Upon research into my latest project I was analysing the new and popular lingerie trends for the upcoming seasons. I found trends that really do relate to the wider fashion landscape too, often seen on the latest catwalk shows. 

Texture

Ader’s success could be said to be part of the ‘drop’ culture that youths are buying in to. When looking on their website you notice that most stock is sold out, boosting you to check back in with the site periodically to find when the next clothing drop is. The young consumer base driving this exclusive trend is most often referred to as Generation Z, born anytime from 1995-2012. The most defining part of this generation is the ‘anything goes’ attitude to defining one’s self. Gender is so much more fluid, and these attitudes are being fuelled on by the Gen z. Ader has a good understanding of this generation and although the consumer in South Korea was a little less open to this gender neutrality before it is something that Ader has managed to introduce very well.

I remembered as the news has hit about many of the events they mentioned within the documentary, a huge building collapses as low paid workers get trapped under the rubble, a huge fire that rips through factories with no proper health and safety procedures in place. I did not however realise how many of the main brands made their clothes within these very factories, GAP and Primark to name a few. It is all well and good that the brands offer their condolences and false promises of improvements however as the documentary shoes these are not isolated events. They are fairly often and so devastating to communities.

There are over 40 million garment factory workers in the world at the moment, with 10% of them working in Bangladesh. It is spoken as an issue mainly for female workers as 85% of these factory workers are female. They earn less than £3 a day. In England, that is the price of an average lunch. It is pocket change whilst for some they have to raise a family on that money alone. The ideas of unions are only just emerging, workers demands barely getting listened to and reports of violence and abuse have risen out of many factories. The documentary featured a worker retelling how they were locked in a room and attacked with chairs and other furniture items, unlike the UK where policing is high, these workers still had to go back the next day and work for these same employers as they needed the money.

Livia Firth, a big campaigner at the moment, has been urging the fashion industry to make changes that last. She has been using her platform to critique fast fashion and to right the 'social justice destruction' that has been happening.

In addition to the human cost, the effects the fashion industry has on the environment is shocking. Clothing factories are dumping tons of dyes and chemicals into local water works, the same streams and rivers in which people rely on for drinking and bathing. That polluted water is being consumed by those who cannot afford to filter or pay for luxury bottled water. They have no choice and are most likely oblivious to the effects that the chemicals can do to themselves and their families.

With 1 in 6 working in the global fashion industry, we need to do more to protect those without a voice. They are silenced due to their low social standing and desperate to do anything that might protect their families. We need to do more.

This week we have come to the end of our project that we've been working on over the past few months. My brand is called Oppidan and we developed a story of it being a streetwear style fragrance brand, our products were 2 portable fragrance cards that could fit in wallets, pockets and small bags, one titled 10am for day time and one titled 10pm more suited for evening use.
This was our mocked up product:


We were given an opportunity to have a studio shoot with a professional photographer, talked about more in detail in my previous blog post. This was a great experience for us and the photos came out amazingly, we were really pleased with their simplicity and it gave us a lot of opportunity for some really cool post production. We also conducted a second shoot around Nottingham to collect some more Urban inspired images as well as some short clips to work into our presentation. In addition to these, one group member conducted a photoshoot of her flat mate around Lace Market in Nottingham, NG1. This was a really important area to us because we felt like our shop would fit in perfectly around this particular area. We edited these so they worked as promotional images for our Instagram and website.



We created a poster that we planned to flypast and post in bus stop advertising too. We decided to do this as we felt our consumers would see this the most as they are young and would use public transportation over their own cars.