Volume 3, Issue 1

Amy Twigger Holroyd in conversation with Annebella Pollen

In October 2023, cultural historian Annebella Pollen met with Amy Twigger Holroyd, fashion designer, maker, researcher and writer, to discuss their shared interests in sustainable fashion strategies, and specifically to consider how the past might be used as a resource for addressing present-day problems. The conversation was prompted by two of Amy’s recent projects. The first, Fashion Fictions—established in 2020 and an ongoing experiment—invites participants to generate and experience fictional visions of alternative fashion cultures and systems. […]

by eric larsen

Boro, a Japanese textile tradition rooted in resource scarcity, has evolved from a practice of necessity to an art form celebrated globally. At its core, boro involves utilizing scraps and off-cuts for garment creation and repair, often resulting in multi-generational textiles characterized by layers of patches. While modern interpretations often focus on sustainability and craftsmanship, this reduction overlooks the socio-economic conditions that shaped boro in Japan’s lower classes. […]

By HANNAH AUERBACH GEORGE

This paper explores forgotten material histories and how they can be harnessed to inform sustainable textile design and help us to combat our current climate crisis. Two now defunct collections at the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A)—the Animal Products collection and the Waste Products collection—provide an insight into ideas around waste, resource, and sustainability in Victorian Britain. These archival collections contain resources and technologies designed to tackle problems such as material shortages and wasted by-products that warrant reinvestigation. […]

by bethan bide

This paper seeks to understand why the British ‘Make Do and Mend’ scheme, and the specific period of 1940s austerity with which it is related, holds such power in contemporary sustainability discourse. It argues that looking back at the history of this period and asking questions about its legacy provides a powerful critique to those who present it as a deceptively simple solution to a complex problem. […]

By Iryna kucher

Research on clothing repair is primarily Western-centred, and it is rarely considered that non-Western perspectives on clothing repair can bring attention to issues that can be overlooked in the Western sustainability discourse. At the same time, there are societies, such as Soviet ones, where from the 1960s until the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991, homemaking practices were promoted as a form of consumption pleasure. […]

By ALICE PAYNE AND JUDITH HICKSON

Significant change is required to address the harms caused by the dominant global fashion system, which is characterized by overproduction and overconsumption. Propositions for a changed fashion future include moving to models that have justice, care, and regeneration at their heart. Examples of alternative fashion systems already exist in both past and present. This article proposes that analysis of social history collections in museums can offer insights that demonstrate alternative fashion practices in action. […]