Ridhi Singla

We have already previously talked about what is fast fashion. It is defined as the process of fast changing fashion week on week thereby causing people to buy new stuff more frequently, causing the life of each apparel to reduce considerably. Now, although to sustain this fast fashion, the cost of any apparel item has come down a lot, there is a lot more we are paying as the human race than we actually realise. Looking at this documentary makes me realise what is happening in the background of providing the latest and greatest every week. This documentary reflects at the real cost we are paying for fast fashion. There are 2 major problems. One, to reduce the cost of apparels, the manufacturing processes cut corners around the guided processes which result in much more pollution in all forms and poor and long working conditions for the factory workers . These factories are also called sweat shops. The other big problem, is of the reduced life of an apparel which is resulting in a lot of...

In the last one month and a half, I have been fortunate to learn a lot of basics around fashion design - from design elements, understanding the basic principles of design to tools like photoshop, where we can do a lot of advanced renderings, create art, edit images, to learning illustrations on paper, where we have learnt basic shading, line drawings, shapes, perspectives, body parts, croquis, hair, hands, legs, different style lines. All these course modules have been really helpful to me in learning the basics of design and different tools I will need in my future journey. Fashion could be overwhelming for someone new, especially for someone from a completely different background like me from computer science engineering. But the faculty at Pearl has been really supporting all the way through. They have had complete empathy towards students with completely different backgrounds taking even the silliest of our doubts at times and bearing with all the different questions and requests ...

First and foremost, we need to understand what is climate change. It is not just about the climate and the temperature. The harmful affect is not necessarily just the slowly increasing temperatures. To understand climate change, we need to understand life as it stands today.  As of today, earth is the only life conducing planet in our solar system or, as per current knowledge, anywhere in the our galaxy. The reason for the same is largely climate. Water on earth, fertile land are all results of our ecological and climatic conditions. The very air we breath, the temperature our bodies can bear can change very quickly if the conditions sustaining it change. And to add to that, we are not managing our essential resources like water very efficiently. To sum it up, we need to wake up and act now otherwise we will also be added to the long list of extinct organisms on the planet. Other than ever looming extinction danger, there are some immediate dangers as well that climate change poses...

When we talk about global environmental and ecological issues, it is only logical to discuss the consumption patterns across the globe as well. We discussed fashion needs in my personal space and immediate environment in my previous posts . Now we move to global perspective.       One of the most talked about topic these days on social media is global climate change. Nations across the world are being forced to observe policies to act against climate change. Youngsters like Greta Thunberg are at the forefront of it. One of the biggest contributor to climate change is different types of pollution released into the environment by different companies across the world. Most of the big brands are making promises to turn carbon neutral by a certain time period in the future. Carbon Neutral is a term used to describe the state of an entity where the carbon emissions caused by them have been balanced out by funding an equivalent amount of carbon savings elsewhere in the wor...

In extension to my previous post about my fashion needs and consumption , I am now going to try writing about the fashion needs in context of my immediate environment. Like I mentioned in my previous post, my buying patterns were mostly influenced by the society I grew up in. The environment around me as a teenager was that what you wear, how you dress, how you look is important part of the social life. People regularly judged each other on the basis of how they look, what accessories they carry, and more recently as an example what mobile phone you carry or what car you drive. This all, ultimately, drives people, because of the fear of social judgement, to buy stuff they don't need to but other people want them to. I would not call this as mindless consumerism but consumerism or buying out of social pressure. Then there is pressure of proving it to yourself. There are people who always want to own the latest and greatest when it comes to latest gadget phones and cars. I had friend...

In this post, I will try to write about my fashion needs and consumption patterns in context of our social responsibility towards our environment and ecological surroundings. I have always been fascinated by glamour from my childhood. Having and wearing latest trending clothes and accessories was somehting I always enjoyed but until recently I never stopped and thought how this could affect my environment. I have always enjoyed newness in everything around me. I am a person that generally gets bored by monotonicity - be it food, clothes, places to go. I guess it is result of the environment and culture I grew up in. Social status has always been a key part of my life and sense of achievement because of the city I grew up in - Ludhiana. It is one of the hubs of fast fashion in India in terms of apparels. I have always seen kids and adults around me engaging themselves in fast fashion. That led to me living the kind of lifestyle I live today, trying to find newness in everything. I am a ...

Ever wondered what is everyone trying to ahieve in their life? Well, I believe, inherently everyone is chasing after one thing only - happiness! And it has different face and different meaning for everyone. Few find happiness in others' happiness, helping others, some others by pursuing their interests but most of us try to find happiness in luxury and stuff. And to some extent things do give happiness to people, it provides luxury, a sense of achievement. But it is all an illusion - one that of perfect life because with 'things', there is this big problem - there is always something 'better' coming along the way which creates dissatisfaction. And, nowadays, with social media becoming a prominent part of everyone's life, it makes it even worse with free flow of information using technology. Information about more stuff in the world, better stuff. Advertisements making us believe we need more and we need better. This is where minimalism comes in. It is a way of...