EVENT: sustainable fashion - from awareness to action

My amazing coursemates have organized it and it sounds like an event not to miss! Looking forward to hearing the speakers myself tomorrow.

Event: Myths and Realities: Sustainable Lifestyles: Great Theory, Impossible Practice

This was an event me and some of the MA Fashion Environment girls attended last night at the british libary. A bit exhausted now to write much in details about it but the jist of it was:

our unsustainable behaviour is formed by habits. These may seem deeply engrained but they do evolve and change.  These changes may be radically influenced by technology but in sometimes unpredictable ways e.g. mobile phones & texting. Technology cannot be seen as the solution to solve our sustainability problems, that would be a 'mission impossible' as Ian Christie called it; social innovations however would make it a 'mission not quite impossible'. These innovations would include changing the framework and social structures which underpin our habits. Just trying to change individual habits is not effective with the current socio-technological infrastructures & cultural conventions.

I also found the different definitions of habit interesting (quite relevant to a 'shoe addiction' project we're working on with Prof. Helen Storey). Habits can be split into 'addicition' or 'routine'. The unsustainable consumption habit has been put into the 'addiction' bracket. Professor Dale Southerton stated that this is very unhelpful in addressing sustainability as it puts emphasis on the individual and views the habits as pathological. Whereas viewing the habit as a routine means the behaviour is the problem but is also the solution.

Cartoon as presented by Ian Christie & found again on this website

The Chair was Drs Astrid Wissenburg, Director of Partnerships and Communications, ESRC and the speakers  Ian Christie, Research Fellow and Coordinator, Sustainable Lifestyles Research Group, Centre for Environmental Strategy, University of Surrey and Professor Dale Southerton, Director Sustainable Practices Research Group, University of Manchester.

Inspiring thinkers

We are lucky enough to have some lectures with some great thinkers of sustainability and design. Kate Fletcher is a researcher at LCF and regularly has sessions with us. On the first one she asked us to read this article in preparation for it. It's on the state of the ecology today and really puts things into perspective. Her book is definitely my bible when it comes to sustainable fashion. Been reading loads around the topic and hope to post about some but the book club on ethical fashion forum for reviews!

   

Only yesterday we there was an inspiring talk (marathon) located at St. Martins and part of our Uni-wide green week. Jonathan Chapman was a keynote speaker; I soaked up his book emotionally durable design, so seeing him in flesh was quite something. Glad to be able to say that he's a good speaker. He recently did some consulting for Puma who seem to be addressing sustainability recently... might write a post later on what I think about quantifying and managing sustainability (read: not too keen on that idea).  Carole Collet was also there, who I'd heard at the interweave event at the Victoria and Albert museum; she helped set up the MA textile futures at CSM and in researching into biological structures for textiles. Amazing really. Some other PhD students spoke & I was hugely inspired (kind of made me want to do one?! we'll see).

I recently discovered, pretty much by chance, openwear. It was after visiting this website that I made myself a pair of slippers for the chilly winter days. Have a browse and you'll see why. This initiative seems to be set up partly at least by Becky Earley, who was also at the talk and set up TEDs Ten. This is something that will really help me with my current essay actually and for which I will be interviewing Tim Parsons on Friday which I am excited about. Talking about essays... ciao for now