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Professor Kate Fletcher

Title
Professor of Sustainability Design & Fashion
College
London College of Fashion
Email address
k.t.fletcher@fashion.arts.ac.uk
Tags
Researcher Research
Kate Fletcher

Biography

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 70 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) and of Opening Up the Wardrobe: A Methods Book (2017), co-author of Fashion and Sustainability: Design for Change (2012), author of the Craft of Use: Post-Growth Fashion (2016), exploring fashion opportunities beyond consumerism. In 2018 a collection of Kate’s work was curated and translated into Italian: Moda, Design e Sostenibilità. More latterly, Kate has published autobiographical writings on clothing and nature in the book Wild Dress (2019), co-editor of Design and Nature: A Partnership (2019) and co-author of Earth Logic: Fashion Action Research Plan. Her work is available in seven languages.

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 focuses on research. Some of her projects include Local Wisdom, Fashion Ecologies and a current research as part of LASTING.

Kate continues to explore nature and clothing through autobiographical writing, with a new volume of nature-clothing texts in the pipeline.

Kate is also a co-founder of the Union of Concerned Researchers in Fashion which formed in 2018.

Grants and awards

(Figures indicate amount awarded to UAL)

  • Research Council of Norway, CHANGE, £55,611.72, (2021-2024)
  • Research Council of Norway, LASTING: Prosperity through Product Durability, £74,769.43, (2020-2023)
  • Research Council of Norway, KRUS: Enhancing local wool value chains in Norway, £67,000.00, (2015-2018)
  • Social Science and Humanities Research Council Canada (SSHRC), cloTHING(s) as conversation
  • Leverhulme Trust, Local Wisdom: Post Growth Fashion and A User's 'Craft', £124,735.00, (2012-2014)

Research Outputs

Art/Design item

Article

Book Section

Conference, Symposium or Workshop item

Teaching

Current research students

  • Flavia Amadeu, Reflecting on capabilities and interactions between designers and local producers through the materiality of the rubber from the Amazon rainforest. (Lead supervisor)
  • Anna Fitzpatrick, FASHIONING POLITICAL ACTORS: how can fashion be used to enable political agency in a shift towards a more democratic and sustainable society? (Lead supervisor)
  • Laurentina Alma Junestrand Leal, “Towards an understanding of engagement with second-hand clothing resale consumption through a comparative study in three European geographies and four generational cohorts: in search of environmental impact reduction” (Lead supervisor)
  • Rawan Maki, Resource flow analysis and sustainability implications of traditional Arab garbs in the GCC (Bahrain and UAE) (Lead supervisor)
  • Joana Monteiro Gobbi, Social Pattern Cutting - Exploring the use of pattern cutting to solve social issues (Lead supervisor)
  • Katelyn Pugh (Toth-Fejel), Fashion-In-Residence: A practice-led enquiry into the landscape of local clothing systems (Lead supervisor)
  • Mathilda Tham, The Lucky People Forecast, Goldsmiths University of London. (Lead supervisor)
  • Amy Twigger Holroyd, Folk Fashion: Amateur Re-Knitting as a Strategy for Sustainability, Birmingham City University. (Lead supervisor)

Past research students

  • Emma Rigby, Fashion Design and Laundry Practices: Practice-Orientated Approaches to Design for Sustainability. (Lead supervisor)
  • Emily Towers, The practice of mending: unravelling its effect on the wearer’s relationship to clothing. (Lead supervisor)
  • 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? (Lead supervisor)