24th September 2012

Fashion & Sustainability: Mike Barry & Kate Fletcher debate

On 27^th April 2012, Mike Barry, Head of Sustainable Business at M&S and Kate Fletcher, Reader in Sustainable Fashion at London College of Fashion discussed wide ranging themes associated with fashion and sustainability as part of the launch of M&S’s ‘Shwopping’ recycling initiative and the two week creative ‘Shwop Lab’ co-ordinated by the Centre for Sustainable Fashion in Dray Walk, London to explore shwopping design implications.

The conversation, described by one journalist as one of the most interesting and wide-ranging she’d ever heard on fashion and sustainability, has been edited into four podcasts available for download.  [Read More]

Tags: Business models, Fashion, Localism, M&S, Materials, Shwopping, Sustainability

17th May 2012

Same, same, but different: how we have to change how we perceive fashion and sustainability

Back in 1997 I started to write regular features on sustainability themes in fashion and textiles in a magazine called Eco Design, the journal of the now disbanded (and much missed) Ecological Design Association. Eco Design was first printed in the early 1990s and reflected the radical, grounded and alternative scope of early ideas of design and sustainability. It was a maverick publication and it contributed in no small way to the community and ideas that shape the way we understand the interplay between sustainability and design practice today.  [Read More]

Tags: Design, Fashion, Localism, Materials, Sustainability, Use