Timo Rissanen: Durable fashion by design: ‘Wasted’ fabric, repair and alteration
PhD Candidate
University of Technology, Sydney
Faculty of Design, Architecture & Building
Garment care can be a fashion design consideration. The fashion designer cannot entirely control what happens to a garment in the consumer’s hands, but plays a role in how the garment may be physically transformed after its purchase. Transformative practices in a garment are possible or not, due to decisions by the fashion designer and patternmaker. These decisions can also help delay the need for transformation. The types of transformation covered in this paper are repair and alteration, which can prolong the useful life of a garment.
Through examples from dress history, the paper offers a detailed look at what designers can do structurally and aesthetically to delay and enable repair. Fabric is the focus. It is argued that increased materials inputs at garment design and manufacturing stage may result in reduced materials intensity overall. Physical durability can come about through an increase in the amount of fabric used per garment. Hypothetically this could result in a lesser need for new clothes.
To improve garment durability through an increase in fabric, it may be unnecessary to use more fabric and thus increase a garment’s fabric cost, than what the marker (cutting layout containing all pattern pieces of a garment) already contains. On average, fifteen percent of the fabric in a garment’s marker is wasted; this waste is disposed of after cutting. Much, even all, of the ‘waste’ could, however, be incorporated into the garment. To avoid using more fabric to improve durability, the fashion designer and patternmaker need to be aware of the garment’s patterns and marker composition throughout the entire design process. Various ways of including the ‘wasted’ fabric in a garment will be examined, with the focus on enabling future transformative practices off the garment. These practices can invest a garment with added meaning, and may increase the time a consumer will care for a garment. Fashion design and patternmaking can enable or disable these transformative practices.
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Timo Rissanen completed Bachelor of Design in Fashion and Textile Design with First Class Honours at the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS), in 1999. Rissanen represented UTS at Mittelmoda in Gorizia, Italy in 2000. From 2002 to 2004 he owned and designed for a menswear label, Usvsu, which in March 2003 won the New South Wales division of the Mercedes Benz Start-Up Program. In May 2003 Usvsu showed in the New Generation Show at Mercedes Australian Fashion Week in Sydney. As well as freelancing as a design consultant and a patternmaker since 1999, Rissanen has lectured and tutored in fashion design at UTS since 2003. He is currently completing a PhD in fashion design there. The topic is ‘fashion creation without fabric waste creation’, and fashion design and patternmaking practice are a significant component of the research methodology.
Publications
Rissanen, T. (forthcoming) ‘Jigsaw puzzle: Creating fashion without creating fabric waste’, in Hethorn, J. & Ulasewicz, C. (eds.) Sustainable fashion: Why now? Fairchild Books, New York
Rissanen, T. (forthcoming), Fashion creation in researching fashion creation, In Form Symposium, Datum, UTS, 19 August 2006
Rissanen, T. 2005, From 15% to 0: Investigating the creation of fashion without the creation of fabric waste, Creativity: Designer Meets Technology Europe, KrIDT, Creative Institute for Design and Technology (Denmark) and The Center for Excellence of Digital Ink Jet Printing of Textiles at Philadelphia University (US), 26-28 September, 2005, viewed February 5, 2007 http://www.kridt.dk/conference/Speakers/Timo_Rissanen.pdf >.