Preserving Tradition - Block Printing & a Wedding Dress

When communities started to weave their own fabric, they realised colour could be added to the yarn or thread through various natural dye techniques. Intricate and colourful patterns were incorporated into the textiles by the artisans, each one telling a story through their hands. Weaving colour, however, has limitations when creating more complicated patterns, and eventually block printing (which was originally used to print text) was applied.

Block Printing

Block printing is traditionally achieved through carved woodblocks. If the artisan is planning on printing different colours on the fabric, the same pattern would have to be cut many times onto separate woodblocks - each block would have different parts cut out where the colour was not required.  Once the blocks are completed, they are then cured in oil to ensure that they are waterproof.

Fifth Generation Block Printing Artisan

My friend and I got the chance to try out block printing at Matter's block printing workshop in November last year. Fifth generation block printing artisan and Matter artisan partner, Khushiram Pandey, was flown in from India to share his expertise.  For those of you who are not familiar with the brand, Matter is a Singapore-based socially motivated fashion brand and work with artisanal communities around to produce designs inspired by tradition.

From the session, I was amazed to learn that the journey from creating the print design to eventually transferring the dye to the fabric could take up to several weeks to complete.  It would be so much easier and cheaper to use silk screen printing instead, but coming from a long line of artisans, Khushiram is passionate about preserving the traditional craft of block printing. 

Being a textile lover, I was very excited to learn. I had chosen to print on a silk-cotton blend scarf. Although we were not able to use natural dyes (as what Khushiram usually uses) or carve our own blocks,  we did get to explore the many woodblocks he had brought to the workshop.

Block Printing is Not Easy

Block printing is not easy - I hear your inner child shout, "But didn't we all block print with potatoes when we were children?".   Block printing is an art form. There are many elements to perfect:

• Design - I stood in front of my square for quite a long time before I decided on the design I wanted. With so many block print designs to choose from, I didn't want to go overboard and end up with a kitsch look.  
• Preparing the dye - one of the key components to block printing is ensuring the dye is of the right consistency. It was the first time I had seen dye seeped through a cotton and bamboo mat. Kushiram explained that this was important to ensure an even amount of dye coated the block.
• Technique - Khushiram demonstrated how to dip the block into the pre-soaked mat of dye and the technique used to get a clean print. You could not be too heavy handed with the printing and he suggested that we practise a few times on the mat before working on our piece.

Incorporating the Scarf into My Wardrobe

I was very happy with the outcome of the workshop, and not to mention I learned something new.  As you can see from the photos, I settled for dots, triangles and lines. I was already thinking about how to incorporate it into my wardrobe. Eventually, I settled on upcycling my mother's wedding dress with the scarf.

Preserving Tradition - Wedding Dress

My parents got married in the seventies. It was the era of platforms, lace and balloon sleeves. My mum made her wedding dress and kept it for me. Unfortunately, the style was not right for my wedding but I decided to upcycle it (30+ years later and yes, I did as my mum's permission!). There is so much fabric on this dress to use that I made myself a top and I still have enough to make another.

This dress has a lot of memories - I took it out again from the wardrobe and spotted some confetti from the occasion.

The top that I made was slightly boat necked and had bat sleeves. I only had enough of the scarf to make the front part of the garment, but fortunately I was able to use the wedding dress material for both the back and front panels.

It's so lovely to have a garment that's block printed and upcycled from a wedding dress! It definitely gives preserving traditions a new meaning. Here I am in my new top paired with Matter pants. Stay tuned to see what happens to the other half of the wedding dress.

Coming Full Circle - Fashion Revolution

"These children should be freed from exploitation" 

Richard Oastler

Not many people know this but I was actually born in England. In fact, it does come as a surprise when I debunk the assumption that I was born in London. Instead, I was born and had my childhood in Bradford, West Yorkshire. I remember lots of fields, making daisy chains and rubbing buttercups under the chin to see if we liked butter. There was a fondness to rolling about in the leaves and having all this space to run about, not forgetting the lovely sweet shops. So, you can imagine how my heart fell when we shifted to Hong Kong, but that's another story.

Introductory panel from the Terrible Times for Children display © Bradford Museums and Galleries

Bradford - International Textile Manufacturing Centre

Embarrassingly, I don't really know a lot about Bradford except for the riots and the Bradford City football fire. It was only recently that I discovered that Bradford was, in fact, an international centre of textile manufacture during the Industrial Revolution, and only declined in the mid 20th Century. It was particularly renowned for its wool and textile weaving, and its rapid growth was helped by the fact that the city was close to coal mines and soft water. Unfortunately, child labour was rampant in the industry with children as young as 7 working for more than 10 hours a day in poor conditions. While there was a campaign to abolish slavery in the British colonies in the 1830s, it was not until a Mr. Richard Oastler had a chance meeting with a Mr. John Wood (who was agonizing over the employment of children in his factory in Bradford) that the cause for labour rights was championed for. 

From a letter to The Leeds Mercury by Richard Oastler, published on October 16, 1830: 

‘Let truth speak out, appalling as the statement may appear. Thousands of our fellow creatures and fellow subjects, both male and female, the miserable inhabitants of a Yorkshire town, are this very moment existing in a stage of slavery more horrid than are victims of that hellish system ‘Colonial Slavery’. These innocent creatures drawl out unpitied their short but miserable existence in a place famed for its profession of religious zeal, whose inhabitants are ever foremost in professing Temperance and Reformation, and are striving to outrun their neighbours in Missionary exertions and would fain send the Bible to the farthest corner of the globe... The very streets which receive the droppings of an Anti-Slavery Society are every morning wet by the tears of innocent victims at the accursed shrine of avarice, who are compelled not by the cart whip or the negro slave-driver but by the dread of the equally appalling thong or the strap of the overlooker, to hasten, half-dressed, not half-fed, to those magazines of British infantile slavery – the worsted mills in the town and neighbourhood of Bradford. Thousands of little children, both male and female, but principally female, from SEVEN to fourteen years of age, are daily compelled to labour from six o’clock in the morning to seven in the evening...Poor infants! Ye are indeed sacrificed at the shrine of avarice, without even the solace of the negro slave; ...ye are compelled to work as long as the necessity of your needy parents may require, or the cold-blooded avarice of your worse than barbarian masters may demand!’

[Credit: http://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/analysis/factory-king-who-battled-to-free-child-slaves-1-5214596]

While the right for acceptable working conditions was fought for (especially for children), reform for the textile industry was also demanded.  

According to this website, two other important local figures were involved in the reformation of the industry as well. Conditions in the mills and working hours were improved, while proof of age (birth certificate) was made a requirement for employment.  Here's a summary from MyLearning:

• " Richard Oastler helped bring about the 1847 Factory Act which made the working day a maximum of ten hours.
• Margaret McMillan's campaigns resulted in the 1906 Provision of School Meals Act. She also carried out the first medical inspections of primary school children.
• William Edward Forster, MP for Bradford between 1861 and 1886, helped to develop the 1870 Education Act, which established a national education system. "

Pages from the Accident Book at Springfield Mills, Kirkburton, Huddersfield © 

Bradford Museums and Galleries

All image sources from www.mylearning.org

Concerns of Working Conditions in Literature

The labour conditions in the textile industry did not go unnoticed to the public. In fact, writers from the Victorian era used the industry as a backdrop to their novels. My favourite is Elizabeth Gaskell, who highlighted the plight of the workers in her writing, such as North and South, and Mary Barton.

Throughout North and South, Gaskell illustrates the huge social divide between the working and middle-class, and how the masters' desire to make more money means lowering wages (a very familiar scenario that we see today!) as one of the characters, labourer Higgins, laments to protagonist, Margaret Hale:

“Why, yo’ see, there is five or six masters who have set themselves again’ paying the wages they’ve been paying these two years past, and flourishing upon, and getting richer upon. And now they come to us, and say we are to take less. And we won’t. We’ll just clem them to death first; and see who will work for ‘em then. They’ll have killed the goose that laid ‘em the golden eggs, I reckon”. 

However, Gaskell also gives both sides of the coin and makes effort to cover the perspective of the master, especially when the workers had formed unions and gone on strike.

"He was trying to understand where he stood; what damage the strike had done him. A good deal of his capital was locked up in new and expensive machinery; and he had also bought cotton largely, with a view to some great orders which he had in hand. The strike had thrown him terribly behindhand, as to the completion of these orders. Even with his own accustomed and skilled workpeople, he would have had some difficulty in fullfilling his engagements; as it was, the incompetence of the Irish hands, who had to be trained to their work,at a time requiring unusual activity,was a daily annoyance."

She also mentions the conflicts between mill owners in terms of worker treatment. Higgins' daughter, who also works in the mills is ill from inhaling cotton dust and says:

’.....Some folk have a great wheel at one end o’ their carding-rooms to make a draught, and carry off th’ dust; but that wheel costs a deal o’ money--five or six hundred pound, maybe, and brings in no profit; so it’s but a few of th’ masters as will put ’em up; and I’ve heard tell o’ men who didn’t like working places where there was a wheel, because they said as how it mad ’em hungry, at after they’d been long used to swallowing fluff, tone go without it, and that their wage ought to be raised if they were to work in such places. So between masters and men th’ wheels fall through. I know I wish there’d been a wheel in our place, though.’

Why are we back to square one?
We learn a lot from our mistakes and from our history, but it seems like we are a very forgetful bunch of people. By the time the last British mill closed down in the 1960s, most of the manufacturing had gone overseas, where capitalists were seeking higher profit margins. Today, we are witnessing communities being exploited again under extremely poor working conditions. I wonder what it would take to change this thinking. Back in the 1800s, people's attitudes changed when Oastler compared the conditions of the factory labourers to those suffered by the colonial slaves. We are so far removed from the horrors that for some, it is easier to close one eye and let it be.

What can we do?

1. Vote with your wallet - shop consciously. Check out my post on PROJECTJust for responsible shopping. Always remember to do your research before you buy.
2. Work together with the big names - some people may say that this goes against building a sustainable fashion industry, but these retailers have a wider reach. If you can change the way they think, just imagine the impact that it could bring. Don't forget that they are employers too!
3. Take part in Fashion Revolution - there's a brilliant line up of activities from 22 - 29th April. Check out the Singapore activities here where I'll be holding my signature Restyle Your Wardrobe upcycling workshop on 22nd and 29th April.

I met Lucy Siegle!

Well, very briefly. We said "hello" and we mentioned that Connected Threads Asia is working on the Singapore campaign for Fashion Revolution.  Actually, I felt like an excited school girl meeting an idol for the first time.  I wish I had said something a bit more constructive, but I did mention to her how difficult it is to get the sustainable fashion movement in Singapore moving.

Lucy was here in Singapore to speak at Asia Fashion Future, which is a collaboration between the British Council and LASALLE College of the Arts, in-conjuction with Digital Fashion Week. She was also joined by Fashion 4 Freedom founder, LanVy Nguyen, and its creative director, Victoria Ho. Although the session was less than 2 hours, many great points were brought up. In fact I thought it gelled well with the earlier session on social media influences on fashion (speakers were Niki Bruce, Editor of HerWorld, Norman Tan, Editor-in-chief Buro24/7, and Billie JD Porter).

Only buy it if you know you will wear it 30 times
Lucy is spot on. Why buy it if it's going to sit in your closet?
It was very interesting to hear how research has shown how our brain responds to shopping on a whim - a sudden euphoria, and then, despite the purchase, disinterest in the item. But what caught my attention was.....

Social media encourages buying
Have you thought about how we are fueling the fast fashion trend? Social media has become the platform for everyone to follow the runways and fashion shoots but, perhaps now it has given us the opportunity to become the trendsetter - street fashion etc.   Perhaps our "likes", our posts of #ootd (outfit of the day), our video hauls are encouraging more people to buy.  In fact, I came across this article in the NY Times about how fashion is moving so fast that it's killing creativity and causing designer burnout.  Hey, I don't want to wear cookie cutter designs, but that's what fast fashion is giving us.

[Note: Norman Tan mentioned that at Buro24/7 they produce more than 60 fashion-related articles a week on their website. With a team of just 10 (I think that's right), I think I would burn-out too!]

It's all about the product
If you're going into sustainable fashion, focus on the product, make it beautiful and people will buy it. The sustainability message will still be there, but that's probably not what your potential clients are focussed on (at first!).

Keep your sustainability message simple
No one wants to be given a long lecture. Focus on the key points and make it fun - a video perhaps?

Empower your artisans
One of the most important messages I got was "empower your artisans".  Why?  They may work for your brand, but by teaching them the skills they need, you can turn them into entrepreneurs so that they can work WITH your brand.

I really love the business model that Fashion4Freedom has used. It has enabled them to work together with their artisans, co-create products and create a community.

Here I am with Lucy and Raye (my partner for Connected Threads Asia). Now don't I look like an excited school girl?

Thank you to British Council Singapore for this wonderful opportunity.

5 Tips For a Budding Sustainable Fashion Designer

So you want to  be a sustainable fashion designer....
It's easy to say that you want to a launch a sustainable fashion collection, and think "I'll just sell on-line" or "I'll open a pop-up stall", but there's so much work that goes on behind the scenes, and it's not just the designing and sewing.  After speaking to many designers in Singapore, I came up with a few tips....

1. It may be sustainable, but is it attractive?
Unfortunately, sustainable fashion has the reputation for being boring and bland, but it doesn't mean that you have to fall into that category! Wow your customers!




2. Who's your target market?
You are not designing for everyone, because the "everyone" you designed your clothes for has different tastes, styles and behaviours. Zoom down to a particular age group and find out what they enjoy doing, what their aspirations and their lifestyles are. These are the things that will help you in your design process and determine the look of your collection.

3. Do you know your suppliers / manufacturers?
You may know them, but beyond checking their certifications, do you really KNOW them?
As a sustainable fashion designer, it is imperative that you develop a relationship with them .... beyond an email or an order sheet. This is especially true if they are based overseas, where differences in culture and business practices may result in misunderstanding between both of you. Knowing your suppliers and manufacturers involves:

open and frequent communication

understanding their skills, capacity and constraints

if possible, visiting their premises

One of my sustainable fashion designer friends visits the GOTS certified factory in India every year to understand their operations and the processes behind the manufacture. It's also a good way of enhancing the working relationship. Ethical Fashion Forum wrote a great piece about working with artisanal and small - medium sized suppliers in India.

Image: John Jackson

4. What's your marketing plan?
How are you going to get it to appeal and sell?
Do you have a unique selling point? Use that to your advantage!
Are you going to sell on-line or at a store?
Do you have a social media plan?

Unfortunately, none of us have deep pockets, but there are many platforms that are free (Facebook, twitter etc), and you can always send press releases (with good quality pictures of your line) to traditional print media.



5.  Have you sussed out your competition?
Check them out before you start your brand!
What makes you different from the other sustainable fashion brands?


Do you have any tips you would like to share?

This is part of the Fashion Designers Do Good series! 

Design for Lower Energy Consumption

Do you know the amount of energy used to create your pair of jeans?

As part of the Fashion Designers Do Good series, we look at how designer choices can influence energy consumption.

Energy Consumption Along the Supply Chain

There are a lot of points along the supply chain where we can make a difference, ranging from the fabric choice to the factory where we choose to manufacture the garments.

Let's look at a pair of jeans....

Source: Energy Consumption in the UK Jeans Supply Chain
University of Westminister

The University of Westminster conducted a Life Cycle Analysis of a pair of jeans manufactured for and distributed in the UK. This study was based on cotton jeans, but I'm sure the energy consumption would rise if the jeans were a blend of cotton and polyester or other synthetic material.

" product manufacture is the most energy intensive procedure in the jeans supply chain studied (approximately 60% of total energy use in the supply chain), followed by cotton fibre production (20%) and finished product stockholding and retailing (i.e. the energy used to run the warehouses and shops in which jeans are stored and displayed) which is responsible for 18% of energy use. The transport activities (i.e. commercial freight transport from field to shop, and consumer transport to home) can be seen to account for 3% of the total energy used per kg of jeans supplied."

Reducing Manufacture Energy Consumption
The manufacture process is so mechanised that it is hard to produce textiles without energy. I read (I can't remember where, sorry) that to reduce energy consumption at the cotton fibre production stage, it would be best to leave out the machinery and allow manual labour to take over. Personally I feel that would be a painstakingly slow and unhealthy process.

The Natural Resources Defense Council, suggests best practises to monitor and reduce energy consumption in textile mills.  These include insulating pipes, heat recovery and optimising compressed air systems.


Image: Hazel Harper

Reducing Transport Energy Consumption
Want to transport your goods by air? Think again. The Natural Resources Defense Council, suggests: 

• Avoiding air transport whenever possible - Continental Clothing reduced greenhouse gas-emissions by 90 percent by switching to ocean-going ships for some of their products. French shoe line, Veja, also ships their products by freight from Brazil.
• Picking the type of ship wisely - Look for Grade A ships. According to shippingefficiency.org, choose a more fuel-efficient ship to potentially reduce carbon-dioxide emissions by up to 53 percent. Shippingefficiency is a database of ship rankings maintained by the nonprofit organization Carbon War Room. 
• Considering the shipping route - OOCL has a carbon calculator for its shipping routes, while for trucking there is the option of joining the Voluntary Interindustry Commerce Solutions Association Empty Miles program. It is a collaborative network that enables businesses to reduce empty miles. This means trucks are not empty on the return leg of a journey.

Image: Karen Winton

Educating the Consumer 

Levi Strauss looked at not only these stages of the jeans' lifecycle but at the consumer stages as well.

They found that consumer care is one of the main contributers to energy consumption (ie climate change impact) in the life cycle of Levi's 501 jeans. This included laundering (warm vs cold wash), frequency of washing, ironing and line dry vs dryer.

Levis Strauss realised that a little marketing muscle was needed to educate consumers on laundering in a more environmentally friendly manner.

How will you reduce your energy impact?

Design for Lower Chemical Impacts

Let's Talk Chemical Impacts.
Have you ever looked at the label on your clothes? Have you questioned what the garment is made of?

As designers, the choice of fabric and processes involved in textile production influence the environmental impact of the garment from the production of the textile, to garment production and eventually driving consumer care requirements. We are talking about chemical impacts, energy and water usage.  How can we design to minimise these?  This week we are talking about chemical impacts.

#1 Material Selection
I'll Wear Natural, I'll Wear Organic

Most consumers believe that by wearing natural or organic they will be chemical-free. Unfortunately, this is not the case; all textiles/garments are harmful to the environment in their own way and chemicals make their way into the life-cycle of a garment be it at the fiber production (e.g pesticides, herbicides, insecticides, sodium hydroxide), or during textile production / garment manufacture (e.g. dyes, formaldehyde etc to achieve certain finishes). Let's go into a few textiles:

Cotton - Organic vs Conventional

"Conventional (non-organic) cotton is grown and harvested using heavy quantities of chemical fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides in production to maximize efficiency and output.

Conventional cotton is one of the most chemically dependent crops, using 16 percent of all insecticides used for global food and fiber production n It takes 1/3 of a pound of chemicals to produce enough cotton for a t-shirt, and 3/4 of a pound for a pair of jeans.

Three of the 10 most acutely hazardous insecticides are commonly used chemicals to grow cotton"  Natural Resources Defense Council

If you are choosing organic, bear in mind that it is not chemical-free. Read up on the standards your chosen organic textile is certified under. Remember, most standards state which chemicals are allowed/approved for use.   An example is the Global Organic Textile Standard (GOTS), which clearly defines what is allowed for use or prohibited. 

Bamboo - Mechanical Vs Chemical Processing

One of  my friends swears by bamboo as the crop does not require pesticides or insecticides; she also loves it because it is soft and silky and more breathable than cotton. 

However, when sourcing for bamboo textiles, always do your research; not all of them are created equal.

Bamboo textiles can be created either mechanical or chemical processing.  The mechanical process is very eco-friendly and only relies on the bamboo's natural enzymes to break down the bamboo into a mush before fibers are combed out and spun. The chemical process, however requires carbon disulfide to turn the cellulose into a gel. Sodium hydroxide is then added to "spin" fibers.  This process, known as hydrolysis alkalisation, is less time-consuming than the mechanical process, but it is also highly toxic.  According to Patagonia:    

"The solvent used for this process is carbon disulfide, a toxic chemical that is a known human reproductive hazard. It can endanger factory workers and pollute the environment via air emissions and wastewater. The recovery of this solvent in most viscose factories is around 50%, which means that the other half goes into the environment. Other potentially hazardous chemicals are also used in the viscose process, including sodium hydroxide and sulfuric acid."

Patagonia

  

GOTS also has this to say about bamboo:

"For almost all bamboo fibre used in industrial textile production not the natural bamboo is used but it is melted and regenerated in a viscose / rayon process and can therefore not be considered as natural or even organic fibre, even if the bamboo plant was originally certified organic on the field. In consequence in GOTS certified textiles bamboo fibres can only be used for the tolerated remaining balance of conventional fibers. If the rayon is made from organically grown bamboo up to 30% may be used for the label grade ‘made with organic materials’. These rules apply to regenerated fibres derived from any other raw material source (e.g. wood, cotton lints, soybean, milk) as well. Users of bamboo (and other regenerated) fibres should also be aware about the legal labelling requirements in their sales markets. In the US, the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) has clarified that if bamboo is produced through rayon process these fibers must be called rayon and not bamboo"

Fashion Incubator  is a good reference if you want to avoid trouble when using bamboo fabrics.

Polyester

Polyester is the most popular synthetic textile and is made from crude oil. Oh, and don't forget, it is CHEAP! If you recall your science class at school, the formation of polyester involves catalytically transforming monomers to a polymer. The whole process involves a lot of energy and chemicals as shown below, and releases Volatile Organic Compounds into the environment. A good read up about it can be found here.  Unfortunately, these chemicals (including catalysts, such as antimony, which is toxic) can persist in textiles and come in contact with the skin of people using the finished textiles. It is without a doubt, the process is an environmental and public health burden.

What choices are there? Again, it pays to do your research! There are polyester textiles that are manufactured using antimony-free catalysts. According to the Eco Forum, " EU Eco-label system requires limitations on the use of polyester catalysts – however does not exclude them. The maximum content of antimony in polyester fibres is limited to 260ppm with the EU Eco-labelling criteria, while the Oeko-Tex standard limit is 30ppm."

#2 Cleaner Processes

Does your fabric supplier have water treatment facilities in place? 
I think this is a very important question to ask when sourcing for fabrics. Before any waste water effluent is discharged, it must be treated. Not treating it would be detrimental to the environment and to public health.

No Dyes?
Why not opt for undyed or colour-grown fabrics? Others ask why not use natural dyes instead of synthetic ones? Well, natural is not synonymous with healthy or green. And it definitely does not mean that it was organically grown or sustainable. In fact, the use of natural dyes requires toxic mordants to fix them into the fibers.

Are there technologies that can reduce the need for chemicals in the garment industry? The Guardian recently wrote and article about technology that reduces water consumption in the dying process. I think these reduce the amount of polluting dyes used too as traditional dyeing methods are inefficient. Other advances include ozone technology instead of conventional bleaching methods (e.g. for denim textiles), using heating methods as a dyeing technique and laser technology for adhesives.

Are there any other ways to lower the chemical impacts in the industry?

This post is part of the Fashion Designers Do Good series.

Design - Closing the Loop

A few weeks ago I visited a recycling plant down in Tuas, Singapore. I was extremely excited as it's not usually open to the public and it's not something you get to do everyday!

Clothes Don't Get Recycled Here

Of course I had to ask about clothing! Well, just to disappoint everyone, the public waste collector does not take clothes for recycling anymore. They did do this when the door-to-door recycling scheme was still around, but with the implementation of the centralised recycling bins, the clothes get contaminated and end up being sent to be made into scraps for use at workshops, or even incinerated.
But...but..but...
Well, that's what the person in-charge said to me.
No one wants dirty clothing. The plant suggested that clothes be sent to the charity / thrift shops instead... but how much can they take?

Fibre Recycling Means Down-Cycling

The second disappointment is that when a garment is recycled, it does not get transformed into another one. Unlike an aluminium can which can be indefinitely recycled into another can without compromising its structural properties, the fibres of a garment become too damaged during recycling to be spun back into yarn.  The shredded garments are usually used to fill furniture, acoustic walls and even car seats. For quality textiles to be produced, the recycled fibres must be blended with virgin fibres. Redress Asia's R-Cert requires that a minimum of 20% recycled fibres remains in the blend and in the finished garment. Unfortunately, mechanical fibre recycling is the most scalable recycling technology to-date for natural fibre post-consumer textiles. 

Source: Redress Asia, R-Cert

For chemical fibres such as certain types of polyester and nylon, chemical fibre, rather than mechanical fiber recycling is used.  

What Can Fashion Designers Do?
Can fashion designers design garments for the Circular Economy? Can we minimise the number of garments entering the waste system? Last week I looked at designing for durability, emotional durability and repair. This week, it's all about recycling, upcycling and disassembly 

#1 Design for Recycling
The process of recycling, be it chemical or mechnical is laborious.  Recycling companies need to understand what is in the garment before it is sorted and recycled back into quality textiles. Garments need to be designed of mono-materiality and be labelled properly  ie, pure cotton or polyester etc. 

• Design it for 100% xxx: mono-materiality. A garment can't be recycled textile-to-textile if it is 99% cotton. 
• Designing with fewer non-textile parts e.g. buttons, zips, studs. All these add to easier sorting and recycling.
• Work together with recycling companies that deal with certain textiles e.g. Patagonia collaborates with Teijin Fibre to upcycle their polyester garments. 

Until we find a way to recycle clothing of mixed materials (and which is also scalable), designing for mono-materiality is the way.   [Note: Eco Circle in Japan and Worn Again in the UK are looking at ways to recycle mixed-fibre materials]

Kate Goldsworthy's research looks at zero-waste techniques and also mono-materiality.  This is one of the garments (Laser Line) produced from 100% polyester.  

Source: Laser Line

#2 Design for Upcycling

Let's postpone the arrival of clothes to the bin. Can we design garments for upcycling? Perhaps we can include little notes with the garments to inform our customers how the garment could be upcycled. All the production textile waste could be used in the designs of other clothing lines. Twice Upcycled explored using different techniques (including laser welding and etching) to prolong the life of a shirt by upcycling it once and then a second time after use. 

Source: http://www.upcyclingtextiles.net/#/concert/

#3 Design it for Easy Disassembly - there's a lot of talk about making appliances easy to disassemble for repair or to upcycle / recycle the parts. What about clothing? I found this technology called wear2. The special Ecostitch of the garments can be easily dissolved using microwave technology which means the garments can be re-used or recycled easily.  Watch this video and tell me what you think!

WEAR2 Innovative Ecostitch Technology from LENSNECTAR on Vimeo.

#4 Design for Composting

This might be extreme, but I do like the idea although I wouldn't compost it unless I've worn it to bits. Frietag developed a 100% biodegradable textile from hemp, flax and modal (fibre from wood) and it breaks down within a few months of being in the composter.

Source: Oliver Nanzig

Are there any other ways of keeping clothes out of the bin?

This is part of the Fashion Designers Do Good series. Read more here.

Design for Minimal Waste (Pt 2)

Fast Fashion Means More Waste

"80 billion items of clothing are manufactured worldwide each year"
European Year for Development 2015

Today the fashion industry is about creating new clothing lines every 2-3 weeks, and unfortunately, we have responded positively to this business model. We voraciously consume whatever is the trend of the season (or possibly day!), and this habit has generated mountains of clothing waste. 

Are you guilty of throwing out clothes that are just worn a few times.......

..... that are slightly worn......

maybe even if it has just lost a button.....?

Why are we now a generation of consumers that purchase based on quantity rather than quality? 

A Cambridge University study reports that "in 2006, people were buying a third more clothes than they were in 2002, and women have four times as many clothes in their wardrobe than they did in 1980. Women are also getting rid of similar amounts each year." 

Can Fashion Designers Influence Post-Consumer Waste? 

Last week we looked at how fashion designers can make decisions to minimise pre-consumer waste, so what about minimising post-consumer waste?

#1 Design for Durability

In the race for cheaper and faster, something has to give, and this means garment quality (amongst other things) is compromised. According to WRAP's Design for Longevity, there are four areas in which designers can make changes to prolong the life of garments:

a) Size and Fit
Undamaged garments are primarly discarded because they no longer fit, but designers can help increase their longevity if the clothing can be easily adjusted.

Being constructed of individual panel shapes, a garment can be designed for future alterations to fit an individual's shape. Let's take a leaf from:    

• the 1800s when scraps of fabric were used to extend the hem and increase the girth of the garment as children grew taller, or adults grew larger in the middle! 

• the adjustable waist bands that are commonly found in children's trousers. Can we apply the same for adult trousers?

Source: Speedbargains.com

•  The Shoe That Grows -  I find this inspiring. These are shoes designed to be adjusted up to 5 sizes as the child grows older, and lasts 5 years.  Although they are designed for use in impoverished countries, they would be great everywhere! 

Source: The Shoes That Grows

b) Fabric quality - good quality textiles means longer lasting clothes, but it also means using the appropriate stitches.
c) Colours and Styles - everyone loves classic or timeless styles. I discovered the 30-year sweater! Now doesn't this look classic to you? Let's design things that people want to wear.

Source: http://blog.pier32.co.uk/2015/06/introducing-30-year-sweatshirt.html

d) Care - how we care for our clothes affects their lifespan. Designers and retailers can inform customers how to launder and even store the clothes via proper labeling or even online or in-store information.  I share my tips here. 

#2 Design for Emotional Durability

Garments can be physically durable, but how can we promote a garments' lifespan through emotion? 
Clothes protect us from the elements, but they are more than that. They give us our identity, define who we are both culturally and professionally.
Can we create clothing that is more meaningful to the wearer ..... something emotionally durable? 

• Case in point, why do wedding dresses get passed down and worn by the next generation? Allison Rinaldi wore her great grandma's.

Source: Ecouterre

• Patagonia and The North Circular develop an emotional connection between their clients and the product through customer stories, and maker stories, respectively.

• Companies such as Project Repat, provide services to enhance that connection by remaking things, in this case cherished but worn out t-shirts, into quilts.

Meet your knitters at The North Circular

#3 Design for Repair

Today, most wearers don't typically repair their clothes, but then they probably don't notice the plastic packet of buttons or swatch of fabric that comes with it. We need more than that to nudge people to repair their clothing.  In fact some companies such as Patagonia and Nudie Jeans offer free repair services for their clothing lines as part of their customer service. Others even offer a full repair guide on on-line!

Next week I'll be looking at how the fashion designer can contribute to the circular economy. Stay tuned!

Design for Minimal Waste (Pt 1)

"Designers have privileged access to the production process since they are responsible for specifying up to 70 percent of subsequent material and production processes in any given project. " Source: McAlpine

As a little girl I used to watch my mother sew dresses; she would take her time to ensure that the patterns were laid out in such a way on the fabric to minimise any potential waste. She would pause,  do some mental arithmetic and then go back to placing the patterns. I'm sure there's a formula for this!

"You don't want to waste something that is so beautiful and costs money" 

It's true, why do you want to chop up a piece of fabric only to have most of it end up in your bin?

Design for Minimal Waste

15% of textiles end up on the cutting room floor, but consumers also throw out a lot more garments every year too, not to mention the newly bought clothes that sometimes don't get worn or end up in the bin.

As designers we can design for minimal waste, impacting both the pre-consumer and post-consumer end of the supply chain. This week we look at the pre-consumer end of the supply chain.

Pre-consumer

Note - The techniques I share below are new ones. In fact, if you familiar with knitting or crocheting, these are both techniques that actually minimise textile waste - you are creating the textile to fit the garment rather than cutting it out from a roll of fabric! For example, some manufacturers have circular knitting machines to create t-shirts. 

#1 Zero-Waste Pattern Cutting

Timo Rissanen explored and uses zero-waste pattern cutting. I had blogged about Rissanen in 2009 when he first published his zero-waste pattern cutting concepts.  Basically, an entire garment can be cut from fabric with NO waste, as you can see from this image (courtesy of Timo Rissanen). Isn't this amazing?



Rissanen is not the only designer who explores this concept. Others include Holly McQuillan and Daniel Silverstein who explores different types of draping techniques, which leads me to the next technique which I think is equally amazing...

#2 Subtraction Cutting 

This technique was developed by Julian Roberts.  There is no traditional pattern in Roberts' technique but "the resulting shape of the garment is created by the removal of fabric rather than the addition of fabric and therefore the creation of negative space which the body occupies".  It involves three concepts of the tunnel, plug, and displacement, and the resulting garments are more voluminous and less seams. I think the looks is very experimental though but some of the designs come out great!  My only concern is what happens when you need to do alterations; there are no seams.....

Source: Julian Roberts

#3 Transformational Reconstruction

If you are a lover of Pattern Magic books, you might have seen this technique by Shingo Sato. The designs and patterns are extraodinary in the sense that no darts and seams are needed. I'm not sure whether this technique would constitute a minimal waste design, but take a look for yourself here. 

#4 Upcycling Pre-Consumer Textile Waste

Off-cuts, end-of-rolls, cut-and-sew waste (ie the 15%) and the textile samples all can be upcycled into something. Orsola de Castro uses cut-and-sew waste to create her collections, while Alabama Chanin by Natalie Chanin uses off-cuts for some of her signature applique creations. 

Courtesy of Alabama Chanin

#5 Take a Leaf from Cultural Costumes

To be honest, some of the best zero waste designs are from cultural costumes, and these are based on the rectangle block. Perhaps designers should draw inspiration from these cultures.

Indian Saree 

Sarong wrap 

African Kente

Kimono

Chinese qipao - I added this because before the qipao was influenced by Western tight-fitting forms, it was very baggy and based on the rectangle block. 

Source: http://alphahistory.com/chineserevolution/introduction-to-china/

Next week we look at how the designer can design for minimal waste from the post- consumer angle.