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Sustainable Fashion
Is green the new black? There seems to have been an increase in the number of glossy fashion magazines with a ‘green theme’ but how prepared are textile students to take up the challenges of sustainability.
Eco-fashion
Fashion activist Kate Pears reports that Australians spend approximately $1.7 billion each year on clothing and accessories we don’t wear, or wear a few times and dismiss. So what can students do?
- Encourage students to set up their own clothing exchange, a fun and free activity encouraging collective action for sustainable development
- Explore material reuse and recycling in students’ textiles projects - perhaps junior students could do some t-shirt surgery or t-shirt mash-ups.
- Use the compass of sustainability to assist students to assess the different sustainability aspects of textile design. This could include material creation, selection, design and manufacture.
- Explore fair trade issues in the classroom with education materials from Etiko Fair Trade
- Check out our list of sustainable design resources and tools, developed for the recent NSW Technology Educators Conference. Resources include useful tools such as life cycle analysis, ecological footprint calculators, and product case studies.
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Invite guest speakers to your school or get involved in some eco-fashion events; try the Powerhouse Museum talk on “Sustainable Traditions - from silk farming to Lao textiles"(8 June, Sydney), the Eco-ethical Fashion show (5 June, Chatswood Mall) or Clothing exchange events (Melbourne).
