PHOTO: B.EARLEY - TOP 100 PROJECT - PHOTOGRAPHER: PAUL HARRIS
Textile Futures Salon 2
WHAT FUTURE FOR ECO TEXTILE DESIGN?
11 October, 2007 at the ICA
The Textile Futures Research Group (TFRG) and the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) present an ECO TEXTILE DESIGN SALON in two parts: International Conversations and Question Time.
Sponsored by GAP, Inc.
14:30 – 17:30
International Conversations features four internationally renowned designers, researchers, activists and makers in conversation with four Textile Futures Research Group members on the most current and future issues for eco textile designers. Conversations will be held between Mo Tomaney (TFRG) and Elaine Jones (Ethical and Fair Trade Consultant, UK), Rebecca Earley (TFRG) and Natalie Chanin (Alabama Chanin, USA), Carole Collet (TFRG) and Maja Kuzmanovic (founder of FOAM, Belgium) and Sandy Black (TFRG) with Christoph Bergmann (Clariant, Switzerland).
18:30 – 21:00
Question Time is formulated after the popular BBC programme, by the same name. This session will be chaired by Carole Collet and will feature six panelists: Clare Brass (Design Council, UK), Tamsin Blanchard (Telegraph Magazine), Lynda Grose (California College of Art, USA), Rebecca Earley (TFRG), Kate Goldsworthy (TFRG) and Kindley Walsh Lawlor (Gap, Inc.). Questions pertaining to the role of the designer in determining the future of eco fashion and textile design will be chosen from an audience of experts, students in the field, and the interested public. The panelists will engage with the questions and the audience may be asked to respond.
If you purchase a ticket for this event and would like to submit a question for selection that you are prepared to ask the panel on the evening, please email tfrg@tfrg.org.uk
A competition has been set for University of the Arts London (UAL) students by TFRG, sponsored by GAP Inc. Three of the most poignant and provocative questions submitted by UAL students will be awarded a £200 prize.
Tickets available from ICA Box Office in early September
Tickets for each session:
£10, £8 concessions, £6 ICA members
Tickets for both sessions:
£16, £12 concessions, £8 ICA members
Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA)
The Mall
London
SW1 5AH
www.ica.org.uk
ICA Box Office: 020 7930 3647 / Switchboard: 020 7930 0493
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Mo Tomaney is currently a Research Fellow in Ethical Issues and Fair Trade at Central Saint Martins and runs the MA in Ethical Fashion at University College for the Creative Arts at Epsom. She continues to work as a consultant, both with the creative side of the fashion industry, and with the advancement of sustainability in fashion and textiles on a variety of levels. This includes the development of international market access for small scale producers of textiles and crafts in the developing world, fascinating and rewarding work that has lead her to many parts of the developing world. She is closely involved with the Fashioning an Ethical Industry project, which aims to build awareness of ethical issues in the fashion industry supply chain among students of fashion subjects. |
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Rebecca Earley, Associate Director of the Textile Futures Research Group, is a Reader in Textile Environmental Design (TED) at Chelsea College of Art and Design. The TED project aims to 'explore the role that the designer can play in producing textiles that are more eco friendly'. Earley subsequently developed an 'exhaust printing' technique which produces hand printed textiles with no water pollution and minimal chemical usage. Recent projects include the curation of Well Fashioned, an exhibition dedicated to eco fashion, at the Crafts Council Gallery in March 2006. Her textile work has received numerous awards including Peugeot Design Awards and a New Generation Award, (British Fashion Council and Marks and Spencers); and the pioneering nature of her research and scholarship is evident from her recent nomination for the Morgan Stanley Great Britons 2006 award, in recognition of her work promoting eco design in the UK.
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Natalie "Alabama" Chanin creates projects that reflect a wide range of disciplines, from sustainable clothing and home furnishings to a limited edition jewelry line. Natalie is currently developing an archive of oral histories entitled, "The History of Textiles," which is a collection of oral histories from textile workers including farmers and their wives, displaced factory workers and home seamstresses. Her documentary film, "Stitch," is like a road map through rural America as told through the eyes of those who made quilts, as well as those who used them. Natalie Chanin is best known for her work as co-founder and designer of Project Alabama, which became known for elaborately embellished and completely hand-sewn garments, made from recycled materials by local artisans and sold in stores around the world. Today, Natalie runs Alabama Chanin, a company which continues to enlist the craftsmanship of local artisans and strives to bring a contemporary context to age-old techniques. Natalie sees herself as a perpetuator of what she calls the "Living Arts". These Living Arts consist of craft and traditions that have been passed down through generations of women and men – connecting us to our roots, our past, our community, and consequently to our present. By preserving these integral crafts and traditions we work towards ensuring sustainability of product and eventually providing the basis for truly sustainable contemporary communities. Natalie has a Degree in Environmental Design from North Carolina State University and works simultaneously as designer, manufacturer, stylist, filmmaker, mother, artisan, cook and collector of stories from her home in Florence, Alabama.
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Elaine Jones is an independent consultant in Ethical and Fair Trade. She works together with Mo Tomaney as part of a two person team on a Commonwealth Secretariat supported project in developing market access with rural women textile producers in Pakistan. Elaine has worked in international development for almost 30 years, latterly concentrating on organisational development, promoting market access for small producers in developing countries into Fair Trade markets and working with organisations advocating for labour rights in global supply chains. She is particularly interested in highlighting the presence of informal workers, particularly women, in supply chains as they are often invisible, unacknowledged and among the most exploited. She has recently contributed to a chapter in the Routledge publication: Fair Trade, The Challenges of Transforming Globalization, (Edited by Laura Reynolds, Douglas Murray and John Wilkinson). |
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Christoph Bergmann currently works as a Marketing Manager for the Apparel & Fashion segment of the Textiles division of Clariant, a global chemical products company, one of the leading suppliers of dyes and chemicals for textiles processing. He manages projects with clothing retailers/brands and their respective textile mill suppliers – that is, working with Clariant's customers' customers. He is responsible for the global coordination of research & development activities in denim, coordinating Clariant's denim centres in LATAM, Asia, Turkey and Spain. A new project for next year is to establish a denim fashion collection made with Clariant dyes and finishes. He is active in promoting, both internally and externally, the need for integration of design and sustainability to achieve quality throughout the supply chain in the company's and their clients' activities. Christoph Bergmann has a background in textile technology and operations management which he studied at Manchester University Institute of Science and Technology. He has worked for many clothing and textile companies including C&A Mode and Schoeller, and was previously Head of Collection Development for Knitwear at Hugo Boss Industries.
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Clare Brass ran a product design consultancy in Milan for 17 years, working with clients such as Alessi, Guzzini and TVS in the houseware and tableware sector. Alongside her product design work she also ran a succession projects using design to address social or environmental challenges. She returned to London in 2004 to take up the role of Campaign Leader for Manufacturing at the Design Council. In her new role as Leader of Sustainability she is currently preparing a paper which will explain the Design Council's position on sustainability and form a framework for forthcoming projects and activities. |
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Tamsin Blanchard is a journalist who writes about fashion and design. She has recently authored the book Green is the New Black, published by Hodder & Stoughton. She has always been interested in fashion and grew up making her own clothes, and shopping at Chelsea Girl, jumble sales and Liverpool's best vintage clothing shop, 69A. Her interest in fashion was fed by magazines like i-D and the Face and looking at the pictures in Italian Vogue. She was quite single-minded in her determination to get onto the Fashion Journalism course at St Martins (at the time, it was the only course in the country). There, she spent a lot of time in silly platform shoes. For her, fashion has always been – and still is – about ideas, visual excitement, colour, texture and pattern rather than the name on the label. After seven years at the Independent, where fashion coverage was encouraged in its broadest form, from eco fashion (in the days when it was still considered the stuff of cranks and 'crusties') to haute couture. Tamsin moved to the Observer where she spent five years writing fashion profiles as well as editing and writing the interiors pages, offering her a chance to explore other areas of design. She is now style director at the Telegraph Magazine, where she commissions, and occasionally writes, fashion features. In the summer of 06, she helped to organise a fashion day as part of the Hackney Spice Festival, an annual event put on by the Hackney Empire. The theme of the day - which included a farmers market of fashion (local designers and makers) and a catwalk show - became eco/ethical fashion and was sponsored by Hackney Council's Recycling department.
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Lynda Grose has been in the fashion industry for 25 years. For most of her career, she has been actively engaged in designing and researching socially and environmentally advanced clothing and textiles. After receiving an honors degree in Fashion Design from Kingston University in London in 1981, Lynda began working as a fashion designer in London and then New York. She started to merge her artistic and commercial skills with a concern for the environment in 1990 when she co-founded Esprit's Ecollection, a five-year research and development project which helped establish pioneering environmental standards for the clothing industry. Now an independent designer, consultant and educator, Lynda works with clients ranging from artisans and farmers to non-profits and clothing companies. These include The Sustainable Cotton Project, Aid to Artisans, Gap Inc, Patagonia, Green Peace, 13-mile Farm, and Shayan Craft center. She is senior adjunct professor at California College of the Arts in San Francisco where she has developed curricula for Intro to Knitwear and sustainable fashion design. In 2007, London Financial times identified Lynda as one of its 'green power brokers'. Lynda sees environmental and social issues as a starting point for innovation and design as a service to help give form to a sustainable society.
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Kate Goldsworthy designs multi-media textiles, from recycled materials, employing both hand-crafted and digital techniques. An interest in sustainable design and a desire to override pre-conceptions surrounding recycling, underpins her work and has encouraged an original response to choices of materials and processes. Inspired by light, transparency and movement her pieces are multi-layered, sheer and dynamic. After graduating from Central Saint Martins in 2000 with an MA in Textiles focused on Sustainable Design, she has been working freelance on varied design and consultancy projects, as well as lecturing in the Design Department at Goldsmiths, Central Saint Martins and Chelsea College of Art & Design. Kate works to commission for private and public interiors, as well as for exhibition. Her recent projects include multi-sheer window panels for London restaurant Pied-a-Terre, large textile screens and wall-hangings for an exhibition with the Re-Design collective and translating her textiles into garments for the Crafts Council's touring exhibition Well-Fashioned: eco-style in the UK. Kate is currently working on a research project at Chelsea College of Art & Design entitled 'Material Re-creation: the forward design of thermoplastic waste into 'interim' textile products' looking in depth at the role of new and digital technologies in creating innovative solutions for the recycling of synthetic materials. The project is part of the Ever&Again Research Project based at TED (Textiles Environment Design).
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Kindley Walsh Lawlor is the Senior Director of Gap Inc. for Social Responsibility. In her current role Kindley is responsible for the Strategic Planning team (public reporting, external stakeholder relationship management, etc) and the Environmental Affairs team (and their focus on energy, waste and sustainable design). She is currently also serving as interim head of Foundation Communication and Strategy and Community Relations. Kindley joined Gap Inc. 10 years ago and spent most of her career with the company running Production for both Banana Republic Men's and Gap Adult. |
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Sandy Black is Professor of Fashion & Textiles Design & Technology at the London College of Fashion, and Associate Director of the Textile Futures Research Group. Her current research interests seek to Interrogate Fashion – its practice and design processes. She is developing projects that integrate both old and new technologies to approach the design and creation of textiles, fashion and accessories through the relationship between craft practices, advanced technology and industry. A key concept underpinning this research is the notion of more responsible design for fashion that takes into account the wider environmental, ethical, and social implications of products and the individual needs of their users, across a more inclusive spectrum. She is currently leading a Designing for the 21st Century project (funded by AHRC/EPSRC) Considerate Design for Personalised Fashion Products. Sandy has published widely on textiles, knitwear and fashion, including Knitwear in Fashion (Thames & Hudson) and Fashioning Fabrics (Black Dog), and is the author of the forthcoming book Eco-Chic: The Fashion Paradox, which discusses the complex issues and contradictions involved in implementing sustainability throughout the fashion cycle, with a focus on design as a catalyst.
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Maja Kuzmanovic is a generalist interested in inciting small miracles in everyday life. She received her BA in Design Forecasting (HKU) in 1996 and MA in Interactive Multimedia (University of Portsmouth) in 1997. Throughout the 1990s she collaborated on a range of interdisciplinary projects in research institutes around Europe and North America, as well as roamed the field as an independent artist-researcher. For her works, Maja was elected one of the Top 100 Young Innovators by MIT 's Technology Review in 1999. She founded FoAM in 2000 and has since functioned as FoAM's PI, media artist and head chef. Her leadership skills have been recognised by the World Economic Forum, awarding Maja with the title 'Young Global Leader' in 2006. |
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Carole Collet is Course Director, MA Textile Futures at Central Saint Martins College. Carole is a textile Designer and consultant in the area of textile print, R&D, trend forecasting, sustainable design, and intelligent textiles. Her consultancy work has included clients such as DMC, Boussac, Koji Tatsuno, Hoechst, Global consultants, and Ian Ritchie architects. Carole Collet with Professor Amanda Fisher (MRC Clinical Sciences Centre, London) pioneered the Nobel Textiles project which links Nobel laureates to leading Textiles and Fashion designers.
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