Isla

        The fashion industry is one of the largest contributors to environmental damage in the world, and fast fashion media

consistently uses aspirational imagery, celebrity endorsement, and targeted advertising to encourage overconsumption,

especially among young audiences. The dominant representations of fashion in mainstream media position it as disposable

and trend-driven, rarely questioning where clothes come from or what they cost the planet.​

        I intend to create a print fashion magazine that offers a counter-narrative to fast fashion media, using the conventions of the

form to reframe sustainable clothing as aspirational, creative, and culturally relevant for a young Melbourne audience.​

        I am making this production because I want to challenge the representations my audience has grown up seeing in

mainstream fashion media, especially in upper class designer media. By using recognisable editorial codes and

conventions, film-style photography, double-page spreads, Q&A interview formats, and bold cover design I am constructing a

media text that speaks the same visual language as established fashion publications, but uses that language to communicate

a completely different set of values. My models are not passive subjects but active voices, represented through first-person

profiles that give them agency and authenticity. The clothing itself is framed not as a product to be consumed, but as

something personal, considered, and meaningful. Through these deliberate construction choices I aim to shift how my

audience reads and interacts with fashion media. Additionally, I want the environments I shoot in to function as more than

just backdrops, the textures such as graffiti and grainy walls, vibrant colours like the big open sky and the greens of the grass

for the rural images, and geometry such as the distance between my model and the background. Each location will be

deliberately chosen to complement and interact with the clothing, making the setting an active part of the image rather than a

passive background.​

        I want my audience to see this work and feel challenged, to recognise the gap between the fashion media they typically

consume and the values they actually hold, and to feel that sustainable fashion is something they can be part of.​

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