Ecology

*This post was written by Christina DesVaux, a friend of Conscious Lifestyle. You can learn more about her year in Montevideo, at "cdesvaux.wordpress.com.""

I was recently invited to be a guest lecturer at the University of Montevideo, in a seminar entitled Communication and Fashion. I am living in Montevideo, Uruguay for the year as aRotary Ambassadorial Research Scholar. I am taking courses at the University of Montevideo, in their School of Business and Entrepreneurial Studies. My research project will focus on female Uruguayan artisans and the North American based fair-trade organizations that buy from them.

Using Conscious Lifestyle (and its President, Michael Del Ponte) as a resource, the class and I engaged in a cross-cultural discussion of Fashion and Culture, looking at its macro contexts of Politics and Ecology. I was encouraged by the high level of participation and the insight into Uruguayan culture. There were some differences of note, especially in regards to the use of fashion to affect political change. The women in the class did not think that in Uruguay messaging on T-shirts was as effective as actual participation. That is to say, buying a shirt with a socio-political message did not hold the weight that perhaps it does in the States. More different still was the current U.S obsession with limiting our "clothing footprint." It was decided that usually ideas like organic vs. synthetic, green vs. traditional lifestyles don´t hold the cultural clout here like the seem to do elsewhere. Buying from up-and-coming designers, neighborhood markets, and other non-corporate brands seemed to be a better expression of "purchasing power."

What we did share was the idea that fashion speaks to cultural values and is a way in which we can express our self and our context. In the upcoming weeks we will discuss how fashion can act as an effective and thoughtful tool of personal expression. A summary of future classes will be posted on the course's blog.

Photo from GOOD Magazine's article "(Not) Ironic T-Shirts."