Clara Vuletich
Research Title: Social Textile Design for Sustainable Fashion
What are the social needs that a textile/fashion practice/designer could meet/solve?
How can a textile designer encourage new ideas of individual and social well-being, or ‘nudge' people to change unsustainable behaviours?
This research project will explore the role of textile/fashion designers as ‘social innovators' and how design can catalyse new sustainable behaviours, new enterprise models and new ideas of well-being.
What are the social needs that a textile/fashion practice/designer could meet/solve?
How can a textile designer encourage new ideas of individual and social well-being, or ‘nudge' people to change unsustainable behaviours?
This research project will explore the role of textile/fashion designers as ‘social innovators' and how design can catalyse new sustainable behaviours, new enterprise models and new ideas of well-being.
In a post-growth, post-design world, how can we, as Ezio Manzini states, ‘compensate for a reduction in consumer goods with an increase in the quality of our physical and social environments'?. Initiatives such as the Transition Town movements, where new low-carbon, local approaches are being tested and created, are evidence of the new ways communities and people are sharing common goals, and building resilient social relationships, but what does this mean for designers? This research will be mapping the activity of designers who are engaging in ways to increase these qualities, whether it's facilitating a community group with a quilting workshop, or establishing a local Re-use centre that provides training & employment.
If designers are now being encouraged to practice ‘human centred design' or ‘co-design', where the real human needs of users and consumers are considered as paramount, where do fashion/textile designers fit within these new practices? Rather than being part of a system that feeds a continuous cycle of consumption and obsolescence, fashion/textile designers have new opportunities to use their unique set of design (and hand making) skills to add social value and contribute to this ‘complex social learning process'.
This project aims to explore through practice how the textile designer of today can use both technological and social experimenting, and inter-connected design strategies, to create change at a societal level, in order to propose new models for future practice.
This Studentship is part of the MISTRA Future Fashion project.
