Rebecca Earley: The New Designers: Working Towards Our Eco Fashion Future
Designer and Senior Research Fellow, Textiles Environment Design project (TED), Chelsea College of Art and Design, University of the Arts London
“The world will not evolve past its current state of crisis by using the same thinking that created the situation.” Albert Einstein
The fashion and textile designers of the future will have to think and create clothing differently if they are to make a positive contribution to our changing culture and circumstances. Society is becoming ever more aware of the environmental predicament our planet is in. In the 21st Century we can buy organic food more easily, we recycle and compost our waste more often, and we buy more second hand and vintage clothes than ever before. Yet still an estimated 1 million tons of textiles in the UK go in our bins and into landfill every year. Fashions that are designed to last one season take many years to decompose, emitting harmful gases into the atmosphere as they go.
As my practice as a fashion designer has extended over recent years into the realms of academic research, my approach has evolved into producing more conceptual and eco conscious designs. This new direction fascinates me. Each year at college design students are increasingly aware and interested in learning about the environmental issues facing the industry. I can clearly see the potential for fashion and textile designers to play a more significant role in our environmental future.
The current state of eco fashion in the UK is reviewed in the recent Crafts Council Touring exhibition that I curated – Well Fashioned: Eco Style in the UK – where the work of 21 designers was show cased, each of whom has a different approach to eco fashion design. These approaches include: the careful selection of materials and production processes; the decision to use organic fabrics and manufacture in ethically managed factories; reusing old, unwanted textiles, in an inventive and creative way; creating a fundamental label ethos and structure and using websites to convey information and create an inclusive retail experience; designing multi-size and multifunctional clothing, thus extending the potential life and usage of one piece of clothing, and reducing our need to acquire more items for our wardrobes; and adding value and emotional attachment to design work instead of responding to trends. The washing and drying of our clothes has the largest environmental impact, so included in the exhibition are also designs which attempt to be ‘low-launder’, which involve the use of merino wool and synthetic fibres not traditionally considered as eco-friendly.
Through producing designs under my own label ‘B.Earley’ over the last nine years I have considered many of the above concepts. I have also worked on creating situations and opportunities for fashion textile designers to explore these ideas for themselves – through research projects, exhibitions and by setting up the TED Materials Resource in London – in the hope that these designers will begin to make design decisions with the environment in mind. The designers exhibiting in Well Fashionedand who visit the resource are usually very small businesses, often sole traders, whose production volume makes very little impact in contrast to the large high street and designer companies. But perhaps they mark the beginning of a new direction, perhaps they are signposting the future for us, and perhaps their impact could in fact be very great indeed.
Websites:
www.beckyearley.com
www.craftscouncil.org.uk/wellfashioned/flash/index.html
www.5ways.info
www.tedresearch.net
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Rebecca Earley is a London based textile designer, and Reader at the University of the Arts London. She currently produces hand and digitally printed textiles for her own label, undertakes public art projects and commissions, and is an educator, facilitator and curator.
Rebecca is known nationally and internationally as a printed textile design researcher who produces research outcomes of a highly challenging and original nature. The research work has been communicated widely, both on the catwalk and in a gallery context.
Rebecca’s textile work has also attracted the following national awards: Peugeot Design Awards, Textiles (Category winner and short listed entries, 1999, 2000, 2003); New Generation Award, British Fashion Council (1996); silver and gold medals, awarded by HRH Prince Charles, Prince’s Youth Business Trust (1996) and TexPrint Print Prize (1994). The excellence 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.