BA Womenswear Grad Amber Kim talks sustainability with BBC Radio 4

LCF19 BA Womenswear graduate, Amber Kim, was recently featured on BBC Radio 4 Today Programme, discussing her views on sustainable fashion and how this influenced her recent collection.

Amber’s collection, titled ‘Repurpose’, is "a fashion design project with a reimagined mode of avant-garde, sustainable aesthetic that aims to extend the life of textile products using modern craftsmanship and technology." By designing and crafting her collection using discarded tents from festivals, she told BBC Radio 4 “I’m a festival goer and I’ve seen all of the problems. I couldn’t leave and not do anything about it.”

"The collection will deliver a message to the audience that sustainable fashion can be imaginative, inspiring and innovative."

Through using salvaged materials, my garments will not only highlight the waste problem but also seek to make people think and offer solutions on how discarded textiles can be reduced and recycled effectively.

When BBC Radio 4 asked about her views on sustainability as a consumer, she explained: “I don’t really want to own any denim, as it has huge water footprints. It uses a lot of water to make one single pair of jeans.” Although, it’s not only about how the clothes are produced. Fast fashion is a huge part of the problem as Amber tells BBC Radio 4: “you can’t just keep buying new things and have that kind of shopping habit.”

Amber was also featured alongside Professor Dilys Williams, Director of Centre for Sustainable Fashion at London College of Fashion. Dilys explained that “the two fundamental parts of anything that is next to your skin right now is nature and labour. Every single part of the process, whether it’s dying or weaving, you’re using water and you’re using resources of energy. Those energies quite often come from fossil fuels.”

Professor Dilys Williams also explains how consumers are being "duped" into believing that fast fashion is costing us less, when in fact consumers are spending more on fashion than ever before due to the frequency of purchase. She explains that "people need to realise they’re being duped. For every 5 pounds, they're spending another 5 pounds the following week, and the next week."

You can listen to the episode of BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme again, tune in from 02:21:00.

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