Many fashion brands are exploring ways to reduce their environmental impact, but what about their social impact? Fashion brand, THE-CØDED, recently worked with Central Saint Martins Foundation students to explore sustainability through the lens of transparency and the stories of the people in their supply chain.
More than just a fashion label, THE-CØDED describe themselves as a community movement who want to help shape the fashion revolution. They want to reframe discussions around sustainability to include the people that work at every level of the supply chain. The brand assigns a distinct ‘cøde’ to their garments and to every manufacturer they collaborate with. Searching for this code allows customers to access a comprehensive factory profile along with images and videos of the factories, their products and the people working there.
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Print design by group The Good Egg for a collaborative project with The Coded
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Work by the Rise team, Foundation x The Coded
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Print design by group Reclaimed Narrative for the collaborative project with THE-CØDED
The project
After a briefing from THE-CØDED on their codes and values, more than 140 Foundation Diploma in Art and Design students used waste materials to develop innovative samples and surfaces that could inspire a creative, playful range of textile print ideas. Based on these samples, 40 students were selected and worked in groups to respond to the overarching competition theme – redefining sustainability in the fashion industry through the stories of the manufacturers, the garments and THE-CØDED themselves. A winning team was selected for each of these 3 themes and were each group was awarded a £1,000 prize.
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Print design by group The Good Egg for a collaborative project with The Coded
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Logo design for The Coded created by group Reclaimed Narrative
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Work by the Rise team, Foundation x The Coded
The winning concepts
Students from winning teams tell us more about their concepts.
Reclaimed Narrative, the story of THE-CØDED
Dylan Farrow, Yasu Hwang, Martha Carlin, Alia Maftei
We were moved by THE-CØDED’s celebratory ethos and wanted to focus on the makers, the care and the skill that goes into the manufacturing process. We designed and created prints inspired by microscopic imagery, taking microscopy as a metaphor for how we wish to follow THE-CØDED example of unpicking the supply chain and zooming in on the often-forgotten humanity, or ‘blood, sweat and tears’, behind making fashion happen.
To empower and uplift the individuals who make our clothing, we proposed and created collaborative prints where each person who contributed to the creation of a garment leaves their mark – a fingerprint. These prints would provoke consumers to reflect on their purchase, whilst totally removing the anonymity of the manufacturing process. We wanted to almost put the workers under the microscope, telling their stories to highlight the importance of transparency and promote a community feel. In doing so, we also hoped to be able to deconstruct the reputation of garments like the hoodie as emblems of mass-production.
Our group felt motivated to reclaim the humanity of the supply chain in order to, ultimately, reclaim the narrative of the fashion industry.
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Work by the Reclaimed Narrative team, Foundation x The Coded
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Print design by group Reclaimed Narrative for the collaborative project with THE-CØDED
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Logo design for The Coded created by group Reclaimed Narrative
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Print design by group Reclaimed Narrative for the collaborative project with THE-CØDED
The Good Egg, the story of the manufacturer
Viola Gibellini, Binnie Park, Efrata Tadese, Amy Lay
Our ethos as a group was split into 2 parts - to ‘connect the consumer to the makers’ and to celebrate working women. These were both important to us because one of the priorities of our anonymous factory in Romania (factory 019) was to empower local women in their communities. We wanted to go about this by communicating the richness of Romania’s culture through our prints. We drew inspiration from existing local artisanry, such as Romanian motifs and patterns found in tapestry, egg decorations, ceramics, architecture and traditional clothing. Since THE-CØDED was all about positive change to spark motivation in consumers, we wanted to provoke the same motivation by being playful with our designs to spark curiosity in our consumers.
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Work by the Good Egg team, Foundation x The Coded
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Print design by group The Good Egg for a collaborative project with The Coded
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Print design by group The Good Egg for a collaborative project with The Coded
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Print design by group The Good Egg for a collaborative project with The Coded
Rise, the story of the garment
Iris Marshall, Ciaran McDougall, Soryn, Angus Tsai
Our concept for the garment was having a universally recognised symbol of humanity printed onto a unisex overskirt to show the humanity of the workers within the factories, we chose the fingerprint as a symbol of this as it is something that is unique to everyone in the world but also something that we all have in common as people, it was also an effective way of symbolising the idea of recognising how many hands touch a garment within the manufacturing process of clothing.
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Work by the Rise team, Foundation x The Coded
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Work by the Rise team, Foundation x The Coded
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Print design by group Rise for a collaborative project with The Coded
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Work by the Rise team, Foundation x The Coded
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Foundation 2022, Lethaby Gallery. Photo: Martin Slivka