4. Waste not, want not

~ Sustainable design involves more creativity and can be far more interesting. Designers need to think about how they build in both readability and emotional attachment - designing products that people want to keep for years and years ~ Tim Cooper 17

Waste not, want not.

Designers are complicit in the fuelling of growing ‘throw-away culture’, contributing to associated environmental issues, and must begin to 'balance creativity with their environmental responsibilities’. According to Tim Cooper, head of Sheffield Hallam University’s Centre for sustainable consumption - 80 per cent of a product’s environmental impact is fixed at the point of design. 18

Figure 2. A screenshot from the movie trailer of ‘The True Cost’ 19

Figure 3. What started it all: Inspired by the movie ‘The True Cost’, this mini-installation depicts waste that can’t be contained in the bag and ends up spilling out, London, 2019. Photography: Shipra Chandran 20

17 Hazel Clark and David Eric Brody, eds., Design Studies: A Reader, English ed (Oxford; New York: Berg, 2009), p.70.

18 Ibid.

19 ‘The True Cost’ is a novel documentary film that reveals the dark underbelly of the fashion industry - its social and environmental issues.

20 The ‘waste’ (here) comprises entirely of discarded yarns and swatches found in the Dubied knitting lab at the Royal College of Art, London. These are just a week’s worth of rejected samples!

Turning the focus to the second part of my concern : waste in the industry, how can the notion of sustainability (positive) be made relevant to the discipline of 'deformity’ (negative)?

The production of products that have aesthetic and cultural attributes, raise them above the merely functional and help reduce emphasis on consumerism and begin to foster attitudes of responsibility and care. 21 Stemming from a deep-rooted sadness over the volume of textile waste created by a single project alone, initial explorations were conducted through direct involvement in the artistic activity of designing itself, i.e mending defected swatches.

Knitting machines in operation can cause the following types of fabric defects :

1.Infringement 2.A series of loops or the formation of enlarged loops 3.Bias hinge series 4.Tying in Jacquard cloth loops of an inappropriate colour 5.Offset of pattern repeats 6.Un-flat ironed creases. Waste in knitting can also be from breakage, that is, fabric is not fully knitted because of thread breakage or cannot be processed further because of uncorrectable defects.

However since this is secondary, I only touch upon this aspect - industrial mass customisation - in my dissertation, as a small part of research leading to a large scale solution. This is the end goal of my Master’s project, but the themes explored in the dissertation are pivotal to building upto this part of my research. I expand to different sub themes, while reflecting on history and theory of fashion alongside looking at my own work.

It is time. Time to welcome the fragmented. Time to welcome the crushed and the crumbled with open arms. We must learn to embrace the lack of perfection as an advantage in the innovation process or better still, as the end product.

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