A directional beauty pLATFORM, pushing the boundaries of clean beauty.

IMAGE BY AMANDA FORDYCE. 

EDITOR'S NOTE

Growing up, like most of you I am sure, I was excited by the potential of the future. The potential of all the things I could be and do when I grew up. The prospect of possibility. I wanted to be a human rights marine biologist.

I was born in a time when things were different to how they are now. Part of the last generation before the digital natives that roam these wastelands. Before the image manipulation, before the water-crises... just, before. Of course, every generation feels the same. We look back and appreciate the comparative ease of our childhoods, often forgetting the struggles and challenges our formative years bared. With nothing to compare them too, of course they were easier. 

My formative years saw the rise and rise of fast fashion and over-consumption. I remember loving the idea of disposability, as did my mother, my teachers and my friends. Perhaps because it was a novel idea at the time? And of course, at the time, the impact of those ideals were unconsidered. 

It is a bitter pill to swallow; realising that you are part of the problem. Those easy childhoods. The 'innovations of my generation'. Now I am fighting for the future. Fighting for generations to come, so that they have a home to live in that was, at the very least, a resemblance of the memories of my youth. Where mountains are made from rock and granite and not consumer waste that is piled so high it blocks the light and alters the geography of our third rock.

When plastics were invented, they quite literally changed the world. The impact of this revolution was not known at the time. The correlation between the make up of the plastics and breakdown of the plastic (or lack there of) did not formulate as an idea until it became a problem. 

And therein lies the trouble. With advancements, comes risk and those risks only become evident later down the line. So I guess the question is, how do we foresee these potential dangers before they become global calamities? And who should be taking responsibility?

There is a theory that we should always look ahead to our future and looking back is futile. But perhaps. we need to look back - at patterns and processes and impacts, so we can start thinking smarter, sooner. Disposability is not merely an action, it is a mindset.

This issue explores the shape of things to come. The benefits and drawbacks of technology, shapes and patterns in fashion and nature and what our beauty choices are having on the emotional and environmental landscape of our lives. I also want to look at the reality that what we are doing now, will at some stage in the future, cause a backlash. We are humans, we learn through failure. Perhaps that is our design flaw?

So, while I became neither a human rights lawyer nor a marine biologist nor a combination of the two, perhaps it was that very idea of I could become anything that has led me to this path that I have found myself running down. Championing people, planet and animals alike, while doing multiple jobs.  

K x