Craft of Use at LCF
Yesterday, LCF and the Centre for Sustainable Fashion hosted artists, academics and environmental campaigners to explore fashion in a new light.
‘The Craft of Use’ was developed by LCF’s Kate Fletcher as part of her Local Wisdom project, as a way of seeking and collecting stories about fashion which help us think beyond consumption. Kate explained more at the opening of the conference:
“Fashion is cut into the cloth of consumerism and it’s normal to think that our main interaction with fashion is shopping. The stories of ‘Craft Of Use’ are a counterweight to these narrow definitions of fashion.”
Those stories are made up of an international effort to photograph and document how people live their lives with their clothes – sharing them, mending them, changing them, inheriting them.
Leading environmentalist, Sir Jonathan Porritt kicked off the day of workshops and discussion by talking about sustainable transformations within the fashion industry:
“In many cases, the fashion industry is the embodiment of consumerism at its worst. It is an industry that desperately needs more innovation because we know that fashion touches peoples’ lives.”
He added,
“In terms of making progress towards sustainability, things are still getting worse, but more slowly.”
Calling for ‘zero fibre to landfill’, Jonathan urged designers and those who shape the industry to use tomorrow’s challenges as a stimulus for innovation. He spoke about the Rana Plaza disaster, the anniversary of which is next month, to illustrate quite how devastating the industry can be if it does not evolve.
Throughout the day, poetry from Sabrina Mahfouz helped bring the stories of lives touched by fashion to life, revealing a human relationship with fashion that helps us overcome the dangerous whirl of consumption and destruction. Meanwhile, workshops asked attendees to collaborate to create and articulate these innovative ideas for the future of fashion.
- Read more about the day on the Centre for Sustainable Fashion’s blog
- Read more and join in on Twitter: #CraftOfUse
- Photo by Ana Escobar