Author: muj205

Name: Mehr Un Nisa Javed 

Professor: Nimrah Syed

Date: 29th March’2019 

Here’s a link to the medium post & the website+video:

https://medium.com/@mehrunisajavedraja/3-day-challenge-to-try-new-looks-4decd11549d0

http://imanas.shanghai.nyu.edu/~muj205/FASHION/index2.html

( posted the website link late because I had issues accessing the IMA Server – Cyberduck. )

Name: Mehr Un Nisa Javed 

Date: 17th March’2019 

Professor: Nimrah Syed

Objective: Write a blogpost for final project progress 

Idea: My idea for the final project is to create awareness and increase knowledge about slow fashion and divert people from moving towards fast fashion. Therefore, I wanted them to make them Love The Clothes the people already have as of now. More than likely, people find pieces that they’ve forgotten about, and things they can mix and match for a “new” look. As a result, I asked them to try at least one cloth everyday which they haven’t wore in a while. Take this as a three day challenge and then see the results!!

Day 1: Fun Day (Friday)

Day 2: Cranky (Saturday)

Day 3: Lazy (Sunday)

Participants: NYUSH and non-NYUSH students. (Age range: 18-25)

Progress: so far I have created a web page and asked people for their photos and their opinions about the idea and their views after they had tried the challenge. For that purpose I have made a few collages and organized the photos. I will soon start to add the videos and incorporate them into the website. 

Here’s a link to the webpage I’ve made as of now:

Name: Mehr Un Nisa Javed 

Date: 10th March’2019

Professor: Nimrah Syed 

Objective: Reading Response to Allie Gullingsrud and Lewis Perkins’ “Designing for the Circular Economy: Cradle to Cradle Design”

Reading Response:

I really liked this reading because although I have come to know by the last few  readings that our industry is extremely unsustainable but I got more evidences of it through this reading which would be quite helpful for my final project and I also really appreciate how the authors stated that there are possible solutions for the large magnitude of the environmental impacts of the fashion industry such as “Cradle to Cradle”. 

I really liked how McDonough and Braungart put forward an approach through which there could be great industrial efficiency could be achieved and the companies would do production in a way which would be actually beneficial for the environment. “We see a world of abundance, not limits.” (p,295). They then put forward some examples to support the point such as “Factories that produce by-products that are high-quality drinking water” (P,295). I really liked this idea and for sustainable fashion and I believe it goes with the idea of slow fashion where the things are produced in less amount so that they are of such as good quality that their replacement wouldn’t be needed until a few years. Also, in our daily lives we should adapt this and make use of the resources. For example, the building next to the AB (where there is StarBucks) has a green roof and it is quite beneficial because it reduce stormwater runoff, it is energy efficient, improve air quality, can serve as habitat and last longer. This shows that if while thinking about the business we also think about the planet it wouldn’t be just beneficial for the environment but in long term it would have a positive impact on us as well. I feel liked the same type of green roof should be for NYUSH as well so that we can start the sustainability practice from our School. 

Note: Not a late submission. accidentally submitted this to my other IMA class blog site which is not on IMA Dashboard. 

Name: Mehr Un Nisa Javed 

Date: 5th March’2019

Professor: Nimrah Syed 

Objective: Reading Response 

Background of Eileen Fisher:

Eileen Fisher is the founder of the US based women fashion company. Her main vision behind her brand was the simplicity of the Japanes people’s fashion sense i.e. “Kimono”. She made clothes which were easy to maintain and wear which made her brand reach great limits. 

Response:

I really enjoyed reading the article as it really made me think that how much sustainability is important for the brands and how some designers with great vision are pumped to work on sustainability at a larger scale. I also really got fascinated by the fisher’s point which was put forward by her in a way that the meaning of “sustainability” got wide open. She explained that sustainability does not really just link with the environment instead it is also dependent upon the kind of working environment in which the workers work. If the environment is healthy then that means that there is sustainability. 

Moreover, I really liked that how her company focuses on sustainability, human rights, empowerment of females and wellbeing of the employees of the company. These are all the characteristics required in the companies which can help to save our world. If the company’s would soon progress and slowly move from being profit oriented to the sustainable model by following Fisher’s footsteps then, for sure in the next few years we would achieve the highest level of sustainability. 

Name: Mehr Un Nisa Javed 

Date: 3rd March’2019 

Professor: Nimrah Syed

Objective: Make a Photo-Essay Zine and a video under 5 mins. 

Here is a PDF File of the Photo-Essay Zine and a video for the project: 

(The updated video is also in this file)

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1_eSTO5tXMQquNxWhECMQH8wj37kvOGUk?usp=sharing

Process: We went to the notions market and Shanghai Bund Market on last Saturday. We left for the market around 9:30 am and came back by 3pm. In both of the markets we took a lot of photos and made a couple of videos as well while interviewing people and the overall, maket. However, we mostly focused on the notions market as it dealt mainly with the wholesalers and we just wanted to focus on one market as it would help us to do some in-depth research.

In class for the workshop we printed out several photos and took them to the class. Over there we arranged them in a way so that a story could be narrated through the photos. Here are some photos of the work we did during the workshop:

You can see that the picture of The Money God is in the centre as the people only pray for money as they’re quite materialistic. On one side we put the photos of the people just using phones, lifting weights, sleeping in their spare time. Whereas, on the other side there are photos of the people interacting with the customers (we looked at to what extend they were catering the needs/demands of the customers). 

Photo-Essay Zine

For the photo zine we chose so me of the meaningful shots we had and made them tell a story. With the photos we added short descriptions so that the picture could be a bit more explicit. For the video we just showed the notion market where we showed many sellers during their work time and during the time when they were not working. We started out photo-zine with a photo of the Money God and then moved on to our observations. In the zine I tried to have a story for the people and with that I also took a first perspective shot of the shop so that the viewers can see what actually a certain person was selling. I also tried to add description of their stuff which they were selling, how much was the demand for a certain thing, how much was the price of a certain thing and what was the reaction of the people towards different things, how much were the sellers willing to sell to one person instead of bulk selling?

Video

In the video we basically started from the point where we got inside the bus and the moved on towards our research area. We tried to show the notion market only in the video as we only covered that for our research. We also covered a view interviews in the video. 

Strengths of the research:

We conducted interviews which were participatory so we could gather wide amount of data 

My partner was a native Chinese speaker so we had no issue in communicating with the sellers 

Weaknesses:

We conducted the research for a very short period of time. For example, only about 3 hours which is not enough time to observe someones daily life. Maybe how they were behaving was due to their concerns of seeing so many people around them interviewing them. Moreover, maybe a lot of people were using mobile phones, watching videos etc on that day because it was a Saturday morning and maybe in the morning only not a lot of customers come to shop.