Alex McIntosh, designer
Alex McIntosh from the centre of sustainable fashion spoke to us about the rate of consumption in the fashion industry and how our skills as communicators give us the power to influence change.
The centre of sustainable fashion at LCF was set up to respond to the fact that the fashion industry was facing a crisis. Statistics have found that we have 1.7 billion fashion items that have not been worn for a whole year, throw away fashion is becoming ever too common.
Their aims are to transform peoples thoughts and practices, new ways of behaving and interacting with clothes. One of the main problems that Alex spoke about was how we have little connection to the things we use, how it was made, where it came from, it has become so easy to throw away and consume.
A project that he has been working on is Catalyst fashion, this uses nano technology in textiles to create an ambient environment around the wearer. If everyone wore this form of clothing it would reduce pollution by 80%, people would all be collectively making a difference to their environment.
This is the video featuring Erin O'Connor http://vimeo.com/24816897
Catalytic Clothing is an exploration project into how clothing can be used to purify the surrounding air. Designer Helen Storey MBE and chemist Tony Ryan OBE have created this successful collaboration, bridging the gap between art and science. Their slogan is 'helping us shape our world for the better'.
Alex suggests that people behaviour needs to change, sustainability in fashion is extremely undefined, the garment is not sustainable, behaviour is. We are more likely to look after something if you had a input in how it was made or designed. So should we be designing our own clothes or be more thrifty? What is the solution?
In the future would Nike be servicing the consumer rather than selling them a product? Would you be able to suggest paced consumption rather than buying to this society?
Fashion is ambiguous, we all engage in it. A feasible way to change peoples behaviour is to change the new generations instincts making them understand the process the clothes we wear go through.
The Global Circulation of Cast-offs
Meghna Gupta, film maker
Meghna explores the journey of our unwanted clothes, where they go and what happens to them. She produced an award winning film called Unravel which shows the moral and environmental implications of our wasteful ways. The clothes that we give to recycling banks go to the second hand clothes market, it is one of the most valuable waste streams in the UK. 9% of donated clothes get sold and the rest go on to commercial rag companies.
The film Unravel follows how our unwanted clothes travel to a small town called Panipat in North India to get made back into yarn, this is often low grade and gets made into blankets, this called the shoddy industry.
We are so distanced from actually what happens to the clothes we donate to charities and commercial companies make no effort to hide the facts, so why do we not know what happens to our clothes?
The women who have to sort through the tonnes of clothes we send over have their own perceptions on why we are so wasteful with our clothes. They believe that in the west we must have a water shortage as we wear these clothes once or twice then throw them away!
We consume so much, we are never satisfied we want more and more, then you watch a film like this and see people that have nothing and are so satisfied with their bit in life, it is very humbling.
No comments:
Post a Comment