Routledge Handbook of Sustainability and Fashion PDF Edited by Kate Fletcher and Mathilda Tham

CONTENTS

I.1 Different perspectives and approaches to fashion and sustainability 8
I.2 Possible reading paths through the book 9
1.1 Multiple functions take time 16
1.2 Size doesn’t matter 17
1.3 Button vertebrae 23
3.1 The Planetary Boundaries Report identifies nine systems that are essential to the functioning of the Earth 36
3.2 A flourishing Fibershed might include solar-powered mills, sheep,
farmlands, gardens for food, fibre and dyes, small-scale equipment,
tours, retail, recycling and artisanal workshops 39
6.1 Connecting to the material source of clothing, wool for Flock knitwear
by Christien Meindertsma 68
6.2 Iva Jean pencil skirt designed by Ann DeOtte 69
8.1 The order of civilization 84
8.2 Fleeting encounters with dress can help locate us in the here and now of our lives 85
8.3 Dancer and oloid form share a moment of rest 86
9.1 Nelsa Guambe shopping for second-hand dresses in Maputo 94
9.2 Nelly and Nelsa Guambe modelling Mima-te dresses 96
11.1 Burquini by Ahiida 116
11.2 Vivobarefoot shoe 117
12.1 Clothing disposal 124
12.2 Fiona’s patched jeans (model Sara Almgren) 125
12.3 Illustration of the different stages that occurred during the use phase of Fiona’s jeans 126
12.4 Home-made woollen cardigan 128
14.1 Betty Smith on her wedding day 141
14.2 Betty Smith’s Singer – wedding present? 142
16.1 “Don’t buy this jacket”: Patagonia’s 2011 Black Friday advertisement 165
16.2 Honest by 167
17.1 Norwegian magazine Personae – Klær, Kropp, Kultur (Dress, Body, Culture),
3/4, 2011. Theme: religion and rituals 176
17.2 101-year-old Rose posted at advancedstyleblogspot.com 178
18.1 Growth in LCA activities in different fields from 1993 to 2012 183
18.2 Fibre consumption by type, 1993–2012 184
18.3 The waste hierarchy: a general classification of options by environmental
impact 188
19.1 Silk screen print on habotai silk using a pink pigment produced by
Streptomyces coelicolor 195
19.2 Strawberry Noir (Fragaria Fusca Tenebris) 196
19.3 Diagram illustrating designing with living systems 198
20.1 A zero-waste fashion design garment and pattern by Holly McQuillan,
with textile by Genevieve Packer 203
20.2 Endurance Shirt by Timo Rissanen 205
21.1 ‘Graffiti for garment workers’ by Clean Clothes Ireland, in collaboration
with MArk FiTZ Art for Living Wage Campaign 2013 211
21.2 Shahnaz Akter works as a sewing-machine operator in a factory in
Bangladesh 217
22.1 Global textile fiber outputs more than doubled between 1977 and 2007
and are projected to reach 130 million tons by 2025 224
22.2 Nature integrated with growth 227
22.3 In a post-growth era, new forms and patterns of social order emerge,
in stark contrast to the brittle linear pattern of the growth era 230
23.1 Finding connection that is true to the spirit of designer and design,
Zakee Sharriff, AW2003 236
23.2 Notions of hosting, multi-voicedness and temporal awareness 241
24.1 Leeds Community Clothes Exchange, 2013 248
24.2 Antiform, 2013 249
25.1 Completed re-knitting project (replacement sleeves using reclaimed yarn) 258
25.2 Completed re-knitting project (‘cardiganised’ jumper and afterthought pocket) 258
26.1 Mended Turquoise Backless Dress 263
26.2 Tom of Holland’s meta-darning of Sanquhar socks 264
26.3 Mending in Cuba in Turquoise Backless Dress 269
28.1 Nested levels of design (after Lundebye, 2004) 288
28.2 The place called reconciliation 290
C.1 Research agenda themes and recurrent cross-cutting ideas 295

INTRODUCTION
Dear reader and collaborator of fashion, it is an honour to share with you a body of work that celebrates fashion futures for sustainability.

This edited volume of contributions from over thirty scholars from around the world explores interconnections between sustainability and fashion, a web of relationships that are, at one and the same time, global and also domestic, personal and also industrial, a basic need and also a luxury, essential to the fashion sector and also challenging to its very nature. It does so by bringing together different experiences and perspectives of fashion: some emerging from within fashion itself, and others from the sustainability community. The chapters reflect a wide range of influences as varied as everyday actions, scholarly practice, technological innovation, direct experience, industrial knowledge and creative activity, many of which are different to what has gone before, and some of which are radical in the original sense of the word, that is forming the roots, back to the bare and essential aspects of ideas and practice of fashion found within a thriving – a sustainability – future.

We believe the contribution of this volume to be new, vibrant and unique in a number of ways, including that:

• it opens up the fashion and sustainability discourse, and hopefully practice, by inviting a range of perspectives from scholars and disciplines hitherto outside this remit;
• it integrates theoretical fashion perspectives, pushing the engagement in understandings of sustainability towards relating with, embracing and even celebrating the complex symbolic rationales that underpin the fashion experience;
• it asks scholars and practitioners to step beyond what they know and, from their advanced vantage point, speculate and offer visions for fashion and sustainability, as well as sketching out further territories of research and practice;
• it integrates insights from research and practice, dissolving some boundaries between, and also honours insights coming from the personal realm of the contributors;
• it focuses on solutions and possibilities, seeking to offer agency and a range of ideas;
• it draws on collaborative processes, where each contributor has been invited to shape the ethos and direction of the book.

The contributions to fashion and sustainability offered by this volume are of different types. They range from fresh findings from empirical research, which should prompt new emphases going forward; to reconceptualizations of fashion and sustainability, which invite novel understanding of the alignment of fashion and sustainability stakeholders, identify new actors to involve, or redistribute power and open up new territories for research and practice. The wide range of academic and professional disciplines meeting (and hopefully attracting a similarly wide readership) is also reflected in the diversity in terms of conventions of voice and research.

Aims of the book
The ambition of this book is to offer a range of perspectives that both recognize the complexity of aligning fashion with sustainability values, action and futures and offer strong visions. It is concerned with long-term futures, not just transitional strategies, with the effect that, although the book often engages with fashion and sustainability at the level of products, processes and services, it is predominantly occupied with the deeper levels of systems and paradigms. This volume also has a pragmatic goal: to infuse and apprise the world of fashion with insights from multiple, plural, complex points of view. While revealing fundamental underlying structures and conflicts, say between economies of scale and the fragility of natural systems, it also seeks to promote agency by offering inspiring examples, tangible strategies and strategic platforms for new enquiry. The book’s bold ambition is to set out a research agenda for the next 10 years. Another aim of the book is to shift the perception of fashion as problem to fashion as a resource for sustainability futures.

Cumulatively, the book is a broad, oftentimes deep and singularly distinctive, sounding of the field. It is also one that is aware of its own limitations: we openly acknowledge that this sounding reflects but a moment of time and the voices of a particular range of perspectives in the territory. Just as there are trends in fashion clothes, there are trends in discourses also, with a marked shift in recent years away from framing ‘fashion and sustainability’ as a material phenomenon to one instead influenced by human actions, relationships and their material effects.

We also firmly believe that a fuller mapping of the field is necessarily an ongoing activity, more emergent, more multidimensional, more fervent. Yet this book offers clues as to how this process of charting might unfold over time, how it may look and feel, and what it might reveal about what we value and how we extend an ethic of care to others and the natural world, through and within fashion.