Dr Mila Burcikova

Biography

Mila Burcikova works across a range of research and knowledge exchange projects, with a focus on micro and small fashion businesses that offer alternatives to the current fashion system. Her current work at Centre for Sustainable Fashion includes the Condé Nast Sustainable Fashion Glossary and the AHRC funded project Rethinking Fashion Design Entrepreneurship: Fostering Sustainable Practices.

Mila’s research interrogates the options for balancing the immediate, mid-term and long-term strategies for fashion and sustainability. Drawing on her background in cultural studies and cultural anthropology, her research interests encompass the human dimension of fashion. 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 has presented her work at conferences and symposiums internationally, including invited lectures and panel discussions. Her research has been published in both peer-reviewed journals and popular publications. In 2018, she was the guest-editor for the special issue of the journal Utopian Studies (Penn State University Press) entitled Utopia and Fashion that examined the role of fashion in utopian thinking and the potential of utopian thinking to reimagine and inspire better futures for fashion.

Mila is a founder and owner of the independent slow fashion studio MISENSE by Mila B.