F ASHION

Guiding Question: How can I design my own fashion collection to raise

the awareness of protecting endangered animals?”

Aim: To design my own fashion collection to raise the awareness of

protecting endangered animals

Supervisor: Ms. Lily Chan

Cissy Chan
S4Peace
FASHION
Introduction

The whole focus of my personal project will be Human

Ingenuity. The question that comes out of my mind after I decided
what my focused will be is “How can I design my own fashion
collection to raise the awareness of protecting endangered
animals?” Eventually, the topic of this personal project is fashion
design, while the goal of this project is to design my own fashion
collection to raise the awareness of protecting endangered animals.

I always like designing and creating things related to art.

Nowadays, the number of endangered animal has increased
tremendously, more people would be aware of the importance of
protecting them. I am very interested in fashion design. I always
like to go shopping and see what are the trendiest designs in the
shop. Many people like me would sometimes find it hard to select
the clothes they want. Therefore, I want to design some clothes to
give more options. At the same time, I hope that it can show the
message of people protecting endangered animals because I
personally like animals a lot, I hope that the number of endangered
animals won’t increase a lot each year.

I am going to achieve my goal by doing some different kind of

research, such as books, websites, magazines, catalog, or even
some interviews with different kind of people. I need to research
some skills on designing clothes, and also, it is also important to
find out different materials to create the clothes, so that it can
show the meaning of protecting the endangered animals. There are
different TV shows about fashion, so I can have a look at it and see
how people design clothes and to learn some skills from it. I need
to do each stage, including investigation, design, create, step by
step in order to achieve my goal eventually.

The AOI of my topic is Human Ingenuity, which is to explore

how people create or design to benefit the society. Through
exploring how to design my own fashion collection, I am able to

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draw a connection to raise the awareness of protecting endangered
animals. This project allows me to find out what is the
consequences of making those clothes, how would it affect people
of their thinking or their perspective towards endangered animals

Description and Analysis of Process

Description of techniques and their application

There are lots of step that I need to follow, in order to reach my

goal and to create my final product for the project, such as:
interviews, websites, books etc… There are different techniques
that I used throughout the whole process I would introduce it step
by step.

Investigation

Investigation is a big part of my project; I need to find a lot of

information of fashion design as I don’t have any knowledge in this
area. I start with just going to the internet and to find out the
answer to the question of “What is fashion?” It is the most basic
question that I should know about. Of cause, there were a lot of
websites talking about this, however, I need to analyze it afterward
and to see which one is the best fit to the question. After that, I
started to get into interviewing my cousin, who studies fashion
design in university. As I don’t even know how to start my project, I
asked her about the basic steps of designing clothes and she also
teaches me how to draw the model and the clothes. In my
investigation stage, I cannot only use one resource, so I did the
interview, then I went to the internet, library finding book and even
going to magazines and catalog to find different taste of clothes to
analyze. I found out a lot of information about fashion and even the
cloth people had design, so I started to analyze the information
afterward. Finding the main point in each of the information I found,
summarize it and see what kind of information will help my
personal project. It is important for me to examine different source
before I evaluate it. In school, my teachers had taught us some of
the ways to find out is it a good web sites. We need to look at the
website and to see is it objective or subjective, we want to find the
website that is objective, as it will give us both perspectives. If we
cannot see is it reliable, we will look at what kind of websites it is,

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did the website link end with “org”, it stands for organization, and
that we will know that it is reliable.

Best way and other ways to create my product:

The best way of creating my product is by getting the design ready

and to give it to a company and let them create it. As I am not very
good at creating it, I think giving it to a company to create the
product will make it become a better quality and it will be more
professional. I want my product to be professional and to be good
for others to look at. If my product is not looking professional at all,
people will not want to see my product thus hinder the message of
“not using real fur:. In addition, I would not be able to raise the
awareness of endangered animal and even not matching with my
aim of the whole project.

Designing Process

Throughout that whole process of designing the clothes, it has take

me a lot of time. I need to always go out to the shop and get some
inspiration. Sometimes when I am out shopping, I will get a design
in my mind, and I always put a book or paper in my bag, so that I
can immediately draw the design out. At the start of the design
stage, I really cannot think of any design, and that’s makes me feel
frustrated on it, because I cannot think of anything and cannot
design any clothes. One day, when I flipping the magazines, I saw a
dress that was quite beautiful and when I was looking at it,
suddenly a design came out from my mind. From that day, my
inspiration started to develop, and the time spent on designing one
piece clothes was much more efficient. Eventually, I meet all the
deadlines that I set before without procrastinating.

Planning Process

Before doing any of the steps, I tried to have a plan for myself, so
that I would have a deadline for myself of the schedule that I need
to meet. In order to not rush at the very last minute, I try to have a
plan on which day I need to start that essay or creating the
product, and in which day, I need to finish all of the work. If I meet
all of the deadline, then I will not need to rush before the deadline
and I will have some good quality of work after it.

(A planned time table in appendix A1)

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Creation:

As I mentioned above, I tried to find a company to help me to

create the clothes, I sent all of the designs to them and after
around 1 month, the clothes are completed. Before sending the
designs to them, I still need to buy the materials and fabric, such as
cheetah, lion, brown bear’s fake fur, for the clothes, I went to one of
the street in Tsim Sha Tsui and Jordon in Hong Kong, called Bowring
Street, and all of the shops in that streets, are selling the clothes
for making clothes. I went there and see whether there were any
fake furs or any materials that I can use for my designs.
Unfortunately, there weren’t a lot of materials that I really want to
use in my design, and at that time, I can only change my design to
another kind of fur, which gives the same feeling to others. I didn’t
brought all of the materials at the same time, I went to the same
place few times and see if there have any new materials that I can
use, however, because I went there once a week, so it doesn’t have
a lot of new materials at that time. I think that using fake fur to
create the product already is a collection of clothes that made from
fake fur, so I tried to use more different kind of fake fur, like lion,
cheetah and brown bear’s fur, to make people feel unique about it.
I tried to make it not to be the same as the shop have, however, in
some of the designs, it is somehow similar to the one that are
selling in the shop.

Changes to my original work:

The design that I made in the investigation stage, some of it are

different from my product, as I was buying the cloth from the
street, some of it is not the cloth that I expect to have, so I cannot
make the extract same product that I want to make of. When the
cloth is not the same as my design, it will make the whole product a
different feeling and idea, as the color and the pattern of the fur
will be different. However, I think that the changes that I make from
my design to my original work will not affect the message I want to
send out from the clothes.

Knowledge:

From the process of researching the information for my product, I

learn much more on what are the endangered animals, the
percentage of endangered animal in the world. In the world, there

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are different endangered animal, such as Alligator, Cheetah,
Dolphins, Frogs, elephants, bats, bear, or even wolf etc1... From one
of the web2, it said that “Since the year 1600, a total of 83
mammals species (2.1%) and 113 birds (1.3%) are known to have
become extinct.” From all those information, it inspires me to
design the clothes and what kind of clothes I should design to make
it become clothes that people would accept more. I also look at
different catalogs as in nowadays, a lot of people like to use fake
animal furs/ cloths to make clothes. I think it makes me can think of
a lot of design in my fashion collection. From a lot of books,
catalog, and even TV show, such as Project Run Way, Fashion Show
2009. I found out that we must choose the right materials to make
the clothes, different materials will give people a different feelings
and a different idea from it. Color is one of the main things that
would affect the feeling of the clothes, red is representing energy
and excitement, green is representing nature and growth 3, those
are one of the main things that would affect the whole idea of the
clothes.

Materials:

I choose to use the fake animal fur as the main materials of the
clothes, as it is telling others that we should be more aware of
endangered animal more. Some of the people in the world would
use some real fur from the animal and makes more and more
animals had listed as endangered animals. I hope that from the
clothes that I made can let people knows that using fake fur can
still make the same things from it. Of cause I cannot make all of the
cloths in fake fur, it will be very boring if it does. From one of the
research in a magazine from Tai Wan, called Chic Choc4, the
designer always said that people should not put one or more
things, including clothes, ear ring, bracelet, that is make of fake fur,

1
"Kids' Planet ESPECIES Animal Fact Sheets." Defenders of Wildlife - Kids' Planet.
06 Feb. 2010 <http://www.kidsplanet.org/factsheets/map.html>.
2
"Endangered Species/Species Extinction - Causes, Statistics, and Trends." Clean
Funny Cartoons / Environmental Issues ... on Grinning Planet. 23 Feb. 2010
<http://www.grinningplanet.com/2004/07-13-2x/endangered-species-
conservation-article.htm>.
3
"Psychology Of Color." Precision Intermedia a Northern California MultiMedia
Marketing Agency. 06 Feb. 2010
<http://www.precisionintermedia.com/color.html>.
4
"Fake Fur." Chic Choc Oct. & Nov. 2009.

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or else, it will be a lot of things having fake fur and people will not
look good at that time.

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Research:

(Also see in appendix, A2, Bibliography for more information)

Web sites:

Websites is one of the useful research tools, we can easily find a lot
of websites when we click the internet button in the computer.
However, I tried to not use the websites that is not reliable (how to
examine is it reliable, see in p.2), for example in some of the web, it
can let people easily to change the information, however, and we
won’t know whether it is true or not. For that website, it is not good
enough for us to do a project as we really need some reliable
information to put into our project, so for every single web that I go
through, I tried to use some web sites that is reliable, such as the
government web sites.

Books:

Books is one of my research tool, it is easy to find it in the library,

and one of the books that is very useful is “Fashion Illustration by
Fashion Designers5”. It is very useful because it teaches me how to
draw the model and it teaches me some of the basic techniques
when I am designing clothes.

TV Shows:

There are numerous TV shows about fashion, such as Project

Runway, and Fashion Show 2009. Fashion Shows 2009 6got a lot of
designers designing different kind of clothes and it is one of the
competitions. We can see in the video that how people get their
inspiration, how they really start to make their cloth, how they start
to gather the materials needed and how they choose their
materials for the clothes.

Catalog:

There are shops that are selling clothes, I went to some shops in
Hong Kong such as Max & Co. laurel, to get some of the catalogs
5
Borrelli, Laird. Fashion Illustration by Fashion Designers. New York: Chronicle,
2008. Print.
6
"Season 1." Fashion Show 2009. IMDbPro. USA, June & july 2009. Television.

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and see if it can inspire my mind and to design some clothes that
people would really like.

Interview with my cousin:

My cousin 7had learnt fashion design, so I learnt the drawing skills

of fashion design from her. Drawing the fashion design is not the
same as drawing other drawing. From her, I learnt a lot of drawing
skills of fashion design, and the ratio of the head and the body
when we are drawing it. Also, I got some of the ideas from my mom
as she is good at making clothes, before, she sew clothes and she
will buy the materials for the clothes herself. I learn from her of how
to design a successful cloth and is it makeable.

How my research relate to my AOI?

There are different questions that are required to explore in the AOI
of Human Ingenuity, including “Why and how do we create? What
are the consequences?8” From the research that I did, it is
surrounding these areas. I found out how we can create a fashion
collection, the steps, and even some details. I tried to find out some
research about how the fashion collection affects others. In my
project, I am trying to create a fashion collection that will raise the
awareness of endangered animal, and that is the goal of creating
the fashion collection, it will change the people’s perspective
towards endangered animals and to change people’s mind of not
using real fur but use fake fur instead. From all the different kind of
research that I got from above, it shows that I had done a lot of
research relating to the AOI of Human Ingenuity and a variety of
sources are included in it.

Reflection and Evaluation

For my product, I designed different kinds of clothes for

different tastes, such as Japanese style, Korean style, rock style, or
princess style. All of the clothes I made used fake fur, and in that
way, I want to persuade others not to use the real fur to avoid
killing a lot of animals. Before, SPCA also had a program, telling

7
"Fashion Design." Personal interview. 20 July 2009.
8
"Human Ingenuity." International Baccalaureate (IB). 1 Jan. 2010
<http://www.ibo.org/myp/curriculum/interaction/humaningenuity/index.cfm>.

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others to “Say No to Fur”, my project also supports this program by
using fake fur.

Throughout the process of my project, I started off by talking

about how I get the idea for my personal project. Mainly, I was
inspired by my family when I went out shopping with them one day.
We were all going out and still cannot find a clothes that we really
want, and that’s why I get the idea of making a fashion collection,
and when I search on the internet one day, I saw the advertisement
of SPCA, and it always ask people to protect the animals, and that
always inspire me to make the fashion collection to ask people to
protect the animals and not to kill the them. The first stage after I
decided the topic is to start the research stage, and it is quite
successful as I used many different sources like books, interviews,
TV shows, websites, and even catalogs. Luckily my topic is
effortless to find and when I went to library, it is easy to find the
books about fashion and even endangered animals. People kill the
endangered animals for some reasons, first, they want clothes that
made with real fur, as they think real fur is more beautiful. Second,
people will eat them, there are still 12 endangered animals that
people still eat, including Chinese Giant Salamander, Chimpanzees
& Gorillas, Chinook Salmon, Chinook Salmon9 etc…

After that, I started the planning stage, it was quite

successful too, before hand, I created a plan for myself of which
day I need to finish which stage of work, maybe designing the
number of pieces. The creation of my product was not really
successful, because in some of the designs, it is not really what I
think it was, it is not the same thing that I thought, however,
because I was still using fake fur, so the theme of the product can
still display from it. Making the product is not the biggest challenge;
I think the process of designing the clothes is much harder.
Sometimes, I cannot meet the deadline because at that time, I
don’t have any ideas for it and it makes me cannot design any cloth
at that time. I tried to make some of the clothes to be more special
and try to be not that common that we can see it almost
everywhere. I tried to make the collection of the clothes will have
their own style and I tried to make every single piece of the clothes

9
"12 Endangered Animals That People Still Eat |." WebEcoist. 06 Jan. 2010
<http://webecoist.com/2009/04/09/12-endangered-animals-that-people-still-
eat/>.

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have their special place by adding something in it, like a ribbon. I
made a lot of different clothes such as long dress, short dress, and
some of the jackets that can be matched with the clothes. I hope
that this collection can encourage people to consider using fake fur
in their fashion. Fake fur can give consumers, producers, designers
another option when creating their work.

If I need to rate my final product, I think that my product will

be in medium level, as some of the clothes are not really what I
want, and some of the ideas have changed a bit with the materials
and the final product is not the same as the designs. Changing the
clothes in some way is good; however, in another way to look at it,
it might not really increase the awareness of endangered animal in
some way. Next time if I can do the same project again, I think that
I will make the clothes unique, as some of the clothes that I
designed are not really special, and some of them are much similar
to the one that people can see in the shops. One of the main things
that I need to change is that, fake fur can bring out some of the
message of endangered animal, however, people might not know
the idea of it, so I think that I can think of other ways to bring out
the message clearer and to give people a better idea.

Apart from only supporting the function that SPCA run, I think
that there are some more different ways that I can do this project
and bring out the message clearer. First, I can join with the
environmental groups, such as Action Blue Sky Companion, Clear
the Air, Friends of the Earth, WWF Hong Kong, Green Power, to ask
them to create a function by inviting some celebrities or famous
people to promote the message of “Not using real fur”. The
celebrities can wear the clothes that I designed and in that
function, people that went there can receive that message that
fake fur can still give people the same feeling as the real fur does.
Secondly, fundraising activities can be held in some places in Hong
Kong such as Times Square, City hall, usually lots of people will go
to fundraising activities and at that time, displaying some of the
clothes that I designed and underneath it, there will be a small
description telling others what materials it was made from and the
significant message. People that went to the fundraising activities
will then understand that message and persuade them not to buy
or make the clothes in real fur. We can also held some activities

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where school students would visit art school. Usually students that
were young will bring their parents also; young students should
begin and be more aware when making wise decision of what kind
of cloth they should buy and to protect endangered animals. When
they grow up, if the message is clearly brought out from the
activity, the student will then know what they should do and when
they grow up, the awareness will still be in their mind and they will
know that using real fur will be killing a lot of animals. Those are all
different ideas that I can use if I can do the whole project again, so
the message that I want people to receive can be brought out
clearly. Since my product now can somehow increase the
awareness of endangered animals, if I can use some of the ideas
above, it will be clearer and more successful.

The whole project allows me to know more about the AOI by

researching on how fashion really can affect others, what are the
consequences of fashion and even the steps of creating it. At first, I
really know nothing about this AOI and what I only know is the
information from my teacher, the question or guild line of it. I really
don’t know the actual meaning of it; however, after I have lots of
research on my topic and even having some research on Human
Ingenuity, I got a deeper concept of it.

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