Dilys Williams

Professor of Fashion Design for Sustainability

Director, Centre for Sustainable Fashion, University of the Arts London

Citylab 2050

Fashion Design Context

“Its (fashion’s) logic encroaches on the areas of art, politics and science, it is clear that we are talking about a phenomenon that lies near the centre of the modern world.

Fashion affects the attitude of most people towards both themselves and others.”

Svendsen (2006)

Fashion Industry Context

Fashion’s business employs 25 million people globally. It contributes to individual and community prosperity and can offer independence, identity and social connection. It marks significant contributions to our creative industries in often delightful ways.

Yet it is also a significant contributor to the degradation of natural systems, social injustice and societal dis-ease. It exemplifies the machine of consumerism, which has come to be one of its defining features.

Fashion Thinking Context

“The shape of the global future rests with the reflexivity of human consciousness – the capacity to think critically about why we think what we do – and then to think and act differently.”

Raskin (2008)

Our current state:

A geological classification defined as the (first) period during which human activity has been the dominant influence on climate and the environment.

The Anthropocene

Commitment to Purpose

“We will strive for the ideals and sacred things of the city, both alone and with many, we will transmit this city not less but greater, better and more beautiful than it was transmitted to us.”

Oath for Athenians 500 BC

Credit: Stephen Walter

The new wildernesses on our planet, waiting to be explored, are information, knowledge, history and time.

These are altering our relationship with the physical world and the old traditional landmarks.

Credit: Betsy Issacson

Personal Community Member

Cultural Member Academy Member

Economic Power Public Participation

Earth MemberPolitical Voice

Multi Layered Citizenship

Circular Design: cherish and be cherished

Engage Citizen Participation: Local loops and shared value

Engage Citizen Participation

Engage Citizen Participation: Local loops and multiplier effect

Extended value and re-shored manufacture

Mulberry

London Cloth Company Tender William Kroll

Geographic and extended value

Engage Citizen Participation: Global loops of extended value

M&S Shwopping

Engage Citizen Participation: Fashion services

Rentez-Vous

Engage Citizen Participation: Fashion services

Nudie Jeans Repair Shop

Mud Jeans ‘Lease a Jeans’

APC Butler Worn-Out Denim Series

Engage Citizen Participation: Design services

Antithesis

“Our multi-functional pieces aim at contributing to a new consumerism philosophy advocating quality over quantity.”

Engage Citizen Participation: Design services

Tom of Holland Visible Mending Programme

Material Resourcefulness

Michelle Lowe-Holder

Christopher Raeburn From Somewhere

Material Resourcefulness

Design for the Circular Economy at Scale: decoupling success from the degradation of nature

Nike ‘Mobilize Makers’ project

nikemakingCSF

Specialist Informers: Humanising Data

Specialist Informers: Technical Innovation

V&A Fashion Climate Hackathon Michelle Lowe-Holder, FIREUp participant: 3D printing project

Hackney Fashion Hub

Are we tending to the leaves whilst continuing to sever the stem?

Metabolism or Mechanism?

Source: The Gaia Atlas of Cities

Katharine Hamnett

The Voice of the Designer: what is your design ethic?

Dr. Noki

Design Activism: I speak for nature and people

Sewing Bee / Shoreditch Sisters

The voices of maker and wearer: participatory design

Craftivist Collective

Meet ups

“It is our choices...that show who we truly are, far more than our abilities.”

J.K. Rowling

A Networked Society

“Once we know and are aware,we are responsible for our actionand our inaction.

We can do something about it or ignore it. Either way, we are still responsible.”

Jean Paul Sartre

Environmental Profit and Loss

The reform of our education and training systems will have to be large scale and dramatic. Every job in Britain will change to some extent and many will change substantially.

Aldersgate Group

Circular mindsets

Content

Product Innovation

Business Innovation

Process Innovation (New Methods and Curriculum)

Innovation systems: making them work

Design in an EthicA point of View

Design DisruptionChange perceptions

Design in ResourcefulnessUse Nothing New

Design 9 LivesThe Gift, the service

Design Magic Rapid one use, replenish earth

Design inspired by meansShaping technological application

Circular Design Frameworks (as different speeds and scales)

“We are leaving a world designed for efficiency in repetition and entering one where value comes from contributing to change... Because change is the opposite of repetition, this requires mastering a set of human social skills as a prerequisite to being able to contribute — including empathy, teamwork, change making...”

Ashoka CEO Bill Drayton

Mapping vs. Measuring

Source: Chris Kenny

Synthesizing and creating are also intellectual / cognitive capacities... more important in the 21st century than ever before. But educators have less experience in training these ‘habits of mind’ and unless teachers themselves have these latter skills, they will not be able to inculcate them effectively in students.

Howard Gardner, Professor of Cognition and Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education

A crisis of perception: a crisis of imagination

Long live imagination!