Fashion + Sustainability: Lines of Research is an exciting project series currently underway over at Fashion Projects. The project, beautifully curated by Mae Colburn with the support of Francesca Granata, is designed to inspire…and inspire us it has.

Three interviews have been released so far, with more to come. Here is a sampling we hope will entice you to follow the series.

Interview with Timo Rissanen: Fashion+Sustainability—Lines of Research Series

“In Zero Waste fashion design, you have to begin making the pattern before you know how the garment is going to look.  What that’s saying is that patternmaking is integral to the design process.  That’s a shift in thinking […] because historically in fashion education, but also the way the industry is organized, all of those skills tend to exist within their own categories: you’ve got the designers, the patternmakers, the cutters, and the machinists, and there’s kind of a hierarchy.  With Zero Waste, you have to bring the patternmaking and the cutting and the making into the design process.” (Timo Rissanen)

Interview with Otto von Busch: Fashion+Sustainability—Lines of Research Series

“I don’t talk about sustainability in my work, and if I do, I usually talk about abilities and the ability to sustain values.  I think that we have to disseminate abilities, whether it’s the ability to repair, or the ability to have attention to detail, or the ability to use the sewing machine.  It’s about building those capacities rather than disseminating the commodities.  How do we produce the ability, the courage, to dress and interact with the fashion system differently?” (Otto von Busch)

Interview with Pascale Gatzen: Fashion + Sustainability—Lines of Research Series

“If you really look at the work of Coco Chanel and see how it’s made – her attention to the make and finishing of the garment was amazing; how the lining was quilted into the jacket, the small metal chain against the back hem to weigh the jacket down, ever so lightly, the lack of interlining and shoulder pads, the way the sleeves fit into the body of the jacket allowing for movement and comfort – it’s very much about the person wearing the piece of clothing rather than the clothing as image, which is what I see on the catwalk and what Yves St. Laurent never escaped.  Even if it’s an image of comfortable clothing, his clothing remains mostly image.”

Source: Thanks for the info. Francesca Granata, of Fashion Projects

Mary F Hanlon

Mary has a PhD in Sociology from University of Edinburgh, researching responsible fashion and transnational labour rights activism in the wake of the Rana Plaza building collapse in Bangladesh.