Resources are growing too scarce and our population too large for the fashion system to continue indefinitely along its current wasteful path. So what is to be done? The solution definitely includes less globalization and a lot more local wisdom. Which is also the name of an ongoing project at the Centre for Sustainable Fashion, part of the London College of Fashion.
Through a series of photoshoots in different countries involving volunteer locals, Local Wisdom collects stories, habits and practices of how we use clothing. After all, most of us have to wear clothes every day, making us kind of experts in the art of getting dressed. Our collective experience, ingenuity and freethinking is being tapped by the project as a way to switch some of the focus away from the buy-buy-buy product side of fashion and explore instead the final destiny of garments and the ways they are lived. An area many design schools simply don't address. To say nothing of the way resources are wasted in the process, including crops like cotton and what goes into growing, harvesting & processing them.
Local Wisdom has proved so successful that in order to communicate the knowledge, skills, themes, strategies and practices identified and developed, a project dubbed the Craft of Use was launched. The goal of both projects isn't to grow or maximize consumption, but to pace it - all while keeping fashion fabulous, relevant and interesting.
Heres' the podcast I recorded about this. Enjoy! :)
- Lesley Scott
(images by Paul Allister)
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