Future Fashion: new and ancient systems at the intersection of design, anthropology and ecology.
AN ANALYSIS OF POST-GROWTH FASHION PRACTICES THAT COLLABORATE WITH INDIGENOUS
KNOWLEDGE SYSTEMS TO CREATE LUXURIOUS CLOTHING WITHIN PLANETARY BOUNDARIES.
HOW ARE A GROUP OF FIERCELY INDEPENDENT ENGAGING WITH
RADICALLY INDIGENOUS TEXTILE TRADITIONS?
WHAT ARE THE VALUES THAT UNDERPIN THEIR WORK?
RESEARCHER
Kirsten Scott - former Programme Leader for MA Fashion Design and MA Luxury Accessories Design at IML.
Ecological design is the art that reconnects us as sensuous creatures evolved
over millions of years to a beautiful world.
That world does not need to be remade but rather revealed.
(Orr, David, 2004: 32, Earth in Mind).
Abstract
The fashion industry is a key actor in extractive globalization: its contribution to the degradation of our planet and its peoples through use of fossil fuels, over-production and mass-consumption, waste, exploitation, and human rights abuses in the supply chain is well documented (Fletcher and Tham 2019, Ellen MacArthur Foundation 2017). A complete reset is needed in the systems, materials, designs and relationships embodied in and articulated by our clothing, so that we may transition to live in a “mutually enhancing relationship” with the whole earth community (Berry 1990:53, Escobar 2018).
Using a qualitative strategy, this research offers an analysis of an emergent subculture of resistance to the fashion status quo that embraces extreme, natural, indigenous textiles in contemporary clothing. It shows how these non-conformist designers employ radical indigenism (Watson 2019), soil to skin (Burgess 2019), extreme natural fibres, slow and conscious processes, and/or aesthetic sustainability (Harper 2017), to offer a persuasive counter narrative to the incumbency thinking that perpetuates the prevailing fashion system. Case studies of Monad London, Oma Space and Noir Handmade have been created from series of interviews and the analysis of responses, products and processes. Key to this research has been defining the values that inform these designers’ praxis, such as the importance of craft, the rejection of growth-logic (Fletcher and Tham 2019) and the desire to promote human, environmental and even spiritual wellbeing through their work.
Noir Mud Silk
Monad London
The research demonstrates the importance of reframing indigenous technologies as innovative rather than primitive and of learning - with humility - that traditional knowledge systems have much to offer our future (Watson 2019, Nakashima 2010, Magni 2017, WCED 1987). There are profound lessons to be learned from indigenous textile practices about how we might better collaborate with nature - including associated land stewardship, sustainable fibre and production processes, inter-human relationships, care, and the local, cultural significance of processes that have sustainably been performed for centuries - that might re-orientate us towards a future where we all may thrive (Berry, 1990).
Oma Space
Although designer-artisan collaborations are common within the existing fashion system, a focus on the ability of material systems to reconnect us with the whole earth community has received less attention (Watson 2019, Berry 1990). When radically indigenous materials are suggested for fashion, questions of scale-ability quickly arise, as the impulse to commercialise and grow is privileged over relational modes of knowing, being and doing (Escobar 2018: xi). This research shows ways to collaborate with traditional textile knowledge systems to re-imagine, produce, value, use, repair and ultimately discard clothing while affirming natural and restorative systems.
Key findings
• The fibre and fabric are the catalyst for the creative practice – they come first and foremost.
• The fibres are sustainably produced, often through small scale, regenerative agricultural practices or local foraging.
• They source directly from makers, normally small scale artisan producers who are closely connected to their environment.Relationship!
• The source is acknowledged – it is transparent and honours the makers’ skill.
• Their practices support the preservation of indigenous knowledge – processes that have sustainably been performed for hundredsof years.
• Production is naturally constrained by seasonal availability of fibres, processes, and the makers’ other commitments – theywork within planetary boundaries.
• They use natural dyes that carry additional, beneficial properties.
• They embrace the aesthetics of wear and imperfection.
• They produce limited ‘editions’ that are timeless and seasonless.
• They reject the myth that technology alone can solve all offashion’s problems.
• They are content to stay small, where they are able to ensure thattheir values as embedded throughout their practices.
References
Berry, T. (1990). The Dream of the Earth, San Francisco: Sierra Club Books.
Burgess, R. (2019), Fibershed: Growing a Movement of Farmers. Fashion Activists, and Makers for a New Textile Economy, Chelsea Green Publishing: Vermont.
Ellen MacArthur Foundation. (2017). A New Textiles Economy: Redesigning Fashion’s Future, found at https://www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/publications/a-new-textiles-economy-redesigning-fashions-future
Escobar, A. (2018). Designs for the Pluriverse: Radical Interdependence, Autonomy, and the Making of Worlds, Durham: Duke University Press.
Fletcher, K. and Tham, M. (2019). Earth Logic Fashion Action Research Plan. London: The J.J. Charitable Trust.
Harper, K. (2017). Aesthetic Sustainability: Product Design and Sustainable Usage, London: Routledge.
Magni G. (2017). ‘Indigenous knowledge and implications for the sustainable development agenda’, in European Journal of Education. 2017;52:437–447. https://doi.org/10.1111/ejed.12238
Nakashima, D. (ed.). (2010). Indigenous Knowledge in Global Policies and Practice for Educations, Sciences and Culture. Paris :UNESCO.
Watson, J. (2019). Lo-TEK: Design by Radical Indigenism, Germany: Taschen Gmbh:
World Commission on Environment and Development. (1987). Our common future. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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