Fashioned From Nature: Designing a Sustainable Future

Fashioned from Nature at the V&A is an exhibition designed to encourage debate and raise awareness about the complex, uneasy and unequal relationship between fashion and the natural world, without preaching or causing feelings of guilt. Fashion takes inspiration from nature but also exploits it, and as the fashion industry has grown rapidly in scale since the Industrial Revolution it has become a global problem that is impossible to ignore.

Senior Curator Edwina Ehrman’s introduction to the Fashioned From Nature: Designing a Sustainable Future conference gave some fascinating insights into the design of the exhibition and also set the tone for the rest of the day: fashion has some hard truths to face up to but it is also a space for experimentation, innovation and beauty.

The first speaker was Professor Dilys Williams, Director of the Centre for Sustainable Fashion. She posed questions that challenged the audience to think about our intentions when we choose our clothes and dress ourselves. If our ability to project our identity through our clothes is an identifier of being human (no other species can alter their appearance in this way), what does that say about our relationship with nature? For four hundred years humans have believed that we could change or control nature, but the truth is that we are a part of nature, not separate from it. The current fashion system relies on inequality, and the imbalance between what we take from and what we give back to nature.

The Centre for Sustainable Fashion encourages the fashion creatives of the future to look at the fashion industry through different lenses, considering power, culture, nature and society. Rather than putting economy before ecology, we need to work towards an era of interdependence, using our imaginations to construct new identities which are more in sync with the world around us.

Kathy Gomez, the Vice President of Innovation at Nike, talked about the new techniques the brand is pioneering to achieve their goal of increasing sales while dramatically reducing their environmental impact. An interesting fact I’ve noticed during the time I’ve been writing this blog and looking into sustainable fashion is that brands that run their own factories have many more opportunities to change and improve their practices. For instance, the plastic used to make the air soles for Nike trainers can be recycled and reused in-house because Nike own and operate the factories.

Journalist and vegan fashion advocate Bel Jacobs was joined by director of sustainability at Stella McCartney Claire Bergkamp for a conversation about the search for alternatives to animal products for the fashion industry. Even as an emerging designer, Stella McCartney was adamant that she did not want to use leather, so from the start the brand had innovation at its core. Not wanting to offer products that were an inferior quality, collaborations with traditional manufacturers that had moved with the times to stay in business were often the answer when it came to finding artisans to work with new materials. The search for new materials has led to a collaboration with Bolt Threads, who make lab-grown spider silk and mycelium leather, and the brand has embraced the opportunities for creativity and change that come with pioneering the use of new fibres.

After lunch (an opportunity to sit in the V&A garden and digest everything I’d just heard) the afternoon’s presentations began with founder and director Nina Marenzi and curator and consultant Amanda Johnson from The Sustainable Angle, a not-for-profit that aims to connect the makers of sustainable textiles with buyers from the fashion industry. They run the Future Fabrics Expo, which showcases thousands of samples of new and innovative materials (you can read more about my trip to the Future Fabrics Expo in this blog post). Many of their most successful fabrics use post-consumer waste from a variety of industries to create fabrics that are a great substitute for their cruel or polluting “natural” alternatives. Leather is being replaced by some brands with Pinatex, made from pineapple fibre, or Frumat, made from apple pulp. Malai is made from coconut water waste, grown onto a banana fibre base, while post-consumer plastic bottles can be made into a synthetic down substitute for jackets which feels and behaves just like the real thing.

Oya Barlas Bingul from Lenzing gave us an overview of the company’s latest sustainable textile innovation: Refibra. Taking cotton waste from the manufacturing process and combining it with lyocell creates a natural fibre which reduces both  textile waste and the need for ever-increasing quantities of raw materials. Lenzing maintains a traceable and transparent supply chain for their fabrics, viewing innovation as a necessity: “don’t settle for the way things are, push for the way things could be”.

Dyeing is a hugely impactful part of the garment-making process, responsible for large-scale water pollution in countries like Bangladesh, but Orr Yarkoni, founder of Colourifix, had some good news about revolutionary sustainable processes that are currently being developed. Colourifix’s new technology will first ferment synthesised pigments from naturally occurring colours before the dyeing process begins, which improves the absorption of the dye by the textile fibres. This new technology will be compatible with existing dyeing infrastructure, and can be used on yarn, fabric or garments. It also successfully dyes both synthetic and natural fibres, unlike many other dyes.

PhD researcher Miriam Ribul is interested in fashion on a molecular level, investigating better fabrication models for an already abundant source of plant-based textile waste: cellulose. In the past, cellulose could only be made into fabric using toxic chemicals, but new technology is making cellulose regeneration a cleaner and safer process. One key problem that limits current textile recycling is the lack of information about what chemicals have been used to dye or treat the fabrics, and if the garment label has been removed or damaged even the information about the mixture of fibres in a garment is lost. DNAture material coding would embed this information in the fibres themselves, so a quick glance under UV light and a microscope would provide all the relevant information about the garment.

Carry Somers, co-founder of Fashion Revolution, sat down with Amy Powney from Mother of Pearl to bring fashion back to the personal. The two women spoke about the ways in which their unconventional upbringings had paved the way for a career in sustainable fashion: living off-grid meant they didn’t take modern conveniences for granted. A parental lack of concern about her street cred at school led Amy to obsess about saving up for the latest trends, and she remembered every detail about these precious passports to teenage acceptance. Being detail-oriented meant that Amy wouldn’t accept a lack of knowledge when it came to starting her own label, and her search for information took her all the way to South America. Interestingly, sourcing a collection from scratch rather than relying on existing supply chains has reduced the costs of manufacturing this collection, rather than increasing them.

From the molecular to the global, there are positive changes to be made at every level of the fashion industry. We can learn from the past, as the Fashioned From Nature exhibition shows us, and we can overcome the current problems in the industry by learning from one another and collaborating, fashioning the identities that will shape a better future.

You can also read my review of the Fashioned From Nature exhibition here, or catch it at the V&A until January 2019.

Fashioned From Nature at the V&A

The history of fashion is deeply personal, with cherished garments surviving for centuries to give us a unique glimpse of someone’s style; a real-life manifestation of high-fashion garments that look impossible, or at the very least highly improbable, if you study contemporary cartoons. It is also global, a complex network of threads that have connected continents along trade routes and supply chains for millennia. It is a history of the search for novelty as well as practicality, of brutality as well as beauty.

Fashioned from Nature at the V&A looks at the complexity of the history of fashion through its relationship with the natural world, how inspiration and exploitation have become two sides of the same coin, and how we can break away from the bad practices that make fashion the second most polluting industry in the world.

The exhibition opens with an exploration of the range of materials that people have used for clothing over the centuries. Some materials that we would associate with years past, like flax (traditionally grown in Northern Europe and spun into linen), are enjoying a revival as we start to look for fibres that require less water for growing and processing. Other materials like baleen (from the keratin plates in a whale’s mouth that enable them to sift microscopic plankton from sea water) which was used for corset boning have thankfully been replaced by modern alternatives like flexible steel, although not before whales were hunted almost to extinction.

The exhibition doesn’t shy away from presenting the problematic past of some of our favourite fabrics; the history of cotton cannot be separated from the history of slavery in the U.S, with cotton plantations in the southern states reliant on slave labour. Wealthy mill owners in the U.K. also benefited from cheap raw materials from our occupation of India, and the exploitation of poorly-treated factory workers during the Industrial Revolution.

We are also shown the ways in which we have plundered the natural world, desperate to capture some of its beauty for ourselves. From the birds of paradise killed and stuffed to adorn accessories, to the wild animals hunted for their fur, and even the silk moth larvae that make one of our favourite luxury fabrics. Iridescent beetle wings decorate diaphanous muslin dresses, they were sought-after and widely used despite their exotic provenance because they were “cheaper and more accessible than an emerald or a ruby” according to a curator from the Natural History Museum in a video that accompanies the exhibition.

The exhibition isn’t all doom and gloom though; there are beautiful examples of how the natural world has inspired more sustainable homages. Exquisite embroidery adorns jackets and waistcoats, and the popularity of bold prints is illustrated by 17th and 18th century textiles, as well as 21st century designer gowns. There are also historical examples of fabrics I’d assumed were modern innovations: I love Pinatex, a faux leather made from pineapple fibre, as a material for shoes, but the exhibition features a dress from the 1830s made from a pineapple fibre that is woven to resemble a fine cotton lawn.

As well as showcasing natural materials and textiles, Fashioned From Nature reveals the unforeseen side-effects of trying to come up with man-made substitutes: the water pollution and chemical poisoning that began on a large scale with the invention of aniline dyes in the 1850s, and continues to this day. It also demonstrates the global nature of the fashion industry by tracking the production of garments from raw materials to shop floor, and the global devastation that the fashion industry can cause, from deforestation to the draining of the Aral Sea.

The exhibition strikes a hopeful note with inspiring examples of fashion innovation that combine great design with thoughtful production. A vast array of fashion textiles, from specially moulded sneaker parts to knitting yarn, can be made from reclaimed fabric waste. Elsewhere, designers are turning other kinds of post-consumer waste into high fashion, a great example being a strikingly chic Salvatore Ferragamo ensemble made a fabric derived from citrus fibre.  Other design collectives are synthesising brand new materials from organic sources, like Bolt Threads bio-engineered “spider silk” and mushroom leather.

Knitting and crochet have always been great ways of producing zero-waste clothing, and designers Katie Jones and Unmade eliminate wasteful overproduction by making their knitwear to order. Fashioned From Nature makes it clear to us that the apparent over abundance of clothing is an illusion that cannot be maintained forever, given the looming spectre of climate change and irreversible environmental degradation. However, the exhibition never suggests that this means we have to give up our love of clothes, or our desire for beautiful things.

My favourite piece in the exhibition was the most beautiful piece of zero-waste clothing I have ever seen. Made during World War Two from strips of salvaged parachute silk, this exquisitely delicate blouse is made from thin strips of fabric, embroidered together to create a fitted shape. Its style is a tantalising mix of a demure shape and daringly sheer fabric, and as I stared at it my imagination ran away with me and I started thinking about the woman who made it. Was she making it for a special occasion, waiting for a sweetheart to return? Was she having to do this painstaking work by poor light in the evenings, tired out from war work? Creating something so soft and light from an object that was part of the destructive machinery of war is the best example I can think of for the transformative power of fashion; we all have to make sure we use this power for good.

From Suffragettes to slogan T-shirts: could my clothes be considered "protest fashion"?

2018 marks the centenary of (some) women getting the vote, and it sometimes feels like we still have a long way to go in the fight for equality. My colleagues Amy Towle, Amy Trend and Hannah Monkley expressed the same sentiment when they went to the Women’s March in January 2017 dressed as Suffragettes, with a banner that read “Same Shit, Different Century”. A picture of them subsequently went viral, and after being asked to appear at Port Eliot Festival to talk about the Suffragettes, they decided to start a podcast to share the stories they had discovered. Listening to the podcast, it’s been shocking to learn the extent to which women in this country endured police brutality, imprisonment and torture in their fight for the right to vote, but it’s also been fascinating to discover the savvy PR tactics employed by the Suffragettes to convey a striking and coherent message.

The Suffragettes’ colour scheme, devised by Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence, of green (for hope), white (for purity) and purple (for loyalty and dignity) is probably familiar to most of us, but they also advised members to wear the fashionable, feminine dress of the time (long skirts and high-necked lace blouses worn over corsets and petticoats). Author Cally Blackman describes how the colours were worn “as a duty and a privilege” and how effective they were at creating a striking spectacle when women turned out in their Suffragette “uniforms” in force. An edition of the Votes for Women newspaper in 1908 declared “The Suffragette of today is dainty and precise in her dress”, and Sylvia Pankhurst was aware that no one wanted to “run the risk of being considered “outré” and doing harm to the cause”.

I realised that (probably subconsciously, and to a lesser extent) I’ve been using the same thinking to inform my ethical fashion choices. Although I don’t follow every new trend, I always make an effort to look neatly styled in every outfit post, wearing carefully chosen clothes rather than just throwing on any old thing. When I started my blog I wanted people to see my approach to fashion as imaginative but accessible, and something that’s suitable for a wide range of lifestyles and social situations. 

I find the ways in which femininity was performed and subverted by the Suffragettes really fascinating; I touched on the difficult relationship between femininity and feminism in a previous post about my love of vintage fashion. The jewellery in the Museum of London’s Votes for Women exhibition is an interesting microcosm of this. The medal awarded to Emmeline Pankhurst was in the style of military honours awarded to men, so this would have made a striking addition to a genteel outfit. The necklace awarded to Kitty Willoughby Marshall was a simpler design, featuring three coins on a delicate chain, and Louise Eates was awarded a beautiful Art Deco pendant. I love the thought that these were specially chosen to reflect the personal styles of these women, and to thank them for their unique contribution to the cause. 

For the exhibition Suffragettes: Milennial Rebels milliner Claire Strickland recreated hats worn by prominent Suffragettes, and collaborated with photographer Nicholas Laborie to recreate portraits using young women as models. At a panel discussion about the exhibition, author Diane Atkinson raised a thought-provoking point. The large hats which were fashionable at the time, she explained, were a status symbol, and made the wearer look ladylike. Policemen sought to undermine this tactic by ripping the hats from Suffragettes during confrontations, to make them look dishevelled and slovenly. I found this description of violence quite disturbing, but it also showed how even a symbol of sophistication and elegance could be provocative if worn in the right context.

When we think of protest fashion now, we’re less likely to think of millinery, and more likely to think of T-shirts (my colleagues have turned their Instagrammable banner into a T-shirt and tote bag slogan to raise money for the charity Abortion Rights). T Shirts: Cult, Culture and Subversion at the Fashion and Textile Museum addresses some of the successes and contradictions of this simple but effective wearable tool of protest. 

One of the best-known examples of a high fashion protest T-shirt is the oversized “58% DON’T WANT PERSHING” shirt made and worn by Katherine Hamnett to meet Margaret Thatcher in 1984. Hamnett has gone on to create T-Shirts protesting the Iraq War and fast fashion: her “No More Fashion Victims” T-shirt, made in collaboration with the Environmental Justice Foundation, is on display in the exhibition. This slogan isn’t just a neat play on words for Hamnett; she has campaigned against the use of forced labour in the cotton industry in Uzbekistan, and her T-shirts are made ethically from organic cotton. 

It did make me question whether other slogan tees in the exhibition were just empty words; Dior’s “we should all be feminists” T-shirt looked fabulous, paired with their zodiac-embroidered maxi skirt, and a percentage of the sale price is being donated to the Clara Lionel Foundation (set up by Rihanna). However, the shirt itself retails at almost £500, and Dior’s parent company LVMH do not disclose any information about their supply chain.

 Also featured in the exhibition was the “this is what a feminist looks like” T-shirt produced by the Fawcett Society, which was criticised for being sourced from a factory that did not pay a living wage. The exhibition addresses the environmental impact of making cotton t-shirts, and points out that “our consumer choices are social and political acts”. Two T-shirts from ethical brand Lost Shapes are on display, playfully illustrating two contrasting viewpoints for the conscious consumer. 

I’m not a great T-shirt wearer (I prefer a slogan tote bag), but I have been thinking about how the contents of my wardrobe could be considered “protest fashion”. In her book “Folk Fashion”, Amy Twigger Holroyd explores the idea of refashioning or making clothes as a political act: “I am aiming, as much as I can, to disrupt the dominant paradigm of industrial production and overconsumption in fashion, and to contribute to the construction of an appealing alternative”. My friend Ludi, who took up sewing to make the sort of clothes that aren’t available in her size on the high street, had similar feelings in a post on Facebook: “I think learning to sew is body-positive and powerful and politically interesting”. I think I’ll be returning to this topic in a later blog post!

At a time when consumer culture is doing more harm than good, perhaps it’s once again to see our everyday clothes as tools we can use to campaign for the sort of world we want to live in. Making thoughtful, ethical choices instead of impulse purchases and rocking our vintage bargains and refashioned finery, we can start to turn the tide on overconsumption.

'Balenciaga: Shaping Fashion' and 'The World Of Anna Sui': can couture cure us of our fixation with fast fashion?

Lots of fashion writers have predicted  the death of couture, as pressure grows on designers to produce more and more collections per year, trends appear on the high street within weeks of catwalk shows at a fraction of the price, and, if you are a public figure, being seen in an outfit more than once will be remarked on at the very least, if not ridiculed. 

The popularity of couture as an exhibition subject, however, seems to go from strength to strength. I visited Balenciaga: Shaping Fashion at the V&A and The World Of Anna Sui at the Fashion and Textile Museum, and although neither exhibition tops the superstar status of the Alexander McQueen retrospective (when the V&A stayed open through the night to meet demand for tickets in the final few days), the popularity of fashion exhibitions suggests we haven't completed the transition from seeing fashion as valuable to seeing it as disposable. Both exhibitions illustrate something important about couture that we need to embrace again in order to create a more sustainable fashion industry. 

The World of Anna Sui showcases a designer with boundless enthusiasm for fashion; someone who is constantly intrigued and inspired by the world around her and has pursued her dream of being a fashion designer from early childhood. Her maximalist creations, a mash-up of pop culture references, bold colours and striking fabrics, are the stuff of my teenage dreams, but her painstaking research into fashion history and her beautifully constructed takes on vintage styles held a particular appeal for my inner costume geek. I was swooning over her 40s tea dresses, which feature Christian Berard prints on jewel-coloured silks and fondly reminiscing about my attempts to recreate her 'pastel grunge' looks with retro finds from Brighton's thrift shops in the mid 90s. 

Her brand is centred around looks that are eye-catching and unique, optimistic and playful. Fashion is presented as something exciting, the clash of prints and textures showing a disregard for traditional 'rules' of dressing that echoes the rebelliousness of the subcultures that Sui references in her designs. 

There is much more regard for tradition at the V&A's Balenciaga exhibition, which is a celebration of the craft of couture, and of Balenciaga as a master cutter and fitter as much as a designer. The exhibition emphasises the importance of the choice of fabric in determining the drape and hang of a garment, and showcases the virtuoso pattern cutting which is central to the deceptively simple shapes of Balenciaga's outerwear. X-rays, reconstructions of garments in toile form and even a dress displayed on a mannequin inside out reveal the intricate inner structure of evening gowns, the boning and underpinnings necessary to create the perfect silhouette. I was impressed by the proliferation of pockets, even in an elaborate evening cape, and reflected on it over on my Twitter account, where the lack of decent pockets in women's clothing is lamented and ridiculed on a regular basis. 

As well as the garments themselves, there were also films showing the process of creating couture: mesmerising clips of the craftspeople at Lesage embellishing fabric with embroidery and sequins, as well as a short documentary showing the stages of cutting, fitting and finishing a made-to-measure jacket. As a dressmaker myself, I always appreciate being given an opportunity to see my fellow makers in the spotlight, as I hope it reminds people of the human labour that goes into the production of clothes. We are all garment workers, in the end, it's just that some of us have been fortunate enough to be given the time and opportunity to develop and perfect our craft, to have our work appreciated and to earn a decent salary. 

Obviously couture is elitist, and outfitting ourselves in made-to-measure luxury for everyday life isn’t a practical option, but even clothes that highlight wealth inequality can be viewed as part of a more complex story about the wider fashion industry. Today, the industry’s biggest problems are exploitation, both of people and the environment, through overproduction and overconsumption. People struggling to make ends meet are not going to be overconsuming, but those of us who can afford to splash out on a new outfit when the fancy takes us need to think about what we really value about fashion, and act accordingly. I spent hours at the two exhibitions (and the cost of at least one fast fashion outfit on tickets), and I was delighted by the creativity and craftsmanship I saw, and it reaffirmed that I want my own wardrobe to look like this, as much as possible, rather than the bland and uninspiring fast fashion that has turned me off high street shopping.

There is a possibility that the tide could be turning; earlier this year Stylist Magazine published this article about mental health and burn-out in the upper echelons of the fashion industry. Several designers, including Jean Paul Gaultier, now only produce couture, having found that the pressure to produce an ever-increasing number of collections sapped them of energy and inspiration. For those of us who need more affordable fashion options, many small ethical and sustainable clothing brands have also rejected the high street's emphasis on constantly changing stock, opting instead to sell multi-seasonal pieces that will be versatile enough for even the most carefully curated of capsule wardrobes. The ongoing popularity of good quality vintage clothes also suggest that people are nostalgic for more than cute floral prints, they also still value flattering fit and appreciate clothing that is made to last.

These two exhibitions are a must for fashion fans, but it might be worth taking along a friend who can't understand what the fuss is about. Being encouraged to see fashion as an art form might prompt more thoughtful shopping habits, or a new respect for the people who make our clothes, and this has got to be a good thing.

Shortcut to Sustainable Fashion: Post-Couture Collective at V&A Friday Late

On Friday evening I went to the V&A for July’s Friday Late event. The theme was Hack. Make. Create and I went to listen to Martijn van Strien from the Post-Couture Collective talk about his vision for the future of sustainable fashion. The talk was held in a corner of the Fashion gallery, where the lighting was a little moody, so please excuse the rather grainy photos, the Post-Couture Collection website has a far better collection of images of their work. I wanted to write up and share what I learned at the talk because I was impressed by this novel approach to sustainable fashion, and how quickly the initial idea is evolving and maturing.

Martijn van Strien trained as a textile designer, learning about how ‘messed up’ the fashion industry is firsthand. After working for a Dutch company that were taking a more ‘traditional’ approach to sustainable fashion (a traceable production line, smaller production runs etc), he was inspired by the Maker Movement to imagine how the fashion industry could create less waste if production was moved from large-scale specialised factories to small-scale, local facilities that can be used to create a variety of products. These facilities would contain laser cutters and 3-D printers, and like the ‘hack-spaces’ that are popping up in various cities, would work on an open-source model.

To eliminate over-production, exploitation and waste in the fashion industry, the Post-Couture Collective’s clothes are designed to only be produced as required. The consumer buys the pattern as a digital file for a small fee (van Strien was enthusiastic about the open-source model but doesn’t believe that everything should be free - “I need to eat!” he explained, and €5 for a dress pattern doesn’t seem extortionate), they can then adapt the pattern to their own measurements using Illustrator or similar software, before buying their fabric and heading to their nearest Maker Space to have their garment laser cut. The garment is then assembled with no need for a sewing machine or other tools, using the ‘connectors’ - a series of barbed tabs and slits along the seams of each garment piece. 

Van Strien was quick to point out that he trained as a textile designer, not a fashion designer, and that his first collection of six pieces used simple, ‘archetypal’ shapes and straight seam lines as his main concern was developing and perfecting the connectors that formed the assembly method of the garment; the crucial aspect of this radical new approach to garment manufacture. The first collection was made from ‘Spacer’ fabric, a knitted, breathable fabric made from post-consumer plastic waste. Although usually a fan of monochrome, van Strien included a pale green in his collection as the fabric’s unusual colour was a result of being made from Sprite bottles! The connectors add a simple but interesting visual element to t-shirts and shift dresses. 

He acknowledged the limitations to this production method: customers needed a good working knowledge of the appropriate software to really be able to customise the design to their exact requirements, as well as access to a laser cutter. He had a bold vision for the future of the Post-Couture Collective: a ‘Maker Shop’ where customers could select their design, have it digitally altered to their exact requirements on-site, choose their fabric and have the garment pieces cut for them using the in-house laser cutters, all within the space of around half an hour. The customer would then take away their garment-assembly kit, which should take a further half an hour to make up. Hopefully, this process would be quick enough to satisfy customers desperate for a fashion fix, but seeing each part of the process, and being responsible for a key element of it, would encourage consumers to value and take care of their garments.

Van Strien also emphasised the limitations of the designs in his first collection and how he was improving his design process. As well as inviting feedback and constructive criticism from customers, he has worked with recent fashion design graduates who have challenged him to develop the technology to produce more complex pattern pieces. For him, the advantage of open source design is that development happens faster as more people experiment with and improve on designs. He is also interested in improving accessibility for people without the requisite software knowledge, and jokingly put out a call for programmers to work alongside him in creating more user-friendly pattern-drafting software! 

As with any technology still in its infancy, basic prototypes often seem a long way off challenging traditional methods of production or consumption. The first collection was interesting, the simple shapes reminiscent of Pierre Cardin’s or Andre Courreges’ 1960s space-race- inspired collections, but the sort of thing a fashion or technology nerd might buy as a novelty, not something that would become a wardrobe staple. What impressed me was the huge leap forward in style and wearability shown in the second collection; these were pieces that were futuristic but in a wearable, sophisticated way, not in a kitschy, sci-fi costume way. Don’t get me wrong, I love a kitschy sci-fi costume, but the only thing that is going to make sustainable fashion innovations take off is if people can imagine wearing them right now, and I can definitely see pieces from the Post-Couture Antwerp Collection finding a home in my wardrobe. I won’t be giving up my sewing machine just yet, but I might just be looking for a hack-space with a laser cutter in my neck of the woods!