Dr Mila Burcikova

Biography

Dr. Mila Burcikova is a researcher at Centre for Sustainable Fashion, London College of Fashion. She works across
a range of research and knowledge exchange projects, with focus on the human dimension of fashion and alternatives to the current fashion system.

Mila’s research interrogates the options for balancing the immediate, mid-term and long-term strategies for fashion and sustainability. Her work has been published in both peer-reviewed journals and popular publications internationally. Since 2019, she has been the lead writer and researcher for the open-source Condé Nast x Centre for Sustainable Fashion The Sustainable Fashion Glossary (260 +terms, in English and Chinese versions). In 2018, she guest-edited the special issue of the journal Utopian Studies (Penn State University Press) entitled Utopia and Fashion. The issue examined the role of fashion in utopian thinking and the potential of utopian thinking to reimagine and inspire better futures for fashion.

Drawing on her background in cultural studies and cultural anthropology, Mila’s PhD ‘Mundane Fashion: Women, Clothes and Emotional Durability’ investigated emotional durability of clothing through the lens of a designer-maker practice. She uses the metaphor of ‘mundane fashion’ for developing a holistic understanding of fashion’s deeply personal, cultural, social, and environmental implications. Her research offers rich empirical evidence on how the long-term future of clothing is often shaped by short-term, mundane concerns.

Mila’s current projects include the Sheepdrove Trust funded fellowship ‘Life in Clothes: Place-based organic fashion systems for human and environmental healing’, alongside two collaborative research and knowledge-exchange projects: 1. Managing transition in the UK fashion sector: design-led micro, small and medium sized enterprises as catalysts for net zero goals, resilience, and sustainable prosperity (Creative Industries Policy & Evidence Centre led by Nesta), 2. Beyond net zero goals: Regenerative fashion design for micro-circular rural ecosystems (AHRC Design Exchange Partnership). Dr. Burcikova is also a designer-maker, with her own independent slow fashion studio (2009-present).