Workshop with Kate Best

This post will be using "Driscoll's What Model". It encompasses three parts outlining a reflective practice using these three key parts:

1)What: outlining the experience and what you are reflecting on.

2) So what: reflecting on the experience, and what you have learned as a result.

3) Now what: how you will use what you have learned in the future, and future practices.

Today, I watched the lecture with Kate Best, a visiting lecturer for my school.

1)What?

Kate started out with information about the "Trickle Down Theory" and how fashion of the upperclass are never identical with those of the lower; in fact they are abandoned by the former as soon as the latter reappears to appropriate them.

She then went into talk about the history of this theory, viewer's interpretations within concepts of value and aesthetic and taste, "social codes" and a timeline of fashion history from 1950 -1990's.

To be honest, it was refreshing that Kate spoke with such certainty and fervor in terms of this topic. This lecture in particular related to me a lot in what I've been mulling over for some time now. I felt that innately (along with the trickle down theory) fashion was classist, and didn't really understand how to fully enjoy the aspects of fashion while also recognizing the parts that seek to divide. Throughout the lecture, I felt several emotions. I felt interested, worried, confused, and overall a bit let down. There is this glamour to fashion that we tend to idolize when we think about it. The word fashion in itself brings a mix of emotions when you think about it.

Kate said "we live in a society". It was such a simple yet definite sentence that portrayed the system in which we are in. We divide, we create groups, we make opportunities, and build on culture. In the end, society is woven into fashion, and it seemed that as we continued to mull over this topic, "taste" is a more individualistic term than a generic one!

2) So what?

I appreciate lectures that make me think. Overall, lectures that make me think don't often help me lead to conclusions, but help me to "challenge" my thoughts. This lecture in particular made me feel down, because I felt that the glamorous side of fashion as I had idolized was now cut up in historical and classist grouped arguments. It wasn't negative, it was realistic. Realistic in the sense that fashion involves dividing and enhancing positions. It involves standing out, consuming, selecting taste, and perhaps even more being judgmental using your own woven opinions.

At the end of the day, there is so much to fashion. It realized that in order to understand fashion, I must understand to accept both the good and the bad and also learn to understand the "Why". The why that people divide up, or want to be special, or create exceptional things. The why that perhaps this divides people even more into subgroups, or even becomes classist. The why that fashion in its own is highly broad, and has changed a lot and probably will continue to change.

3) Now what?

"We live in a society."

My conclusion from this lecture, is perhaps this sentence that I wrote down as soon as I read it on the screen. We live in a society, and therefore we will encounter positive and negative things. We may get confused, get worried, be inspired, or even create. But at the end of the day, and at the end of the lecture, I felt that perhaps fashion in itself is a journey that I am sharing not only by myself, but with the people I am encountering that live in my society.