January 28, 2011 by Cath
London College of Fashion Graduate School will be showcasing the work of more than 200 students at a festival of events running during the first two weeks of February 2011, covering the subject areas of design, media and management, including work from all eleven MA courses. This includes the excellent work of our MA Fashion and the Environment students.
MEDIA & MANAGEMENT
Panel Debate and Screening
The Fashion Film: Art of Commerce?
MA Fashion & Film
Screening to include a film from an MA Fashion and the Environment student
Chaired by Pamela Church Gibson, with Alex Fury, Fashion Director of Showstudio; Laura Bradley, Web Editor of Another Magazine; blogger Susie Bubble and Andrew Tucker, discussing Shoot by Nick Knight (2003) Vox Humana by Rodarte and Griffin, part of Future Tense (2008) and The Good Life by Alice Hawkins.
Date: 31.01.11
Time: 18.00 – 20.00
Pecha Kucha 20×20
Student presentations from:
MA History & Culture of Fashion
MA Fashion Journalism
MA Fashion Curation
MA Fashion & the Environment
Date: 07.02.11
Time: 18.00 – 20.00
Symposium
“Fashioning Business: Contemporary challenges in the fashion sector”
Student presentations from:
MA Design Management for the Fashion Industries
MA Strategic Fashion Marketing
MA Fashion Entrepreneurship
MA Fashion & the Environment
Date: 08.02.11
Time: 14.00 – 18.00
- Rootstein Hopkins Space, London College of Fashion
SALON SHOW – DUEL
MA Fashion Design Technology Catwalk Show
Date: 02.02.2011
Time: 19.30
–Raphael Gallery, V&A, Cromwell Road, London, SW7 2RL
We shall be streaming the show live on the LCF website. Tune in at 20:00 on 02.02.11 to watch the show: www.fashion.arts.ac.uk/ma/live
EXHIBITION
MA Fashion Artefact
MA Fashion Footwear
MA Costume Design for Performance
MA Digital Fashion
MA Fashion & the Environment
MA Fashion Curation
MA Fashion Design Technology
MA Fashion Photography
Private View: 03.02.11
Time: 18.00 – 20.00
Public View: 02.02.11 – 09.02.11
Open Daily: 12.00 – 19.00
– Victoria House Basement, Bloomsbury Square, London WC1B 4DA
PERFORMANCE – NEW WORN IDENTITIES
MA Costume Design for Performance
Date: 09.02.11
Times: 15.00 & 19.30
– Victoria House Basement, Bloomsbury Square, London WC1B 4DA
January 27, 2011 by Cath
Shaping Sustainable Fashion edited by Alison Gwilt and Timo Rissanen is published by Earthscan this month. This article looks at a case study from the book on the work of London College of Fashion lecturer and textile designer, Jennifer Shellard:
New Materials for Fashion
When a consumer determines that a garment is no longer desirable for the purpose it was acquired for, it becomes textile waste. While the price of clothing has decreased, consumer spending on clothing has increased, resulting in significant increases in textile waste streams in the West (Allwood et al, 2006). As clothes become cheaper, it may be easier for a consumer to discard a garment and replace it with little consideration. A sustainable fashion industry of the future must identify ways of producing fashion that foster deeper engagements between wearer and garment, from point of acquisition through an appropriate, low-impact use phase to the eventual end of life of the garment. This will require new, closer relationships between the industry and fashion consumers. Alongside social innovation, technological advances will continue to bring about improvements in materials production, reclamation and recycling, leading to waste reduction.
Fashion designers have been increasingly reliant on the appropriate selection of materials as an approach to sustainable fashion. Garments can be made from renewable or biodegradable fibres, reclaimed materials or materials created through new technologies. While we know that often the most significant sustainability impacts related to clothing are created through laundering and drying, materials nevertheless play a significant role in moving towards more sustainable fashion practices. The potential for new technological man-made or hybrid textile materials to provide solutions for sustainable fashion has been little explored in the fashion industry. However high performance materials can maximize garment durability, while alternatively a garment can be designed to exploit fabric ageing: these ideas and more show that through considered material selections a garment can be designed with an extended lifecycle in mind. Furthermore, fashion can be created to adapt to different environments, climates and situations, through simple or complex materials and transformable techniques.
LCF lecturer and textile designer, Jennifer Shellard explores the use of technology in conjunction with traditional craft skills in her experimental textile pieces. In the piece entitled Transitions II, Shellard directs an external computer-animated light to change and enhance a gradated coloured strip that is integrated within a hand-woven material base. The gradual colour change in the strip is slow and measured and the viewing experience is both intriguing and meditative. Shellard’s abstract approach to textiles demonstrates the convergence between craft and technology. At the same time her work opens the door to alternative conversations about materials and their appropriateness to fashion. These conceptual approaches could lead designers to think about the possibility of new textile materials for garments that engage or transform. Garments that can change, adapt or evolve may encourage a relationship between wearer and garment that is much deeper than can be achieved through typical fashion solutions. And it is this connectivity to fashion that can help in the reduction of clothing consumption.
A central problem with fashion is that often a garment is disregarded before it ceases to function. In the case of a fashion garment this can relate to meaning. A garment can be disregarded because it no longer answers a perceived ‘need’; and essentially the ‘need’ here is an emotional one. Sustaining a wearer’s interest and engagement with a garment is then the real challenge. However, if a designer can create a garment that can adapt and transform, and reflect the wearer’s invested care, then we can begin to rethink our engagement with our clothes.
Allwood, J. M., Laursen, S. E., Malvido de Rodriguez, C. and Bocken, N. M. P. (2006) Well Dressed? The Present and Future Sustainability of Clothing and Textiles in the UK. Institute for Manufacturing, University of Cambridge, Cambridge
Receive a 20% discount on this or any other Earthscan book at www.earthscan.co.uk using the voucher code CSF.
Click this link to receive a 25% discount when purchasing Shaping Sustainable Fashion and Sustainable Fashion and Textiles by Dr Kate Fletcher (CSF Reader in Sustainable Fashion) together.
January 25, 2011 by guest
Outsider- one of the labels on our Business Support Programme- is part of a group of designers at Swanfield having a big sample sale. There’s a friends and family preview on 27th January at 6pm. Head down to bag a bargain!
January 21, 2011 by Cath
Go Green Week is People & Planet’s national week of student action on climate change, with events taking place across schools, colleges and universities in the UK.
The UAL Students Union are organising a programme of events, details can be found at: http://www.suarts.org/green and this will be supplemented by various other UAL events, such as an “Any Questions” style event, at which various members of Executive Board will answer questions on environmental and social sustainability.
UAL Green Week runs from 7th-9th February with three main events throughout the week:
Monday 7th: Green Week Exhibition Private View
7pm, SU Gallery @ CSM, just off Rosemary’s Cafe
The Green Week exhibition will run for the whole week at the SU Gallery at CSM and features the work of UAL students who incorporate sustainable concepts into their work or use their work to raise awareness of damaging environmental practices.
Tuesday 8th: Sustainable Fashion Show
7pm-12 midnight Blueprint Bar 272 High Holborn
Thursday 10th February: Create Late: Smells Like Green Spirit
6pm-12 midnight, Blueprint Bar, 272 High Holborn
The debut Create Late takes an environmental twist with workshops, activities, installations and more than bring together a host of green issues in one place. Enjoy good music, good company and generally enjoy a jolly good green night out!
by caralee
Date: 27 Jan 2011
Time: 6-8pm
Venue: The Lethaby Theatre G12, Central St Martins, Southampton Row, London WC1B 4AP
Booking: Places are FREE, but please book in advance at ECCA
Have you got a great idea but unsure what to do with it? Are you a budding fashion designer who is trying to make a mark in the highly-competitive industry?
This seminar will help you to consider the qualities and skills you need if you are thinking about starting up a fashion label. It seeks to help you identify the various routes to market and how you can position yourself within it. Learn what the fashion industry is about and how it works – from delivering a product to market and everything in between, Sales, Marketing, Branding, Production, Costings, Trade shows, PR and so on. Hear from fashion enterprise specialists in this evening seminar, and develop your strategy from concept to commercial success in the fashion industry.
Speaker profiles:
Russell Hammond
The Scaphan Network
With over 15 years experience in the fashion industry working with brands such as Temperley, Burberry & Aquascutum, Russell Hammond is well placed to advise those coming into the industry. He has successfully advised fashion brands on sourcing suppliers, how to increase margin, how to use IT and who to employ. His enthusiasm and passion will challenge and motivate you. Scaphan is the premier management consultancy focusing on emerging designer & luxury brands. We help fashion brands work smarter, improve margin and grow their business. A network of senior and board level executives in the fashion and luxury goods industry who create value for creative businesses.
Kristjana S Williams
Beyond the Valley
A graduate of Central Saint Martins, Kristjana S Williams is the co-Creative Director and co-Founder at Beyond the Valley. Starting out as a pop-up shop in Covent Garden, Beyond the Valley concept store has gone from being a springboard for designers to one of London’s leading destinations for design and fashion innovation, at Carnaby’s Newburgh Quarters. Beyond the Valley continues to receive recognition as one of the most innovative and unique boutiques around. Recent coverage includes the inclusion as one of the top 50 design brands to watch in Observer’s ‘The Future 500’ line-up, and being voted one of the top 100 ‘UK Coolbrands’ for 2007/08/09/10. Alongside them in this year’s listings are well-respected brands such as Vivienne Westwood, Aveda, Nokia and Aston Martin.
January 14, 2011 by Cath
Fashion Footprints: Sustainable Approaches is on tour at the Create Centre in Bristol.
Curated by four of our graduates from the MA Fashion and the Environment at the London College of Fashion, the exhibition takes a look at the underlying problems facing sustainability in the industry through eight themes identified in Dr. Kate Fletcher’s seminal book Sustainable Fashion and Textiles: Design Journeys.
The exhibition also explores the possible solutions enabling us, as consumers, to make more informed decisions about the clothes we choose to wear.
Curators: Felicia Felton, Tara Baoth Mooney, Emma Rigby, Sharn Sandor
The exhibition was featured by BBC Bristol.
by Cath
Chosen from a UK-wide ‘open submission’, Material Actions at the Centre for Contemporary Art and the Natural World in Exeter, shows work by 13 artists which question how textiles are used to affect and contribute to ethical, social, cultural and environmental change.
Inspired by ideas explored in Textile Forum South West’s conference Textile Footprint last year, it focuses on the special qualities and active role textiles practice can bring to challenge these debates. The conference discussed the ethical investments in the practice of textiles and was a timely look at issues surrounding the ethical, ecological and sustainable use of materials.
Admission free
by caralee
From the web to wildlife, the economy to nanotechnology, politics to sport, the Observer’s team of experts prophesy how the world will change – for good or bad – in the next quarter of a century.
12 Fashion: ‘Technology creates smarter clothes’
Fashion is such an important part of the way in which we communicate our identity to others, and for a very long time it’s meant dress: the textile garments on our body. But in the coming decades, I think there’ll be much more emphasis on other manifestations of fashion and different ways of communicating with each other, different ways of creating a sense of belonging and of making us feel great about ourselves.
We’re already designing our identities online – manipulating imagery to tell a story about ourselves. Instead of meeting in the street or in a bar and having a conversation and looking at what each other is wearing, we’re communicating in some depth through these new channels. With clothing, I think it’s possible that we’ll see a polarisation between items that are very practical and those that are very much about display – and maybe these are not things that you own but that you borrow or share.
Technology is already being used to create clothing that fits better and is smarter; it is able to transmit a degree of information back to you. This is partly driven by customer demand and the desire to know where clothing comes from – so we’ll see tags on garments that tell you where every part of it was made, and some of this, I suspect, will be legislation-driven, too, for similar reasons, particularly as resources become scarcer and it becomes increasingly important to recognise water and carbon footprints.
However, it’s not simply an issue of functionality. Fashion’s gone through a big cycle in the last 25 years – from being something that was treasured and cherished to being something that felt disposable, because of a drop in prices. In fact, we’ve completely changed our relationship towards clothes and there’s a real feeling among designers who I work with that they’re trying to work back into their designs an element of emotional content.
I think there’s definitely a place for technology in creating a dialogue with you through your clothes.
Dilys Williams, designer and the director for sustainable fashion at the London College of Fashion
For the full article please visit The Observer, Sunday 2 January 2011
January 11, 2011 by caralee
Prizes include a fabulous trip to Los Angeles for the winner and his/her model to showcase the winning dress or gown at the Global Green pre-Oscar party in Hollywood on February 23, 2011. Please advise your students to visit our website www.redcarpetgreendress.com for all the exciting details about this wonderful, international competition.
The Contest will end on Wednesday, February 2, 2011 at 5pm, Pacific Standard Time and all entries MUST be received by that time/date in order to be eligible to win the Grand Prize.
