LCF’s Dr Carolyn Mair, course leader for MA Psychology for Fashion Professionals and MSc Applied Psychology in Fashion at LCF, features on Vogue’s The Future of Fashion with Alexa Chung.
The online series debuted this month on the Vogue Video channel. The six part series is fronted by Vogue Contributing Editor Alexa Chung and sets out to answer those questions the inquisitive minds and future employees of the fashion world want answers to. Chung speaks to fashion insiders – from current students to the heads of major design houses, via journalists, buyers and everyone in between, exploring what the future holds for this multi-billion pound industry, how the next generation will obtain careers using all the tools available to them, and what the landscape looks like in terms of sustainability and technology.
Each of the six parts go live weekly on a Tuesday, with the entire series available to view from the 27th October. Dr Carolyn Mair featured on this week’s episode, along with her student Caryn Franklin. The series also featured interviews with Christopher Kane, Olivier Rousteing, Paul Smith, Sarah Mower, Claire Waight Keller, Molly Goddard and Frédéric Tcheng, and insight from WGSN.
The Vogue documentary came to LCF to find out more about the postgraduate Psychology courses, the only courses in the world that apply psychology within fashion to improve understanding of human behaviour by using predominantly quantitative methods.
The course was developed to address the need of the fashion industry for psychologically literate graduates, who can apply the scientific study of human behaviour in the context of fashion. Alexa Chung says during the film that “scholarly approaches to fashion are becoming more broad and analytical, and London College of Fashion is arguably leading the way.”
Dr Carolyn Mair said that the fashion industry needs to change, especially with the misconceptions of the human body and psychology. She explained why the course was introduced at LCF, “We need to educate people to become more media savoy, to let the world know that models are models and they don’t necessarily represent the whole spectrum of body type. None the less, studies have shown that showing diversity in fashion imagery, does increase sales.”
Carolyn identifies the need to produce graduates who can help make the fashion industry more ethical, more caring and more sustainable through psychology. Even before enrolment, the course asks students to identify some issues in fashion where they believe psychology could make a difference. In the interview with Vogue, Carolyn said she believes “that in five to ten years time, psychologists working in fashion will make a huge difference because they understand how to change people’s perceptions – and there’s large calls for changes in the fashion industry.”
The episode also featured Caryn Franklin, the fashion activist and current MA Psychology for Fashion Professionals student. Caryn believes it’s a good time for a revolution in fashion. She explained that fashion in the 1980s wasn’t a respectful profession, but things have changed. She believes that now has never been a better time for creatives to promote what they stand for, and that’s why fashion psychology is important for the future of the industry.
Dr Carolyn Mair also recently had her work published in the The Sunday Times Style magazine, where she discussed society being ‘Psyched about Shopping.’ She explained the psychology behind what goes on in your brain when you hit the high street. Carolyn talked about why we shop, the male-female shopping divide, the transformative power of clothes, and trying to figure out if buying shoes is as good as sex.