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Fashion and Sustainability: Design for Change
This book examines how sustainability has the potential to transform both the fashion system and the innovators who work within it. The book is organized in three parts. The first part is concerned with transforming fashion products across the garment's lifecycle and includes innovation in materials, manufacture, distribution, use, and re-use. The second part looks at ideas that are transforming the fashion system at root into something more sustainable, including new business models that reduce material output. The third section is concerned with transforming the role of fashion designers and looks to examples where the designer changes from a stylist or shaper of things into a communicator, activist or facilitator.
- GenresFashionSustainability
192 pages, Paperback
First published March 21, 2012
22 people are currently reading
334 people want to read
About the author
Kate Fletcher
13 books19 followersKate Fletcher is Professor of Sustainability, Design, Fashion at the Centre for Sustainable Fashion, University of the Arts London, UK.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
December 9, 2020
I am reading Fashion and Sustainability: Design for Change
by Kate Fletcher, Lynda Grose. It has been very educational. Since I am both a fashion designer and educator of fashion, I am very concerned with how wasteful this industry is and I wanted to educate myself about how to change this in my own personal designs as well as be able to educate future designers to also think more "sustainably" when designing. So far, I have learned that the role of designer is only one piece of this large, complex puzzle. Companies that we work for have to change their whole sourcing strategies around to demand factories to offer fair wages in factories in which to work and less harmful chemicals in the dye and wash processing plants and more organic and recycled fabrics to work with. With this book, I am learning about new technologies at the factory/manufacturing level as well as at the in house designer level that can result in less waste. Such things as Ozone Laundry is a term generally used to describe a philosophy of textile care that uses electricity and oxygen in a unique way to replace many of the chemicals normally used in a traditional washing process. Some denim manufacturers are shifting the washing of the denim garments to use this new tech to reduce the chemicals that are super harmful to the ground water of the manufacturing regions.
Even learning as a consumer of clothing, to shift away from washing our clothes after only 1 use. As long as the clothes are not smelly and sweaty, clothing doesn't need to be laundered as often. And that itself saves a ton of water! Let's all stop washing our clothing so much from now on.
Also, the new tech that can help designers create less waste is the shift to 3D technology design software programs where we can not only design clothes, we can check the fit of the clothing on a 3D avatar that is measured to scale of a real fit model. This new tech will change the fashion industry for the better as it not only is less wasteful in not needing to manufacture samples to check fit, we can save tons of water, use less chemicals and less garments being made only to be thrown out later because they will never reach the mass market to sell. Plus, companies can save a ton of money not needing to manufacture as many samples during the design development stage by using the benefits that 3D tech can offer. This is a win-win! These are just a few examples of some of the many suggestions that this book offers to keep clothing on our backs and out of a landfill.
by Kate Fletcher, Lynda Grose. It has been very educational. Since I am both a fashion designer and educator of fashion, I am very concerned with how wasteful this industry is and I wanted to educate myself about how to change this in my own personal designs as well as be able to educate future designers to also think more "sustainably" when designing. So far, I have learned that the role of designer is only one piece of this large, complex puzzle. Companies that we work for have to change their whole sourcing strategies around to demand factories to offer fair wages in factories in which to work and less harmful chemicals in the dye and wash processing plants and more organic and recycled fabrics to work with. With this book, I am learning about new technologies at the factory/manufacturing level as well as at the in house designer level that can result in less waste. Such things as Ozone Laundry is a term generally used to describe a philosophy of textile care that uses electricity and oxygen in a unique way to replace many of the chemicals normally used in a traditional washing process. Some denim manufacturers are shifting the washing of the denim garments to use this new tech to reduce the chemicals that are super harmful to the ground water of the manufacturing regions.
Even learning as a consumer of clothing, to shift away from washing our clothes after only 1 use. As long as the clothes are not smelly and sweaty, clothing doesn't need to be laundered as often. And that itself saves a ton of water! Let's all stop washing our clothing so much from now on.
Also, the new tech that can help designers create less waste is the shift to 3D technology design software programs where we can not only design clothes, we can check the fit of the clothing on a 3D avatar that is measured to scale of a real fit model. This new tech will change the fashion industry for the better as it not only is less wasteful in not needing to manufacture samples to check fit, we can save tons of water, use less chemicals and less garments being made only to be thrown out later because they will never reach the mass market to sell. Plus, companies can save a ton of money not needing to manufacture as many samples during the design development stage by using the benefits that 3D tech can offer. This is a win-win! These are just a few examples of some of the many suggestions that this book offers to keep clothing on our backs and out of a landfill.
March 8, 2023
Un libro fundamental para quienes nos adentramos en la industria de la moda. Muy recomendable.
April 17, 2015
The best part of the book for me was the center chapter, #2 out of 3. This examines the social aspects of sustainability and what it would mean emotionally and culturally to change how we dress and produce garments. That gave me a great deal of inspiration and food for thought.
The only thing about the book that I felt kept it from being 4 or 5 stars was that many of the examples and ideas the authors have of things like modular design and co-design aren't really wide scale feasible solutions. They do have a place in a more sustainable system, but the truth is most people don't want to make or modify their own clothing, and somehow the fact that this will likely continue to be the case, even as more and more people are returning to making and mending for themselves, was never addressed.
The only thing about the book that I felt kept it from being 4 or 5 stars was that many of the examples and ideas the authors have of things like modular design and co-design aren't really wide scale feasible solutions. They do have a place in a more sustainable system, but the truth is most people don't want to make or modify their own clothing, and somehow the fact that this will likely continue to be the case, even as more and more people are returning to making and mending for themselves, was never addressed.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews