Professor of Sustainability, Design, Fashion
London College of Fashion
London College of Fashion
Kate Fletcher’s work is both rooted in nature’s principles and engaged with the cultural and creative forces of fashion and design. Over the last two decades, her original thinking and progressive outlook has infused the field of fashion, textiles and sustainability with design thinking, and come to define it.
Kate has over 50 scholarly and popular publications in the field. She is author of Sustainable Fashion and Textiles: Design Journeys (2008), with a fully revised Second Edition with new content released in 2014. Readers call it “inspiring,” “the foundation for a radical new perspective” and “a bible” and it is in active use in commercial design studios and is the principal text in academic seminar rooms around the world. She is co-editor of one of the prestige Routledge International Handbook series on Sustainability and Fashion (2015), co-author of Fashion and Sustainability: Design for Change (2012) and most recently author of the Craft of Use: Post-Growth Fashion (2016), exploring fashion opportunities beyond consumerism.
With a PhD from Chelsea College of Art and Design (1999), Kate is Professor of Sustainability, Design, Fashion at the Centre for Sustainable Fashion where she has a broad remit spanning enterprise, education and research. Her strategic leadership permeates the Centre’s activities, including its role as co-secretariat to the All Party Parliamentary Group on Ethics and Sustainability in Fashion at the House of Lords.
Sustainability, nature, design, localism, practices of use and consumption in fashion. ‘Post-growth’ fashion, slow fashion, the craft of use, design and fashion ecologies.
My work spans sustainability, design and fashion. My current research project is Fashion Ecologies exploring localism in fashion as a vehicle for sustainability change.
Other current work includes nature writing about kinship between garments people and place.
Paul Yuille, Fast-fashion resource responsibility: how might raising the awareness of a UK fast-fashion consumer group through enhancing their understanding of the materiality of the sector, guide them to have more responsible resource use?
Emily Towers, The practice of mending: unravelling its effect on the wearer’s relationship to clothing.
Emma Rigby, Fashion Design and Laundry Practices: Practice-Orientated Approaches to Design for Sustainability.
Mathilda Tham, The Lucky People Forecast, Goldsmiths University of London.
Amy Twigger Holroyd, Folk Fashion: Amateur Re-Knitting as a Strategy for Sustainability, Birmingham City University.
Fletcher, Kate (2015) IN THE HANDS OF THE USER: THE LOCAL WISDOM PROJECT AND THE SEARCH FOR AN ALTERNATIVE FASHION SYSTEM. The Journal of Design Strategies, 7.
Fletcher, Kate and Tham, Mathilda (2014) The Handbook of Sustainability and Fashion. Routledge International Handbooks. Routledge, Abingdon, Oxon. ISBN 9780415828598
Fletcher, Kate and Toth-Fejel, Katelyn (2014) The Craft of Use Event - A publication of the Local Wisdom project. Centre for Sustainable Fashion, London. ISBN 978-1-906908-31-7
Fletcher, Kate (2014) Sustainable Fashion and Textiles: Design Journeys. Second Edition. Routledge, Abingdon, Oxon. ISBN 9780415644563
Fletcher, Kate (2014) How does the story of climate change make an appearance in fashion? In: Culture and Climate Change: Narratives. Shed, Cambridge, UK, pp. 75-77. ISBN 978-0-9557534-3-5
Fletcher, Kate (2013) Design for Sustainability in Fashion and Textiles. In: The Handbook of Fashion Studies. Bloomsbury, Oxford, UK, pp. 557-574. ISBN 9780857851949
Fletcher, Kate (2013) Sustainable Fashion. In: The Handbook of Design for Sustainability. Bloomsbury, Oxford, UK, pp. 283-298. ISBN 9780857858528
Fletcher, Kate (2012) Durability, Fashion, Sustainability: The Processes and Practices of Use. Fashion Practice: The Journal of Design, Creative Process and the Fashion Industry, 4 (2). pp. 221-238. ISSN 17569370
Fletcher, Kate (2012) Sustainability, Pleasure and Fashion Politics. In: The Sustainable Fashion Handbook. Thames and Hudson, London, UK, pp. 208-210. ISBN 9780500290569
Fletcher, Kate and Grose, Lynda (2012) Fashion and sustainability: design for change. Laurence King, London. ISBN 9781856697545
Visit the Local Wisdom project website
www.localwisdom.infoVisit the course page
MA Fashion Retail at London College of FashionVisit the course page
MA Fashion Futures at London College of FashionVisit the course page
MA Strategic Fashion Marketing at London College of FashionExploring speed and rhythms of use and consumption in fashion. Visit the Lifetimes project website
www.katefletcher.com/lifetimes/