Green Gown Awards 2014 - Research & Development - University of the Arts London - Finalist

Centre for Sustainable Fashion: Local Wisdom and Craft of Use Project

The Local Wisdom project explores the rewarding and resourceful practices associated with using clothes, called, the ‘craft of use’. By focusing on the satisfying, skilful and cultivated wearing and handling of the garments the university has already, the project directly addresses the fashion sector’s dependency on increasing material throughput through sale of new items.

The project proposes solutions that include sustained attention to tending and using garments, rather than merely their production and consumption. It is about fashion in times of resource scarcity.

The craft of use is the basis for international collaborative activity between researchers and students in seven cities of high levels of fashion consumption.

With over 80 design projects, the radical, post-growth work articulates and amplifies fashion actions and ideas that rarely make it onto catwalks or business agendas, but are potential agents of change in tackling problems we face as a global community.

Top 3 learnings

1 Over the past decade, efficiency improvements for sustainability have delivered invaluable impact reductions in the production of fashion clothes
2 This project has gathered almost 500 stories from the public from around the world documenting and sharing the resourceful usership of clothes, the surprising, prevalent ‘other side of fashion’
3 This has contributed to the many novel designs and concepts amplifying these global practices, contributing to a sea change in the industry.

Videos

• Centre for Sustainable Fashion: Local Wisdom and Craft of Use Project (click to hide)