I’m starting my project (and this blog!) from the position that most of us in the Western world are over-consumers of clothes (and lots of other things too). We want cheap and fast fashion, and this puts pressure on the environment with dangerous levels of pollution and excess waste, pressure or workers to stitch faster and longer for low wages, and pressure on us to look fashionable. We have more clothes than ever before and yet we aren’t any happier. Surely something is wrong?!
As an embroidery designer I feel like we need to reclaim embroidery as embellishment, meaning to improve something, rather then embellishment as cheap plastic sequins that quickly fade and have no lasting value.
So, I decided to look at cultures that deny themselves decoration to see what I could learn in an attempt to create textiles that have longevity, with the belief that if you are happier with a product for longer you are less likely to buy other things. I’m not saying that denial is a good or sustainable way of cutting down consumption – but hope it will give me a starting point. As Kate Fletcher writes in Designers, Visionaries and Other Stories (ed. Jonathon Chapman and Nick Gant, 2002):
‘A new vision for sustainable fashion has to be more than a minimal consumption drive, something more attractive not because we are flippant or fashion junkies but because of the significance of fashion to human culture.’ pgs 121-122.
I’m interested in the conflict between denial and excess, utility and decoration, function and beauty.
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