C R I T I C A L  R E F L E C T I O N 

For this brief into activism in fashion, I wanted to explore an area different to what I would usually look at. My work often focuses on themes of feminism or mental health, but I wanted to push myself to focus on concepts and ideas I don’t usually feel I have the knowledge to pursue. A lot of my personal image-making work outside of university has focused on plant life and botanicals and so I wanted to bring this interest into this project brief.

As an avid social media user, I was seeing the growing trend in plants and nature, particularly on Instagram and through others’ artwork, so I used this as initial inspiration to kick-start my ideas process, as well as researching into visual artists, designers and fashion brands that are focusing more and more on the concept of natural living that harmonises with the contemporary world around us. The brief was quite open, to focus on either ‘anarchism and revolution’ or ‘peace and prosperity’ – I therefore took my work in the direction of peace and prosperity, to demonstrate the changing attitudes to how we treat our planet and the appreciation we should show towards it.

I would say my work and the direction I wanted it to take changed several times throughout the project. I initially wanted to create quite a broad publication that featured elements of lifestyle, health, fashion and visual art, for example the rising trend in veganism and house plants, visual art that takes inspiration from this, and try out some fashion editorial shoots featuring these concepts. I realised I did not have enough time to make this a reality and was perhaps setting myself too broad and time-consuming a task, so I decided my publication should be a summarised – or extract from a trend book, displaying only a couple of areas of a trend rather than a full report that would be used in the industry.

I wanted the publication to be accessible to the public, perhaps resembling an independent magazine, and providing inspiration and ideas for not only designers and makers but also individuals looking to change the way they approach fashion – this idea came from my initial research into Li Edelkoort’s viewpoint on the future of fashion, and how she states that the industry needs to change to keep the interest of this generation of outsiders (who are ‘hungry for consensus and altruism’ rather than the latest fad or repetitive trends).

I feel I allowed my skills to develop in this project, through learning to conduct in depth visual and theoretical research to feed my ideas – I became aware that when I had not done enough research my ideas came to a halt and I was unable to move forward with my creative work. For example, it took me a while to create fashion illustrations I was happy with due to not researching into existing illustrators. I also conducted more primary visual research, visiting galleries for inspiration – even if simply for colours, shapes or process ideas – and visiting Kew Gardens to obtain a rich library of photographs (and drawings) that I could experiment with and use throughout the project and beyond.

I am particularly happy with the way I developed my InDesign and layout skills, to create a cohesive publication with contemporary and experimental design, while still keeping a professional look. I particularly enjoyed working with textiles when I experimented with plant dyes, and wish I had taken this further to create tactile, multimedia work.

I regret the issues I had with time-management, and becoming demotivated when I hit a creative block or received criticism, as I would have liked to experiment more with fashion photography and include an editorial shoot in the trend book. This project has definitely taught me to keep researching and creating to reach a conclusion I am happy with, and to experiment more with different media and methods. I think I have learned a lot about the way I work and how I can constantly improve and carry this forward into my final major project.