Responsible Fashion: How do we make our ideas a reality?
A SYMPOSIUM HOSTED BY
ISTITUTO MARANGONI LONDON
NOVEMBER 2021
Long before Covid-19, it was clear that the fashion industry had to change significantly: we know that we have less than a decade to prevent irreversible climate damage (UN, 2019). Our soil, our waters and even our food chain have become contaminated with fashion waste; human rights abuses abound within the fashion industry, including modern day slavery, child labour, pitiful wages and unsafe working conditions; some leading brands have even used Covid as an excuse not to pay their workers for the work they have done. Green-washing abounds and the term ’sustainability’ has lost its meaning, appropriated by marketing departments to paper over business as usual. Western designers plunder the cultural heritage of global communities for inspiration without sensitivity or conscience. The fashion system is broken, in urgent need of rebuilding. The pandemic has provided space to step back and to reflect, to ask questions about the meaning, value and potential of fashion in a post-Covid world. How can the industry move forward in a responsible way?
Aim
We need to consider what it is about fashion that we actually want to sustain and what new approaches must be introduced, starting with a blank sheet of paper.
This one-day, online symposium offers an opportunity to explore solutions together: a space to propose radical new ways to envisage fashion design and creation, and to reimagine the systems in which we source, produce, communicate, sell, purchase, wear, live with and dispose of fashion. A holistic approach is crucial, therefore we welcome contributions from diverse perspectives and disciplines, as we consider how to navigate a responsible way forward, how to make our ideas a reality, and the role of fashion education in equipping students to meet these challenges.
Presentations
Panel 1: Responsible Fashion Education Video
Moderator: Dr Kirsten Scott
Fashion our Future through Refashioning Education
Karishma Singh Kelsey and Luis Quijano
Independent designer and social entrepreneurs, Auckland, New Zealand
Design Realisation in Education: Phygital
Jayne Mechan, Adrian Thornton, Rebecca De Lacy
Manchester Fashion Institute, MMU
Reciprocity project
Yvonne Ntiamoah
JACCD Design School Accra
Kirsten Scott
Istituto Marangoni London
The development of an interdisciplinary sustainability studies minor
Dr Jacqueline Parr and Dr Anupama Pasricha
St Catherine University, Minnesota, US
Panel 2: Local Knowledge Video
Moderator: Katarina Rimarcikova
The Role of the Local in Inevitable Transformation
Ingun Grimstad Klepp
Professor Clothes and Sustainability at Oslo Metropolitan University
Tone Skårdal Tobiasson
Journalist
Lisbeth Løvbak Berg
Fashion Futurist
Rethinking Colour in the Fashion Industry: Investigating the potential of a local approach
Emma Darcey
Istituto Marangoni London
How can Fashion Activism be Used to Shift the Current Narrative Around Youth Violence?
Dr Francesco Mazzarella
Centre for Sustainable Fashion, UAL
The 3Cs' Rule: Consent. Credit. Compensation© - Crafting System Change in Fashion through Equity and Dignity
Monica Boța-Moisin
Lawyer, Founder of the Cultural Intellectual Property Rights Initiative® and Co-Founder of WhyWeCraft®
Panel 3: Responsible Systems Video
Moderator: Professor Ian King
Understandings, shortcomings, and ways forward – towards an equitable distribution of environmental responsibility in upstream apparel supply chains
Jacqueline Vater
School of Design, University of Leeds
Dis-Fashionance: Moving Through Affective Dissonance Towards Affective Resilience
Brittany Snyder
Savannah College of Art & Design, US
Giving Voice to Unheard Voices in Fashion
Marisa Gabriel
Centre for Studies on Sustainable Luxury, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Advancing the circular economy through dynamic capabilities and extended customer engagement: Insights from small sustainable fashion enterprises in the UK
Dr Patrick Elf
Middlesex University/University of Surrey
Our mutual responsibility for living sustainable fashion: collaboration across the garment lifetime
Professor Jo Cramer
Oslo Met University