SUSTAINABLE FASHION

Design is creative solutions for problems; however, it sometimes creates new problems. The Industrial Revolution made peoples’ lives more convenient and comfortable, but also put billions of pounds of toxic materials into the air, water and soil. New problems need new solutions. In the midst of the severe damage and degradation in the living environment, people begin to question how can we sustain and have a future.

As described by William McDonough, design today is following a linear, cradle to grave model (McDonough & Braungart, 2002). A solution for this dead end is “c2c” (c2c Task Force Proposal, n.d., 2005), a new design paradigms. However, previous perceptions of the purpose of design will not surrender their domain easily; both the designers and the general public think in a systematic way and follow certain orders.

This paper attempts to introduce a new framework to define sustainability in terms of both physical attributes and cultural attributes. Whereas the physical attributes of sustainability in furniture already have been studied extensively by manufactures and designers, fewer studies have been done for cultural attributes. A product can be physically sustainable, made of environmentally friendly materials or recyclable “technical nutrients” (McDonough & Braungart, 2002); however, if the product goes out of fashion very quickly, it is not a culturally sustainable product. Therefore, cultural sustainability is proposed to provide a more accurate framework for making more precise measurements in sustainable design.

Fashion is the opposite of sustainability. The glamour of fashion fades quickly. In recent years, the domains of fashion, architecture and furniture have converged in many ways, yielding interesting results and adding knowledge, variety, as well as originality to design (Quinn, 2003). By hybridizing fashion and sustainability, this paper attempts to evoke discussions about the cultural aspect of sustainability. How can we have sustainable fashion?

Reference:

c2c Task Force Proposal: Endorsing the Cradle to Cradle Design Paradigm [Presentation]. (n.d.). (2005). Savannah: IDEC
McDonough, W., & Braungart, M. (2002). Cradle to cradle: Remaking the way we make things. 1st Edition. New York: North Point Press.
Quinn, B. (2003). The fashion of architecture. Oxford, UK ; New York: Berg.