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How Does Fashion Make You Feel?
Mental hygiene is crucial Mental health is something that most of us never learn to focus on and take care of. Our lives are more stressful than ever due to often demanding working environment and difficult relationships. Finally, the stress we are facing every day has made us notice the need for mental hygiene. For each of us, mental hygiene means a different thing. For someone, it might be meditation or yoga while for others re-watching the favourite series or going out with friends. No matter what kind of the way we decide to use while dealing with stress, we must not forget to try our best to find the mental balance.…
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Fashion Runways & Body Dysmorphic Disorders
Runways have been the centre of focus when showcasing fashion, each detail serves a purpose for the designer and the observer – professionally and personally. Runways are the mechanism to encourage sales; to demonstrate the fit of a garment on beings and to provide a perception of how they look to the viewer. But should they be influencing how one interprets their own body? With the lack of diversity within the body types exhibited, how is one supposed to mirror a representation that withholds no resemblance to theirs? Therefore I ask. For you personally, do you believe fashion runways are an active catalyst for self criticism and hatred or do…
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Alexander McQueen: A Tragedy at the Hands of Fashion
“It’s such a pity for a man who, from a modest start, climbed to the top of his profession only to die in such tragedy.” This quote from the Westminster coroner, Dr Paul Knapman, accurately summarises the life and death of the wonderful fashion designer Alexander McQueen. The visionary’s unique approach influenced the fashion industry beyond imagination and his tragic death devastated it. His legacy still resonates ten years on from his passing and will stretch far into the future of fashion. He was loved by the most famous of the famous with the likes of Sarah-Jessica Parker, Naomi Campbell and Lady Gaga, to name a few, being photographed proudly…
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Use and Abuse: Fashion’s Mental Health Problem
Use and abuse culture Use and abuse culture facing graduates and young professionals as they enter the fashion industry is often the source of poor mental health. Having experienced several unpaid internships myself within the industry, I have seen first-hand how long, relentless hours can take their toll on personal wellbeing. Graduates and students bursting with fresh creative talent and youthful enthusiasm are over-used and thrown out on a continuous cycle. The high stress environment with constant pressure to stay ahead of trends and work at top-speed is impossible to maintain. Sadly, unpaid work in fashion has become normal. We see internships as the holy grail merely get your foot in…
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Instagram and Mental Health: an Endless Cycle
Instagram is arguably the most used social media platform today. Yet what are the consequences of our casual obsession with Instagram on our mental health? Why is Instagram useful? Instagram is useful for several reasons. From that one app we can stay in the loop with friends, keep up with fashion trends, follow our favourite celebs and even grow our own platform. The limits are endless when it comes to Instagram, that’s why we tend to not get bored with the app compared to others. Over recent years, Instagram has become a useful tool to those trying to gain a large following on a social platform. The use of hashtags…
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How Is ‘Retail Therapy’ Causing a Need for More?
We have all been there, going shopping to feel good on a bad day. This could be defined as ‘retail therapy’, a mechanism to give us temporary fulfilment by purchasing on impulse, and of course, it makes us feel good! Consumerism encourages the idea that happiness can be bought. This is a very problematic concept. In turn, we drift from our ‘true needs’ and turn to ‘false needs’ for temporary fulfilment. Retail therapy is much more of a common outlet than you may think, many of us are guilty of it, even if we are not conscious. Take a look at your last online haul, what item did you really…
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Is Instagram Detrimental to Society?
Instagram is one of the most used social media applications in the world. It launched in 2010 and within two months it already had one million registered users. As of 2019, they reached one billion users. I got Instagram at the young age of twelve-years-old but at that time it was just images of your food and random things with awful filters. Now, it has transitioned into a billion-dollar industry with people craving for likes. You get users being paid to promote everything from diet teas, waist trainers and beauty products. The promotion of these products promotes a false reality fed to users. They show all the good parts of…
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Cancel Culture: Isn’t it Time We Cancelled it?
In a time where mental health has become such a widely discussed topic, why does cancel culture still exist? It seems ridiculous that we live in an age where so many people struggle with mental health issues, yet it is a trend to tear people down online. To add to the irony, more than ever people are using social media to advocate for mental health awareness. Yet influencers and creators are forced to take time away from platforms to take care of their own mental health. It is slowly becoming accepted that social media is a toxic space and criticism is normal. This criticism, as most of us have probably…
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Fashion Barriers: How Mental Illness Can Affect What We Wear
Mental illness in modern society Mental illness is currently at the forefront of many conversations. Its importance is being more widely recognised than ever before, with people working to really understand what it actually is. Of course, mental health is a complex thing. However, it can be described on a basic level as our psychological and emotional wellbeing. One of the reasons why it has become such a huge topic of conversation in modern society is that the number of mental health issues appear to be rising. According to statistics on Mind’s website, the amount of people with common mental health problems went up by 20% between 1993 and 2014.…
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How much longer can fashion ignore mental health?
Whilst industries such sport begins to wake up to mental health, it seems that fashion is still in its infancy in understanding the real pressures and tribulations of the industry. How can a sector as profitable as this be so behind when it comes to mental health? Can it be considered that fashion is ignoring mental health? It shouldn’t have taken the death of Alexander McQueen, one of the country’s finest designers for fashion to wake up to what is going on around them. Of course, they’re not alone in being behind on the discourse and conversations around mental health. Many other industries were and possibly still are having the…
