme that emerges. Almost all of my tops are deep V neck, because I think this neck line fits my body and aesthetics the best. I also occasionally wear ballet neck and crew neck clothes.

It’s the first time when I notice I prefer dark color. When I am designing, I usually prefers to make the collection colorful. However, when I look at my dress log, I realize I am wearing dark colored clothes almost every day. The brightest color I had worn is red and it only happened once in a skirt in the picture where I am playing the piano. I also surprisingly realize that I never wear more than two colors, unless the garment is patterned. I think that’s because two colors provide better unity and I prefer using different intensity of the same color to show variation.

The dress practice log lets me think more deeply about the relationship between clothing and body. In general, clothing serves our body. We use clothing to decorate our bodies and make them look better, to provide comfort, keep us warm and demonstrate our personality. Our purpose of putting on clothes is usually a mix of these. However, the emphasis changes. For example, when we are going out, we tend to focus more on the “looking nice in front of others” side; when we are with ourselves, we tend to focus more on the comfort and warmth side.

This 2007 Tom Ford advertising campaign for men’s cologne is a perfect example of the depiction of traditional gender stereotype. There is a woman’s chest with her hands holding her breasts and covering her nipples. The woman has a typical sexy body: big breasts, tanned and smooth skin, long fingers, red nails and her body is even covered in a layer of water or massage oil. I would name this ad as hyper female sexuality fantasy. The product is targeted to male customers, but only a female is shown in the advertisement and Tom Ford includes a lot of elements that are usually associated with woman and sex. The fragrance is featured in the cleavage in the center. Woman is clearly portrayed as hypersexual object. Since the face gets cropped out and only the sex organs–breasts are shown. Many people find it offensive and think it doesn’t show the respect to the woman. It seems like the woman’s personality (face) is hidden and only her sexual value is shown. This advertisement is suggesting that if the man gets the Tom Ford fragrance, he will be able to attract sexy woman and have sex with them. It significantly increased the sales and demonstrated the power of sex in marketing. According to Kaiser in Fashion and Cultural Studies, “Clearly, sex sells, and it is usually women’s bodies that are represented and ‘consumed’.” In my opinion, this advertisement is just an effective tool to attract people’s attention and boost sales. Despite of many feminist criticism and being a feminist myself, I actually like this advertisement. It aims to demonstrate the sexy aesthetics of Tom Ford rather than to purely objectify women. It is also a piece of striking and controversial modern art.

1. “Fashion is not necessarily spectacular (though it often conforms to the theory of the society of the spectacle), it can also be demotic, ordinary, mundane, routine and humble. It is the stuff of the ethnographer and the anthropologist.”

This aphorisms expand the limits of fashion significantly. Breward thinks that not only revolutional, attention-grabbing runway ready-to-wears are fashion, mundane, day-to-day clothing are fashion as well. As long as the “stuff” is associated with ethnographer and anthropologist, which means it is connected to people and culture, it is fashion. He didn’t specify what the “stuff” it is, probably because he want to expand the boundary of fashion from clothing and accessories to a broader sense.

I partially agree with this. I agree that fashion does not have to be spectacular.Because fashion is everywhere while spectacular pieces only come out once in a while. Simple demotic dresses can be full of elegance and have timeless color palette and  beauty, so they can be considered fashion as well. I disagree that fashion can be ordinary. In my opinion, a truly “fashionable” piece should be at least aesthetically pleasing or interesting; even if the idea is not spectacular, it should offer something to the viewers and wearers. Ordinary “stuff” are more like useful tools rather than fashion.

2. Fashion is intensely personal, in the same way that poetry is intensely personal. It is a medium through which personal stories can be told, memories re-lived and futures foretold.

Fashion has strong connections to the designers and the wearers. Similar as poetry, fashion expresses their identities in a highly personalized way. Fashion can demonstrate what story you want to tell the public, and indicate your memories and even your future.

I agree with this statement. I think fashion is one of the strongest visual statement a person can make. When I meet a person, even for the first time, the clothes and accessories she is wearing can always tell me about her personality. For example, if a person always wear all black, I will assume that she like simple things just like she like simple color, she might be more serious rather than playful, etc. Memories will affect a person’s aesthetics indirectly but strongly. We might keep wearing a type of dress and suddenly realize that  it was what our grandma used to wear when we were kids. Future is also partially shown by fashion. How a person dress herself tells how she wants to be perceived in the public. Her intention can indicate her goals for the future and will definitely affect her actions.