design philosophy

• What is my view on design/ what do I think of as good design/ what do I aim to produce?

I believe that good design is subjective, just like beauty. It is all in the eye of the beholder. To me, good design is akin to beautiful design. Something I find visually appealing.. This tends to range from patterns and mixes of fabrics to clothing silhouettes to tiny details that take awhile to notice to interesting ways fabric is manipulated and played with.. My favourite designers include John Galliano and Alexander McQueen for those reasons I stated above..

As for what I aim to produce in my designs, I just want to create something that would be visually appealing to me. While that might sound narcississtic, I don’t know how else to put it. I am my own person and only I will know what I like, visually. With every design I churn out, there will be some that not everyone will like and so be it. I cannot KNOW for sure what someone else is thinking, even  if that person is my bestest friend in the whole wide world.. So, to be safe, I’ll just design for myself and if someone comes along and really enjoys my designs, then I will be happy for being able to share my vision with someone else! 🙂

And I guess there should be another aspect to this.. The sustainability aspect. If it were possible that beautiful designs could be created without harming and/or exploiting fellow beings and with less detrimental effects towards the environment we live in, that would just take the ultimate cake in GOOD DESIGNING.

• What methods do I use- how do I approach design?

Hmmm.. This is a tough one. I actually think I work better with a pencil and paper. I really enjoy the sketching process if I am able to see it in my mind’s eye and translate it onto a page before I do anything else, that would be ideal.

For example, if you asked me to just grab an old skirt and turn it into something else by draping it on a mannequin and playing around, I’d probably die of a heart attack.. Haha! My brain just doesn’t work that way, I guess. 🙂

That was probably why I was slightly stressed out over this current project and how we were encouraged to just go with the flow of things… My going with the flow is leaving my mind blank, putting that pencil to the paper and just drawing whatever flows out of me, but I guess that’s just a different way of interpreting it!

• What materials do I like to work with?

Materials.. I tend to make sure I choose materials that first and foremost, do NOT harm any sentient beings in the process of making it available. As you might’ve read in my previous entries, I’m against any animal products used in my designs and I make it a point to check every fabric and/or garment I buy for animal content in it.. And even if I really LOVE that silk fabric because of the gorgeous print, I will not buy it, because my physical beauty or someone else’s(if they were to wear my designs) is NOWHERE NEAR as important as the number of beings that died to produce it.

Another factor about materials would be whether they are fairtrade fabrics and whether they are organic and environmentally friendly or not. While I am still a Uni student and do not have the income at my disposal, this part is probably a bit more tricky, since such certified fabrics are probably quite a bit more expensive than their counterparts. But I guess if I can splurge and buy myself fairtrade chocolate, I can buy fabrics.. Hahaha! 😀

• What do my designs look like?

Oh wow.. How do I describe that? I feel like my designs are pretty all over the place! Haha~ Here’re a heap of them.. You tell me! 🙂

• Who is the target customer for my designs?

I made this awhile ago, but it’s still relevant to this question. 🙂

So I’ve been wondering recently..

What inspires me?

Looking at my past designs,  I draw inspirations from anything and everything! But it’s usually what I’m really interested in at the moment..

Let’s have some examples from past assignments..

Bayonetta & my hair-inspired swimsuit designs.

Steampunk-inspired pants in First Year.

I realize through these and looking at old visual diaries, that I tend to take a lot of inspiration from really niche subcultures(Steampunk, fRuiTs, Lolita, etc) to video games to comic books to movies to TV shows. I’m probably the BIGGEST geek imaginable, so that’s probably no surprise.. Hehe..

At the moment, my brain has been swirling with military-themed designs because I’ve been obsessing over a few HBO miniseries.. They are Band of Brothers, The Pacific and Generation Kill, all of which have to do with military exploits in human history. And when Dior’s 2010 Pre-Fall WW2-inspired collection came out, I nearly died with love.. Here it is.

HRRGGG.. THE BEAUTY!! ♥

And that is probably why John Galliano is one of my favourite designers of all time. I can see what inspires him and sometimes I feel like we’re inspired by and enjoy romanticising similar things, though he’s probably 12287361273682173times better than I am… :’)

That being said, this subject, on WHAT INSPIRES ME, is actually way too broad for me to pinpoint. I take inspiration from what I’m interested in at the moment and work from there, and seeing as that constantly changes, I can’t really say, can I? 🙂

Is the Vegan Way truly sustainable?

Apart from animal rights,  I also believe that the animal industry is strongly linked with sustainability. Virtually ALL economic activity is dependant on the availabilty of energy and materials. The animal industry is NOT sustainable. There are so many different areas that the animal industry pollutes and destroys, from water to air to land, it’s all being covered.

Studies show that vast amounts of water is needed in animal industries compared to that of plants. While this study is from the food point of view, the raising of cows(for beef or leather) and the growing of corn(for consumption or PLA) would be virtually the same.

1 kg of beef requires 50,000 litres of water to produce.
1 kg of corn requires less than 2500 litres of water to produce.

How about that, huh? Some other issues with water would be how these animals we raise would destroy and pollute waterways and cause more deforestation to occur for grazing. The production of leather also pollutes rivers with toxic chemicals such as chromium, mercury and formeldehyde, used to preserve and tan the animal skins.

The animal industry also plays a big part in greenhouse gas emissions. According to studies, over 30% of the greenhouse gas emissions in Australia can be attributed to the animal industries alone. The Ausrtalian animal industry will produce substantially more warming over the next 20 years than all of Australia’s coal fired power stations put together.

In regards to land, studies from CSIRO and the University of Sydney prove that 92% of all land degradation in Australia is caused by the animal industry and this takes up 50% of the Australian continent. This pie chart shows how much land degradation goes on in the different industries.

In conclusion, I believe that reducing and eventually doing away with the animal industries would bring about a more sustainable environment for us to live in, allowing for more vegetation and sustainable forestry.

Information from this post is taken from a sustainable living flyer, called Eating Up The World, that promotes veganism. All information in the flyer is from academic sources, like the World Wildlife Foundation, the Australian Government, the Australian Bureau of Statistics, CSIRO and UNICEF to name a few.

Why Vegan Clothing?

I feel like I’ve been pretty in-your-face and extremely passionate about my pro-Veganism in my first post, unless I’m just being paranoid..  But if I scared anyone reading it, that’s just how strongly I feel about the subject and I hope it gave you something to think about.

So, let’s get this entry started with:

What is Vegan Clothing?

Vegan clothing  is clothes that do not use any animal product or by-product. Here are some common materials that you will NOT find in a vegan clothing label

1. Silk – Baby silkworms are killed by being dropped into hot boiling water. This is the process of obtaining the silk threads they use to spin their coccoons.
2. Wool – Sheep are exploited and tortured (mulesing) just to provide humans with the wool on their bodies. Shearing of the sheep’s wool can also be a painful and stressful process for the sheep to go through. Watch this video if you feel up for it.
3. Down – Down feathers are plucked painfully from the bodies of geese and ducks.
4. Leather – Most commonly from cows, but there are many different animals that can be part of this category. Without the animal dying and being stripped of their skin, this material would be impossible.
5. Fur – This comes from many different animals as well, like foxes, minks, rabbits and even cats and dogs. Yes, even domestic cats and dogs. I’ve been recently been watching bits and pieces of Skin Trade, a documentry about the fur industry, when I’m at work and I can’t watch 5 seconds of it without wanting to cry my eyes out. Watch the trailer here.

Here is a question for you. If you are ANTI-FUR, why are you not ANTI-LEATHER/SILK/WOOL/ETC as well?

Why a Vegan Label?

Looking at the list above, it’s almost as if, we humans, want to kill and skin as many different species as possible. What is up with that? If you have ever watched and felt sorry for the animals in the factory farming videos, where thousands upon thousands of animals are bred and kept in tiny cages just so they can be slaughtered and/or exploited for human consumption, can you not link that to the animal-derived materials industry? It’s the SAME THING.

These are the reasons I would LOVE to have a vegan label. Animals have been exploited enough by us for hundreds of years. It has even come to the point where most of us don’t even know what goes on behind-the-scenes in the making of these materials. How we get these products that we use in day-to-day, like that ‘lovely‘ leather jacket or that ‘stunning‘ silk blouse. I’ve even met people who never knew about the number of innocent silkworms that died to produce silk.

There materials are also usually a LOT more expensive than the plant or man-made alternative. Why is that so? I guess claiming that something is 100% calf leather can up the value of a garment quite a lot. Is it because the life of the baby cow is worth more? Who made up these rules anyway? This is a quote I got from the Skin Trade trailer I linked above, “If there’s money to be made from animals, people will do just about anything to protect their investment.“

Some thoughts after the first week of Uni..

So the first week of Uni, we were given a lecture on sustainability in fashion. Some things I started wondering about, coming away from the lecture, was how sustainable is the world now.. Really. I’m actually just going to put my thoughts on this out there.. Honest thoughts.

We still have a LONG way to go.

But first things first, these are some questions we were told to think about.. 🙂

Would you consider yourself an ethical consumer? What about an ethical designer? Why or why not?
Regarding this question, if I had been asked this a few years ago, I probably would say ‘no’, that I was a total conspicuous consumer and a total slave to the fashion cycle. Fortunately for me, I went through some things in life that sparked a change in the way I thought and saw the world around me in general. I am definitely a LOT more ethical now than I was before, and that’s saying a lot. 🙂

In regards to my thoughts on what is ‘ethical consumption’,, you would probably get quite a different answer than most fashionistas out there. While a large percentage of ethical consumption deals with the environment and the humans and how both are treated in the making of the garment, there is still only a very small percentage of clothing labels out there that encompass the ANIMAL aspect of ethical consumerism as well.

Being vegan, and having been for a bit more than a year(I’m a total newbie, but it doesn’t stop me from having the same sentiments!), I personally refuse to buy any garment of clothing that has any part of an animal in it. Yes, that means leather, silk and even wool. I check clothing labels all the time and will not buy anything that states is made from the aforementioned materials, no matter how pretty I think it is..

As for the design aspects of this, I also refuse to use any animal derived material in my designs. As beautiful as silk is, and as warm as wool would make me on a cold winter’s day, none of it is more important than the life of the animal that is being taken advantage of to produce garments that I wear just for convenience, when plant or man-made alternatives are readily available.

Yes, I know that a lot of non-ethical practices go into creating some of these plant/man-made alternatives, but that is for a different post..

What do you perceive to be the challenges and barriers to being/becoming an ethical consumer and/or designer?
For me, I would ideally like to create a vegan clothing line that actively promotes veganism in all ways of life. This, in itself, would be quite a problem already, I think.. I did a lot of browsing and searching for Vegan labels, but it is truly difficult to find an ENTIRELY VEGAN fashion label. Stella McCartney comes close with her vegetarian brand, but she still uses wool and silk(ugh!) in some of her designs. I still think she is amazing with where her label is going, but I would totally have hearts in my eyes for her if she were completely VEGAN.

I think the challenges would be presenting the label to the market without getting scoffed at for taking things too far. People in this world are so conditioned into equating animal products(in the fashion world) with luxury, that trying to get them to wrap their heads around something as simple as a luxury faux-leather bag would be difficult.

To quote Ms. McCartney,
“It’s surprising to me that people cannot get their heads around a non-leather bag or shoe. They already exist out there, but unfortunately designers feel they have to slap a leather trim or sole on them. People need to start looking at the product, and if they like it, that’s all that matters. If it has an ethical or ecological edge, that’s a huge bonus. We address these questions in every other part of our lives except fashion.”

Like she says, we address this in every other part of our lives except in the clothes we wear. While people’s mindsets are changing now in regards to meat consumption and the animals that are killed to be served at our dinner tables, there is still a HUGE wall stopping people from looking at a Louis Vuitton leather handbag or a Christian Louboutin leather stiletto and seeing the poor animal that gave it’s life so the person using the item can flaunt the name of brand they are buying. It is all for show. How tragic is that?

What is your perception of designers who try to use sustainable practices and the products they produce?
As I state above with Stella McCartney, while her brand isnt’ Vegan, I am deeply envious(because I would love to do that too!) and HAPPY that there are people like her out there, bringing to light the plight of animals suffering for us and being able to produce fashionable, BEAUTIFUL collections. I always feel that if there is a fashion leader out there leading the way(even if it’s only in the leather department), paving the fashion world for others, that we can definitely start living in a world where other beings won’t have to be hurt and exploited just for the dominating species to appear beautiful.