Author: srh450

Janet Hethorn highlights the importance of focusing on people rather than on the garment when it comes to fashion design. She argues that fashion is not only a basic need but also a way to “express meaning and identity”, therefore designers must consider both the physical characteristics of the garment, such as being comfortable and useful, as well as the abstract features, such as style, the consumers’ emotions, etc. One of the problems she exposes about the actual fashion industry is that most of the brands create stereotypes and ideals that do not include most of the people. For instance, she talks about how clothes are modeled by fit people or how even in mannequins clothes look exceptional, because they adjust them in order to achieve this. However, most of us do not have those bodies or silhouettes the garments are made for, therefore it is hard to find something that “fit” us perfectly,  And this is precisely the problem, as a lot of times we tend to criticize our own body dimensions according to the garment, rather than criticizing the garment itself, which shows the lack of consumers consideration from the part of the designers. Clothes should be more adjustable to different types of body so they do not represent a major issue when buying them, like the standard sizes do nowadays.  

At some point of the text, the author proposes as an exercise, to think about one moment when we felt really fabulous  with certain clothes and the opposite.  In my case, I have felt fabulous wearing clothes that were both comfortable and stylish, like my red pants that look an feel like pajamas. On the other hand, I have felt so umcomfortable wearing some shirts that felt so rough to my body, but that I have worn because they were part of my middle school uniform or at some other occassions. I can see how important is to have clothes that we like but that are also comfortable.  

Finally, when she mentions the emotional attachment we sometimes have to some of our clothes, I thought about my final project idea as I want to analyse my own wardrobe and why I keep storing some clothes I do not really use anymore or not that often. In the part of “Observations”, Hethorn describes things I could do for my own project, such as taking pics and observing which combinations I make of my own clothes in order to understand more my own behaviour towards fashion. This reading gave me some good ideas that I could implement on my final project. 

    

Team members: Ji Hwan Shin, Dominick Nardone

Topic: Tech led innovation to support sustainable fashion

Inspired by the text of Sarah Scaturro related to technology and fashion, my team and I decided to focus on technology at the different stages of the fashion garment: its creation, consumption and disposal. I focused on the latter. Concerning the disposal stage of a garment, most of the fashion waste ends up in landfills, only a small portion is recycled through thrift stores or recycling companies. Moreover, with the fast fashion industry producing more and more cheap and stylish garments, people are disposing more and more clothes, which are saturating the landfills. Therefore, it is important to find new ways to recycle these clothes and some brands have started to do more research on how technology can help achieve this. 

During the presentation I started by giving some statistical facts about fashion disposal so my classmates realize how big is the impact of the fashion waste and also mentioned that recycling can be difficult especially as most of the clothes are made out of blended fibres, therefore it is difficut to fully separate them. Then I gave some examples of apps that collect clothes in order to recycle them, either by selling them as second hand products or by selling them to recycling factories. One of these apps is called Regain, which offers discounts in return to people who donate, so this is a great incentive to promote recycling.  After that, I explained the differences between mechanical recycling and chemical recycling of textiles. Mechanical recycling is one of the methods more used nowadays but a disadvantage is that it doesn’t separate blended fibres and it only works with natural fibres. The chemical recycling gives better results but it envolves a waste of water and the use of polluting chemicals, therefore it is not sustainable either. 

When I was doing my research about methods of recycling clothes, I found two examples that seemed very interesting to me. The first one is a method called “Hydrothermal method” developed by a giant of fast fashion, H&M, in collaboration with the Hong Kong Research Institute of Textiles and Apparel. This method fully separates cotton and polyester blends into new fibres, and it only uses heat, water and less than 5% biodegradable green chemical, therefore it seem a good innovation. Another interesting example I found was the campaign run by Nike “Reuse a shoe”, where they collect in their stores any kind of shoe, that they transform then into Nike grind in order to make playgrounds, Nike apparel, footwear and equipment products. At the end I also highlighted the importance of how we could reuse our clothes more and consume less in order to prevent more and more fashion waste.

Finally, I found a video made by H&M where they show part of the mechanical recycling of textiles process, so I thought it would be nice to show it to my classmates as H&M is a known brand and probably they have bought some of their products. Although the video is well done and appealing, a lot more needs to be done, but companies are changing their schemes. For instance, H&M has a campaign of collecting clothes and even I have donated twice because they offer discounts to buy new of their products, which is a good example of circular economy. It is about time so the whole fashion industry changes and make better use of technology. 

Sources: 

Scaturro, Sarah. “Eco-Tech Fashion: Rationalizing Technology in Sustainable Fashion.” Fashion Theory, vol. 12, no. 4, 2008, pp. 469–488., doi:10.2752/175174108×346940

https://www.ourldb.com/news/2018/1/21/from-nike-reuse-a-shoe-to-nike-grind

 https://about.hm.com/en/media/news/general-2017/Successful-method-found-for-recycling-blend-textiles-into-new-fibres.html

http://trashisfortossers.com/how-to-recycle-old-clothing/

https://regain-app.com/

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/giveit-free-donation-pick-up/id1060354246?mt=8

https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/sustainable-fashion-blog/2015/feb/26/waste-recycling-textiles-fashion-industry

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7i4JSzB8VlU

This reading was very interesting as it changed my whole perspective on technology and fashion. Whenever I heard these two words together I used to think technology in fashion was something like smart watches or shoes with LEDs. Technology can indeed be part of the fashion garment, but it can also be applied at any stage of the garment life-cycle, since its creation to its disposal.  Technology has evolved to create new materials used for the garment, to create new platforms for consumption and to create different ways of recycling. Nonetheless, some of these technological improvements in the fashion industry are not necessarily sustainable.  For instance, even though in recent years, more methods to create textiles based on natural fibers such as bamboo, milk, etc, are being employed by companies, they are far from being 100% sustainable, as their production process often requires a lot of energy and the use of chemicals. Therefore these methods do not seem a better choice. 

 A point in the reading that really surprised me was when Scaturro talks about the use of bioengineered cotton. I was aware of this kind of method being applied to fruits and vegetables, but I had never thought that the clothes I have could be made out of genetically modified cotton. This could have a negative impact in the ecosystems where this cotton is harvested. But as the demand for cotton is so big, people have to come up with new methods in order to meet this demand.  The demand is one of the main problems as people consume more and more clothes and even brands and organizations suggest “the acquisition o greener products, rather than suggesting more radical methods in the ideologies of ecofashion, like buying less clothing or wearing garments longer” as Scaturro highlights. A few years ago I used to buy so many clothes, because I wanted to have all types of patterns, colors, etc., even though some of them were not really comfortable. Now I have reduced my consumption and prefer clothes that are both good quality and comfortable. Another problem I have is that some of my clothes need ironing, so most of the time I end up wearing those that do not need, it because I am lazy or because I am in a rush in the morning so I do not have to iron them. Nowadays there are some types of fabrics that barely need ironing like spandex but a lot of shirts for instance are still made out of easily wrinkled fabric, so technology could solve this issue in the future, like many others in the fashion industry   

In this text Alice Payne describes the ideal life-cycle of a fashion garment. She explains the different phases of this life-cycle and also the problems they involve. Concerning the fibre choice,  although some materials like cotton or bamboo seem to be more sustainable, their production is often more expensive and also polluting, therefore it is hard to find materials that can be sustainable and also cheap.  Something that really surprised me is how sandblasting is a dangerous practice for workers, as most of the stores sell denim with this characteristic, and I have even bought jeans like this without knowing their negative impact. Alice Payne explains in this example how big is the influence of the media and fashion forescasters to start a trend that people will follow, no matter how some practices in the fashion industry are unethical. For instance, I have seen in California some products like sunglasses with a label warning people about toxic substances contained in the product, but people might buy these products regardless of this label, because they look cool or a celebrity is using that product.  Therefore, fashion magazines, media, etc should do more research about the products they promote and the government should more the fashion industry practices. Another point that I found interesting, during the garment use phase, is how washing clothes is a big environmental issue, as we waste a lot of water and also add chemicals to this  water through detergents  that becomes then hard to recycle. I had really never thought how washing clothes can have a big impact on the environment, as it is a daily life activity and even more, using dryers also requires a lot of energy. Therefore, it is crucial that designers find materials that do not need to be washed that often like denim, so we can reduce the impact of washing. In conclusion, clothes should be designed according to the life cycle described by Payne, so they can really be recycled and follow the cradle to cradle model, however every phase has issues that are yet to resolve like finding the right textiles, having a fair manufacture, etc. Some companies have started to adopt this life-cycle of the garment, but their prices are often higher than fast-fashion prices, so a lot of improvement has to be done. 

Li Edelkort exposes how the fashion industry has not evolved so much over the last years. Although there is an increasing production and demand for clothes, the methods used to design and sell fashion remain the same.  A problem she highlights  is the way fashion is taught at schools, where students all want to become famous designers rather than creating everyday clothes that are sustainable and fashion. She suggests schools should teach more about industrial fashion design as well as textile materials as there is not enough research being done concerning new types of materials that could be adopted in the industry. Last semester, I participated in the Trash Fashion Show and although I designed something that looked good and made out of trash, I still feel it was not that sustainable as the clothes I made could not be worn more than a few times and less be washed. When I was thinking about my design I was thinking about what kind of materials could replace fabric and still be wearable and practical, but I could not really come up with an idea, so I ended up using plastic. I have recently seen at some stores, more and more clothes made out of plastic, especially coats or jackets but  I am not sure how these clothes can be washed or if they are actually useful.  So I think doing more research on textiles and other materials would truly make fashion more sustainable.  

Both Fletcher and Edelkort describe many problems concerning the fast-fashion industry such as the bad quality of the clothes, the low wages of people who make the clothes and how the marketing make people consume these clothes in great amounts. For instance, it is really questionable how the owner of Inditex, one of the biggest companies of fast-fashion, is one of the richest men on earth while people who actually make these clothes come from poor countries where often that is the only job that they can take even though the salaries are really low. We should move to a more slow-fashion industry where more small brands are supported and there is more awareness that companies can sell less at a higher price but with better quality and fairness to all people involved in the industry.