Fashion ADHD

We live in a world where resources are easily at our disposal.  This has created many advantages for consumers and many disadvantages for the environment.  My design concept this week is targeted towards the group of over consumers.  Over consumers have a bottomless appetite for resources that cannot be satisfied.  The potential environmental implications that can result from their abuse of resources is far from their concern.  The apparel and textile industry have aided in the adoption of over consumption by making ‘fast fashions’ easily accessible and affordable.  Over consumers prefer quantity over quality.  I’m guilty of over consuming, a $10 shirt from Forever 21 sounds more appealing than spending $80 on a shirt that’s of higher in quality.  Fashion changes day by day and as a result many consumers are constantly on a quest to reinvent their styles.  Fast Fashions enable over consumers to purchase the latest fashions at a more affordable price.  However, what inevitably ends up happening is a consumers grows tired of the product then improperly disposes of it to go out and buy a new product that fulfills their latest style desires. I like to refer to this unsustainable cycle as fashion ADHD.  

My design concept is a solution that prescribes a sustainable antidotes to combat the effects of fashion ADHD.  In the reading Design Activism: Beautiful Strangeness for a Sustainable World, sustainability is described as learning how to live well, but consuming less.  Sustainability is constructed of many layers that include social, political, cultural, economic, and ethical aspects.  In order for designers, retailers, and manufacturers to become design activist they must intertwine the different aspects to formulate one sustainable strategy.  The concept of my design allows clothing to be loaded into a printer using water based flexo ink to print patterns and designs on clothing.  It would look similar to a computer printer, but much bigger in size.  Retailers and designers would place the printers in local retail stores.  When purchasing a product the consumer would select a design and/or pattern.  Once the design is selected the item is fed into the printer which then transfers the graphic onto the item.  The printer’s ink would not be permanent and after washing the item multiple times the graphic would eventually disappear.  Once the graphic disappears the consumer could go online to the retailers website to view the retailers library of patterns and designs.  After a pattern is selected the consumer would bring the original item to the store and a sales associate would then feed the item into the printer.  The intent of this design concept is to provide consumers with more sustainable options to easily reinvent their styles.  This would increase the lifecycle's of clothing because it would provide consumers with the ability to easily change the appearance of clothing.  The fashion urges of consumers would be fulfilled and as a result, the overall consumption of ‘fast fashions’ would greatly be reduced.  The amount of water that’s usually consumed during the dyeing and production process would also significantly be reduced.  By eliminating the dyeing process workers as well as consumers would no longer be exposed to the harmful chemicals and additives that are commonly found in dyes. 

Example of the retailer's online pattern library

This design concept applies a similar method of design activism that’s described in Design Activism: Beautiful Strangeness for a Sustainable World.  The ‘halfway‘ products that are described allow consumers to take part in the design process.  “In a halfway product, the designer/maker/manufacture only takes the product so far, leaving a space for the user to complete the making.”   As a result, consumers will feel more connected to their products knowing that they took part in the creation process.  Similar to ‘halfway’ products, my design concept would also integrate consumers into the design process of products.  By applying my design concept consumers will feel more emotionally connected to their products as well as to the designer and/or retailer that produces them.  Longterm relationships between consumers and retailers would evolve in the application of my design concept.  Retailer's would be more likely to increase the awareness of consumers, seeing that the customer loyalty is more prevalent.  Retailer's would introduce their customers to this design concept by placing a brief description on tags of clothing.  Retailer's could also advertise this new design concept on the company’s website by featuring an extensive pattern library that adequately showcases their product offerings.  Ultimately, retailers could use this design concept to stress the importance of mindful resource consumption and sustainable production.

In closing, before taking this course I never took into account how my actions could potentially impact the environment.  Needless to say the concept of sustainability was far from my mind.  The most important thing that I learned from this course is the detrimental implications that are forced onto the environment due to the carless practices of the apparel and textile industry.  I intend to integrate this knowledge into my patterns of consumption.  I am defiantly more hesitant to buy clothing that contains certain fibers and I’ve become a staunch advocate concerning the legalization of hemp. I would like to learn more about the battle of legalizing hemp because I found this debate to be extremely compelling.  I’m absolutely certain that if more consumers had a greater awareness of the advantages of hemp it would help in diminishing the negative stigmas that are commonly associated with the fiber.  This course has taught me that sustainability is not merely just a practice or concept, it’s a lifestyle choice that’s imperative for survival and future development.

COMPOST- NOT AS SMELLY AS YOU WOULD THINK!

What are some of the first words that enter your mind when you hear the word COMPOST?  In the past, whenever I heard the word compost, I would commonly associate it with two adjectives, smelly and dirty.  Countless individual’s, including myself, have several misconceptions regarding the process as well as the benefits of compositing.  The amount of waste generated by humans has rapidly increased due to our resource heavy appetites.  Often times, waste is not properly disposed, inevitably ending up in landfills.  Using the methods of composting, provides a solution to improper waste disposal by incorporating the Cradle to Cradle concept of waste=food.  When composted, products constructed 

from natural fibers and materials are transformed into biological nutrients that nourish and replenish our environment.  

This week, I was inspired by the Cradle to Cradle concept that focuses on biological nutrients.  In order, for a product to fall into the biological nutrient category, it can only be constructed from materials that can be recycled back into nature.  Biological nutrients do not impact the environment negatively.  Unlike technical nutrients, biological nutrients enrich the nature of our environment.  Products constructed from natural materials that can easily be composted is the focus of my design concept this week.  In the article, C2CAD: a sustainable apparel design and production model, the author Gam describes four steps that can be used to effectively integrate the framework of the cradle to cradle model into the practices of production.  The four steps include, problem definition and research, sample making, solution development and collaboration and production.  After reading the assigned articles, it became very apparent to me that mixing technical and biological nutrients complicates the disposal process, inevitably making it more energy intensive.  Products containing biological and technical nutrients must undergo the separation process to ensure each material is properly disposed.  In my opinion, the separation process is labor intensive and it’s very unlikely retailers, manufacturers, and designers will actually follow through with this process.  

The concept that I designed reiterates Gam’s first step which is focuses on problem definition and research.  Many of the problems and frustrations of retailers and designers could be completely avoided by putting forth the effort to avoid mixing biological and technical nutrients.  In the application of my design concept, products would be constructed solely from biological nutrients or technical nutrients, not a mixture of both.  After clothing has reached the end of its lifecycle, consumers would compost the products made from biological nutrients and products made from technical nutrients would be sent back to retailers to reuse.  The following example helps illustrate the foundation of my design concept.   To apply my design concept, a designer would first need to determine if she would use biological nutrients or technical nutrients to construct her envisioned design.  In this scenario the designer chooses the more natural route, biological nutrients.  To construct her envisioned design, a dainty collared button-down blouse, she selects fabric that’s made from organic cotton and uses this fabric as the basis of her design.  To assemble the different panels of the shirt the designer uses thread that’s biodegradable.  The next step of my design concept is influenced by Gam’s collaboration approach and by the ethical and sustainable production methods discussed in the article, Textile futures: Fashion, design, and technology.  After the shirt is fully assembled, it’s transferred to sustainable manufacturer, who would then dye and add the trimmings to the shirt.  The manufacturers would use only natural dyes, similar to the dyes discussed in the article by Gam.  Once the shirt is dyed, the trimmings are added by the manufacturers to the shirt.  The buttons and/or trimmings are unlike the typical plastic buttons that are usually found on shirts.  The buttons are made from biodegradable materials, such as corn.  By using only biological nutrients, such as  organic cotton and biodegradable thread and buttons, eases the disposal process for consumers as well as the apparel and textile industry. 

Biodegradable button from the website-http://www.hktdc.com/suppliers-products/Biodegradable-button/en/1X0669UF/1290474

         My design concept reflects many of the design aspects discussed in the articles by Gam and Quinn.  Quinn stresses the importance of taking a more innovative approach that rethinks and reinvents new ways to reuse textiles.  The points made by Quinn inspired the versatility of my design concept.  The congruence of materials and the four-season sustainability methodology, are two aspects Gam strongly emphasized throughout the article.  Ultimately Gam’s ideas helped me form the basis of my design concept that revolved mostly around the composition of materials purely constructed from either biological nutrients or technical nutrients.