At Midsummer this year we had the pleasure to host Swedish and Danish
MISTRA Future Fashion (MiFuFa) researchers in London for our 24hrs Textiles events at CSM and Chelsea.
The first day started with a tour of the
MA Textile Futures show at CSM, led by Caroline Till, and finished with a seminar session entitled
When Scientists meet Designers, featuring
Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg and
Jim Haseloff, chaired by Carole Collet, Deputy Director of
TFRC. The lectures concluded with a conversation between the speakers that also included Asa Ostlund, the MiFuFa Deputy Director.
The
seminar was perfectly in tune with our four year MiFuFa project. Asa
says that 'the driving question that all parties (scientists, designers
and industry) have in common within MiFuFa is to reach sustainability in
fashion. This is challenging both for designers, social scientists and
natural scientists'. Asa pointed out how this relationship between
designers and scientists needs to be nurtured in following ways:
•
“The way that designers and scientists work together is often an
iterative process where the scientists have the knowledge about new
materials and the designers have a curiosity and urge to use new
interesting materials and explore their possibilities. This process has
to be cyclical; material coming from the scientist gets tested by the
designer, who gives feedback on what to improve, and the scientist
modifies the material to respond to the designer’s request.
• “Scientists often an extra push and new energy into their research when working together with the designer.
•
“Regarding the modification of fabrics, such as coloring, printing, or
mixing materials together, this process should preferably be done in
discussion with a scientist to be able to reach the goals of
sustainability. This is important when aiming for recycling the fabrics
after use and to be able to close the loop of recycling all textile
materials.
• “Both the scientist and the designer can reach new
unexplored areas when working together and broadening their view with
the other person's vision and experience.”
After
an evening of networking and ideas swopping by the Regents Canal, the
researchers continued the next morning with a breakfast tour of the
Chelsea degree shows. At 11am the group began a workshop with TFRC
Director Rebecca Earley – where participants were asked to arrive as
sustainable fashion consumers, then become designers, before taking an
advisors role. We tried the new TED’s TEN work books out, and asked
everyone to make their particular recommendations for achieving systemic
change.
The
following day after the 24 hours of events we continued brainstorming
MiFuFa research with Kirsti Reitan Andersen and Sarah Bly from
Copenhagen Business School. Sarah is part of Project 7 looking at
sustainable consumption of fashion, while Kirsti is a PhD student from
Project 1, focusing on new sustainable business models in fashion
companies. We talked about how the TED workshops had explored several
important themes over the last five years, and we worked on ideas to
reflect and explore these further through co-authoring a paper or
chapter in the future.
Our discussions felt like we were beginning
to see how to close the loop in engaging with sustainable design in
companies, as future fashion needs to push a synergy between the
designers, the consumers, and the company. Watch this space for further
collaborations in the Autumn…
