MA Fashion and the Environment
How can we as a society stop plundering our environment and start using our natural resources responsibly? One option is to return to the idea of custodianship; a mind set that is essentially to look after our environment for our children and the generations to come. This paradigm shift is not one that will happen instantly, it is something that needs to be adopted slowly to form a new collective consciousness. One way to speed this process up would be to try to reduce the necessity for newness, reducing the amount that we process and dispose of each year. To extend the useful life of clothing will be of immense benefit. I propose to make a wardrobe for life; a set of garments that would evolve and adapt to your needs and last longer than your lifetime. Our addiction to consumption will hopefully decrease, we will reduce the quantity of resources used and therefore discarded. Through extending a garments useful life, the wearer will return to the state of an active consumer; someone who will care for and interact with clothing, regaining the confidence to mend, alter or customise a garment, therefore retaining its relevance to the wearer. This is an exploration into creating. I am using a dress as the initial template to develop the design system; a prototype to show our industry that there is another path that can be taken in respect to consumerism, one that becomes the foundations to a society of belonging as opposed to our current state of wanting and unfulfilled desire. For more information visit: emilytowers.co.uk