Sustainable Fashion and Textiles: Design Journeys

Sustainable Fashion and Textiles brings together for the first time information about lifecycle environmental impacts of fashion and textiles, practical alternatives, design concepts and social innovation. It challenges existing ideas about the scope and potential of sustainable fashion and textiles and sets out a broader, more inter-connected and forward-looking picture, drawing on ideas of human needs, industrial ecology, speed and rhythms, and participatory actions, as well as knowledge of materials. The book not only adds to understanding, it also presents practical information for textile and fashion practitioners. Each chapter combines long- and short-term solutions that deal with making changes to industry as it exists today, whilst articulating a new vision for the sector based on sustainability principles. Arranged in two sections, the first four chapters represent key stages of the lifecycle: material cultivation/extraction; production; use; and, disposal. The remaining four chapters are conceptual and far-reaching, concerned with altering the scale and nature of consumption, and addressing wide ranging issues including: fashion; human needs; localism; services; shared products; creative participation; fast and slow clothes. While each of these chapters are complete in and of themselves, their real value comes from what they represent together: innovative ways of thinking about textiles and garments based on sustainability values and an interconnected approach to design.