Multi-Media Package

The Conscious Closet Project

The phrase sustainable fashion is being thrown around the fashion industry and media often without any real context on how it’s impacting the planet and its people.

The good news is: there’s a vast variety of resources and media that helps explain the impacts of the fast fashion, and importance of shopping sustainably without getting too complicated.

One of these resources is My Indie Wardrobe, a website started by Hannah Clugston Wilson with the aim of starting a conversation about how we buy our clothes in a fun and engaging way.

Sections of the website include: showcases of sustainable wardrobes, a collection of interviews with small scale creators, lists of local (Sheffield & surrounding areas) sustainable shops and brands, and more in-depth information about the environmental and ethical impacts of the fashion industry.

Hannah decided to set up My Indie Wardrobe because she found that when she was having conversations about sustainable fashion, people always seemed to have the same objections to changing their buying habits:

“The first was that sustainable fashion is either too expensive or too complicated, and the second was that it was unfashionable. I wanted to show that neither of these things are true by creating a resource where it is easy to find new brands and see how great sustainable fashion can look when styled properly.”

She spent a year rummaging through people’s wardrobes and photographing what she found in order to showcase how stylish closets made up of second hand and ethical clothes can be. These photographs are now available on the wardrobes section of the website, and you can view our models wearing sustainable outfits from their own wardrobes throughout this package.

My Indie Wardrobe also champions the benefits of thrift shopping, and shopping with sustainable indie brands for a completely individual wardrobe:

“Usually indie brands offer more interesting garments so you can curate a really interesting wardrobe by shopping in an alternative way to fast fashion.”

She’s also quick to point out the other benefits of buying second-hand clothes, considering that on average a person in the UK produces 70kg of textile waste per year, and the fashion industry is the second most polluting on the planet:

“Buying second hand is really important because it’s buying out of the mass of clothes hitting the landfills. In the west we have this crazy idea that we have endless access to everything on the planet, but that just isn’t the case. If we keep creating and consuming things that we then throw out within the year eventually something has to give.”

Another sustainable resource, Good on You, is an app that breaks down what brands are doing (or not doing) to be more sustainable. It rates brands using a five-dot system, the more dots a brand has, the more sustainable they are.

It gives you the chance to search the brands you commonly shop with and see a simple breakdown on what they’re doing to protect the environment and their workers.

If the brands policies and actions aren’t up to scratch, the app suggests the three sustainable brands that are the most similar to the one you searched. Helping you to easily switch your habits without compromising your style aesthetic.

There’s also a growing movement surrounding sustainability on social media with non-profits such as Sustainable Influencers which aims to create a community and a forum with the purpose to make sustainability more visible on social media.

If you know where to look, it’s easy to find the resources to help you become a more sustainable shopper. You can start simple, with My Indie Wardrobe, Good on You, and this multi-media package The Conscious Closet Project.

If you desire you can delve deeper using resources such as Fashion Revolution, Eco-Age, To Die For: Is Fashion Wearing Out The World? by Lucy Siegle, and documentary The True Cost.

Switching your shopping habits can be extremely difficult, time consuming, and it may seem a tad expensive when you first start to change, but you need to view each purchase as an investment in your own style, the planet, and garment workers.

Because why pay £20 for a new pair of jeans that will tear and need replacing every two months when you can pay £60 for a pair that will last for years. In the long run, sustainable fashion will save the planet, it’s people, and your money.

Choose to protect, and shop sustainable.

A video on the environmental impacts of fast fashion.

A video on the ethical impacts of the fast fashion industry.

Planning, Production, and Research

Article: Planning, Production & Research

– I started by doing some basic research on sustainable fashion, using YouTube videos and articles, you can see all of this in the documents titled ‘Week One-Research’ & ‘Week One-Sustainable Brands’

week-one-research-1 Download

week-one-sustainable-brands-1-1 Download

– I then decided to delve deeper into ways that people were making sustainable fashion more accessible to the masses, I ‘stalked’ the Instagram accounts of sustainable influencers, and even joined a movement called Ethical Influencers which got me inside information on the people paving the way for the sustainability trend we’re starting to see. I also watched as many Sustainable Youtubers as I could to get a real idea of the people at the heart of this movement. You can find all the information I collected from this in the ‘Sustainable Influencers’ document and links in my Bibliography.

My Ethical Influencers welcome email and examples of the newsletters I have received from them.

sustainable-instagram-influencers-1 Download

– After inserting myself into the Sustainable Fashion community, I had a solid idea of how I wanted to continue with my article. I wanted something that introduced the reader to the issues brought about by the fashion industry, and the positive solutions they could partake in, I also wanted my article to give ways of expanding their knowledge of the ethical and environmental impacts of the industry.

– Around the same time that I constructed my idea for my article, I found out about My Indie Wardrobe, a Sheffield based sustainable fashion project which seemed like the perfect fit for my interview. So I researched the project and got in contact with the woman who started it, Hannah Clugston, to organise my interview via email.

The emails between myself and Hannah Clugston.

– After I’d got my interview, I did some deeper research into the ethical and environmental impacts of the fashion industry, and the different resources that were available for further education on the subject.

– I then looked through my notes and used them to construct my article, I highlighted the best quotes from the interview and this really helped me to get the writing done.

My on-paper notes and my highlighted interview.

Infographic: Planning, Production & Research

– My infographic creation process was fairly simple as I used the research, I had conducted for my video to come up with the statistics I wanted my infographic to show.

– I decided I wanted one infographic that had a stat about the environmental impacts of the fashion industry, and one about the ethical impacts.

– It was pure coincidence that I had one stat that used 80% and one that used 85% so I decided to use these.

– I sourced images from different sources (see Bibliography) and created my infographics using the design service Canva, and then White Border to give the same aesthetic that the photographic campaign had.

Photo Campaign: Planning, Production & Research

– I decided that I wanted to shoot a campaign with two models in 100% sustainable outfits and I wanted the campaign to have a feeling of the #shotonfilm aesthetic that is currently popular on Instagram, so I decided to shoot on an Asahi Pentax k5000 SLR with a 35mm fuji colour film.

– I collected some examples of the aesthetic so I could start forming a vague idea:

– I then created a moodboard on pinterest to help solidify my concept and from that I created individual concept moodboards that I printed to use as inspiration during the shoot:

I chose one of my closest friends and my partner as my models as I knew they could be trusted to understand the concept of the project. I looked at their availability, and the weather forecast, and decided on a day to shoot.
I already had the sustainable outfits that I had sourced from brands for the previous shoot, and so we had a quick fitting a week before the shoot to see if any adjustments needed to be made, none were needed.

After the shoot, I took my film to be developed at Harrisons Cameras and once I’d got the images on a CD I imported them and chose the best three for each model and the best two shots of the models together. To edit the photos, I used VSCO, Photoshop, and White Border. I used VSCO to give them a white side border, used Photoshop to write ‘Shop Sustainable’ in the side border, and White Border to again add the border.

Video: Planning, Production & Research

– I started to brainstorm my concept by watching other sustainable fashion campaigns and video projects such as Fabric for Freedom’s launch campaign which inspired the impact I wanted my video to have, and Stella McCartney’s ‘World of Sustainability’ that inspired me to shoot my campaign outdoors. You can find a full list of the videos I watched in the bibliography in my proposal.

– Once I had finished watching others videos I started to conceptualise my own video, I came up with the idea of having a comparison video that contrasted the harsh reality of the environmental and ethical impacts of the fashion industry with the positives of sustainable fashion. I wanted to have my two models wearing dark outfits from their own wardrobes that they had bought from fast fashion brands for the harsh fact shots, and bright, colourful, sustainable clothes for the positive shots. I decided that I would have the facts and positive notes painted on signs for the models to hold.

– I painted the signs, using blue watercolours for the environmental facts to symbolise the environment, red watercolours for the ethical facts to symbolise the blood of garment workers, and orange/gold watercolours for the positive notes to symbolise sunrise + hope.

– I then created two reference images for each model instead of making a story board as most of the shots were framed exactly the same.

– Problem solving: I had organised for another of my friends to join us with all her camera equipment to help shot the video but she was called away on a family emergency at the last minute so I had to shoot the video on my iphone, hoping the quality using the 4K feature would be good enough.

-The models already had the sustainable outfits, but for my concept I wanted them to also be wearing dark outfits from fast fashion companies so I looked through their wardrobes and chose those outfits.

– The models got dressed and we shot the darker shots for the video in the woods behind my house, as it had the right atmosphere, then we went back to my garden to shoot the lighter shots.

– I used three different applications to edit my video: VSCO, Splice, and White Border. I used VSCO to edit the aesthetics of each shot, adjusting the contrast, exposure and saturation to give the best effect, then I imported all the shots to Splice to edit everything together, and finally I used White Border to give a full border to the whole video, I used the border to pull the aesthetics of the whole project together.

These were supposed to be the new signs.

– Once I had the whole campaign sorted I sent it out to get feedback from a few people, and while the photo feedback came back really positive, I had a lot of people telling me that it was really hard to read the models signs in the video.

– I had two choices, with less than three weeks until my deadline I could either: ignore the problems with the video and write it in my evaluation, or re-film the video. I decided to reshoot.

– I hired a camera from college, made new signs that I thought were much more readable, and organised a new shoot date with my models. I also decided to shoot both clips in the same place to save time, and add the atmosphere in the editing process.

– We shot a couple of clips with the new signs before I realised that they were still unreadable, so I decided to have my models read out what was on the signs, using contrasting monotone/upbeat voices.

– I uploaded these videos and instantly noticed the improvement in the quality, and I went through the whole editing process again, although this time in VSCO I edited the statistics clips in black and white and the positive clips in a style similar to technicolour for contrast.

– I submitted the new videos and got lots of positive feedback.

Problem-Solving

problem-solving-1 Download

Evaluation

evaluation-one Download

Final Evaluation + Audience Feedback

I’ve learnt a lot throughout the process of creating this project, from the importance of planning to carefully selecting who you choose to work with.

When I first set out (as you can see in Evaluation One) I had a great idea but no really knowledge of how to how to turn the concept into reality, which lead me to waste a significant chunk of the time I had to complete the project.

After I abandoned my first attempt at the project, I knew that I needed to be much more focused on planning my projects and making sure everyone I worked with understood what we were creating.

I decided to focus on the photo and video elements of the project because I knew that they would take up most of my remaining time to complete.

I started by having the two models I wanted to use round for coffee and going through my ideas for the project, what I wanted it to achieve, and how I wanted them to help me to complete that. Having models that understood and matched my passion for this project really helped because they could suggest little ways I could change elements for the better, such as camera angles, or ways they moved in front of it.

One of the most important things I learnt from this project was to plan every element in as much detail as possible so that I would be prepared for every eventuality.

An example of me not doing this was me relying on someone else to bring the equipment needed to film the first video shoot, because when that person had a family emergency out of their control and couldn’t make it, I was left without the proper equipment to succeed to the best of my potential. With hindsight, I would have had them drop off the equipment prior to the shoot day so if something went wrong I had time to fix it.

Another example is my choice to shoot in film, because I didn’t carefully plan out how many shots I had for each element, I ended up getting carried away and shooting more images of one model than another. When I shoot on film in the future for similar projects I will make sure I have a whole roll of film per model.

The fact that my first videos weren’t good enough quality gave me a lot of experience relating to short-deadlines as I had to get the videos fully edited and published within a time span of about three days, I am glad I decided to re-film my video instead of just mentioning in this evaluation that I could have improved it by doing X, Y or Z. Being able to reflect on the elements that weren’t working properly gave me a lot of insight into my own creative process, and how I could improve.

If I had more time on this project, or if I was to do it again, I would change a few things: I would make sure to also film cuts of the clothes and the models so that the videos would be more visually interesting, and I would make sure to caption my videos as well to make them more accessible to those who are hard of hearing.

The process for writing my article was pretty straightforward as I had a clear idea of what I wanted to do: create a resource where people could both learn a little bit about sustainable fashion and take that education further if they so desired, so I did as much research as I could on the different educational sources on sustainable fashion that were already available, and worked out how I could accumulate all the best elements of them into one project. This worked well for me as it allowed me to open my mind to lots of ideas before settling on a plan for my own ideas.

If I was going to change anything about how I went about writing my article I would have planned my interview much more in advance so that I could have arranged to meet my interviewee in person as apposed to conducting the interview via email, as I feel I could have got much more information if I had done so.

That being said, the way I went through my interview notes and highlighted the best and most articulate quotes for use is a process that worked really well for me and that I will definitely continue to do in my future work.

If I’d had more time, I would have created more info-graphics as I found they were a brilliant way to share information and promote the project on Instagram, as they fitted well into the Instagram Stories format.

I found that learning to use the Canva software to create my info-graphics gave me a brilliant new skill in design that I can apply to my future projects.

Above you can see all the different things I did on my Social Medias to promote the project, I posted three of the images on Instagram, tagging my models, the brands I’d sourced the clothes from, and some other accounts that post similar content, which would make my post much more likely to show up in other peoples feeds who show interests in similar things. I added a short comment explaining the project, and thanking the people involved, and I used one simple hashtag ‘#shopsustainable’ because when people use multiple hashtags in a comment it can confuse the algorithm and mean your post is less likely to show up in others’ feeds.

I also posted my info-graphics on my Instagram story as well as posting an edited ‘goofy’ iphone shot and using the ‘love-o-meter’ feature which gives the audience a way to rate content, you can see that my result was really positive from those who engaged with it.

I posted links to the project on my Twitter account as well, using two images as they were portrait and if I had added three or four parts of the images would’ve been cut off, and I again tagged the brands and models, and this was well received.

I was pleased with my use of social media however if I was to do a project like this in the future I would use the graphic design skills I learnt creating my info-graphics to make some more engaging content specifically tailored to different social media formats.

Before I promoted my project I sent it to one of my friends to get some constructive criticism, this is what he said:

It may be just me but I had to google translate the French, also if you introduce an idea or phrase or term, it’s worth putting a quick five word definition, I understood fast fashion cause it made sense to my brain but everyone thinks differently. I would also say use your platform. You are online and so you can link to shops and documentaries and websites, use what you can to get your point across. Maybe suggest other smaller ways people can change, rather than going straight for the big clear outs start with smaller things and the next thing won’t seem as big and difficult. Consider using a variety of short and long sentences, it seems to be split up into individual sentences per paragraph and then one or two sentences between pictures.

I really appreciated this, and took his comments on board, linking as much content as I could, changing the way the package was presented so that paragraphs were separated by images, and changing the phrase ‘trop cher’ to ‘expensive’.

I got really great feedback from the brands whose clothes I’d used as well, in the form of lovely comments on the Instagram post.

Overall, I’m really happy with my finished product, I created something I’m proud of, gained many new skills in the process, and learnt a lot from the mistakes I made.

Proposal

fmp-proposal Download

Initial Research

fmp-initial-research Download