OP-ED: Eden Loweth on Mental Health and Supporting Creative Talent
In an industry infamous for its exhausting pace and pressurised reality, how can we support and protect its talent and their minds?
It can often take a lot for someone to admit their weaknesses, struggles or flaws — for those who know me, I am one of these people. But we live in a time where, in my view, the only way to change or grow is by being honest, both with ourselves and with others.
Mental health, especially within the fashion industry, is something many choose to skirt around. It’s the elephant in the room that goes unspoken.
I have been incredibly lucky in my life— having my own brand, ART SCHOOL, and as a result experiencing a meteoric rise to industry fame as a graduate coming from a home-schooled education in a small Norfolk village. I am so grateful for all of the opportunities and support I’ve been given. However, I, like many others have for all my life struggled with depression and indeed with suicidal thoughts. It is not something you can simply control, turn off like a light switch, or ignore. It is omnipresent, a continuous drumbeat in the back of the mind.
We’ve seen many challenged by similar experiences, often watching as they crash and burn in an industry unwilling to slow down, to allow its community to breath.
In the first of my monthly Op-Eds for Fashion Roundtable, I ask — in an industry infamous for its exhausting pace and pressurised reality, how can we support and protect its talent and their minds?
Covid-19 has presented our industry with a unique opportunity to take stock, to pause and understand what needs to change. Studies show people working in the fashion industry are 25% more likely to experience mental illness as a result of the fast pace demands placed upon them. This alarming statistic is something I can understand all too well. I have watched as many of my peers and colleagues have struggled to maintain and keep up with the constant demands the industry places upon them, scared to speak about this for the risk of being seen as weak.
I recently began to think about this more when wondering how the industry will change— if at all— when a post Covid-19 “normality” returns to our world.
My conclusion? A fear that nothing will change, that the industry will revert back to its old, damaging ways. That despite all the talk of a new start and a new industry schedule that responds to the needs of its workforce it will in fact slip back to the dangerously pressurised environment we have known for decades.
The single biggest issue in this is a gigantic lack of basic support and protection for the industry’s workforce. Without these simple levels of understanding and tolerance, acceptance for a creative to take time over their work, or for someone to need a few days to breath, we will steam head on back into the cataclysmic norms the industry perpetuated prior to the global health and financial crisis we’ve all faced this year.
This lack of support and protection is mirrored across other creative industries too. It’s been 9 months since the tragic suicide of television star Caroline Flack whose death highlighted the vital need for better systems of support for the creative industry’s brightest when they face personal or professional hardships. The scathing attack of the British press played a huge role in what happened to Caroline, invasively attacking her private life whilst isolating her from the people who could protect her; in the days and weeks following her death the tag line “In a world where you can be anything, be kind” (taken from a post the star uploaded to their Instagram page last December) trended across social media as people reacted to her death, a stark contrast to the way people viewed her life prior, as if she was not a real person but simply designed to be entertainment to a story hungry media.
An overarching theme in all of these cases is that at no point do people both from inside and outside of the industry stop to think about the singular individual. Often in the creative industries, people become “stars” at a young age, coming from challenging, underrepresented or difficult backgrounds. This transition into both adulthood and into a person who is followed, or under media spotlight can fuel mental health problems and become isolating to the individual. It creates a difficult combination of emotions that can be hard to process.
And so, we can’t simply wait and hope our industry will change. All of us have a collective responsibility to support each other, to praise each other’s achievements and indeed to protect each other in our times of need. We are all fighting our own battles, but together is how we overcome them. Check in with your peers and colleagues, be supportive, be kind – who knows, one day you might just need the same repaid to you.
“In a world where you can be anything, be kind”.
No other phrase really does say it better.
Eden Loweth is a Fashion Roundtable Ambassador and Creative Director of ART SCHOOL