February 28, 2013 by Charlotte
Last night the first ever Guardian University Award winners were announced in a London ceremony hosted by BBC education correspondent Reeta Chakrabarti, and we are extremely pleased to congratulate University of Wales, Trinity St David for winning in the Sustainability project category. The awards ‘celebrate the best of Britain’s universities and act as a benchmark for excellence across the higher education sector’.
The Institute for Sustainable Practice, Innovation and Resource Effectiveness (INSPIRE) was launched in 2012 to embed sustainability through the curriculum, campus, community and culture of the university. Judges said that it showed a powerful vision that went right through the curriculum and highly commended the university on their creativity.
Centre for Sustainable Fashion has been working with the support of Jane Davidson, Director of INSPIRE, on the development of the Green Academy programme, through which we aim to develop long-term transformational change for sustainability across the London College of Fashion and University of the Arts London. We are proud to be embarking on this programme to explore strategic and holistic ways to embed sustainable development throughout the student experience, and to be working with other exemplary institutions such as University of Wales, Trinity St. David.
May 25, 2011 by Hatty
Community Repair Exhibition
By Danielle Sponder Testa
This last term at LCF the MA Fashion and the Environment class worked with Otto von Busch on a project called ‘Community Repair: Strategic Social Skill Mobilization for Sustainable Fashion.’ This unique and challenging project was centered around the impact garment repair can have on a community. Each of the 14 students in the class sought out unique participants from our neighborhoods to help us repair a garment that we had worn and loved. Originally scared an unsure of the challenge to meet new people and engage them in an activity they may have never thought to do themselves, we were all surprised by the engaging attitudes of our community members. From lawyers, hat makers, and shoe makers to passengers on a Eurostar train, every participant had their own story and own reason for taking part in this project. In the end we were asked what impact this repair has had on our emotional attachment to the garment, but realized it also had a deep impact on the emotional attachment to our communities and ourselves. Many of us discovered people and places right near our homes that we never would have taken a second look at had this project not challenged us to explore our surroundings.
Personally, I was in awe of the varied outcomes and, along with others in my class, believed this project was worth sharing. Having a relationship with the course and LCF, Jules Hau and Greg Shaw of Foundation Agency generously offered their showroom space to use for an exhibit. We then got to work on organizing a pop-up gallery to further welcome the London community into this project. We worked within our Fashion and the Environment Community to put together advertising, press releases, displays, personal summaries, a video projection, food, drinks and easily accessible excerpts from Otto’s work to come together in a one-of-a-kind exhibition that we shared with the public this past weekend.
On Saturday 14 May we had a Private View for LCF faculty, industry professionals, and of course family and friends. The night was filled with music, drinks, food, and a brief speech from Dilys Williams and Otto von Busch discussing the project, its impact and significance. It was a well received exhibit that we would love to continue sharing. The gallery may not be available any more, but publications still are! Feel free to contact us to receive the magazine that contains personal accounts of the experience from the MA students as well as theory and research by Otto Von Busch. If you made it to the exhibit we hope you enjoyed it!
May 10, 2011 by Hatty
Community Repair: Strategic Skill Mobilisation for Sustainable Fashion
Community Repair is an artistic research project initiated by Otto von Busch with support from the Centre for Sustainable Fashion and undertaken by our MA Fashion and the Environment students as part of their Sustainability Solutions Unit.
Throughout the project, students have explored how craft skills among members of their local communities can be mobilised for the repair or adjustment of a garment; and how the compassion for a garment, the crafting of a shared memory and the mending of a social skin can be the needle on which the thread of gifts and exchanges can stitch up a shattered community.
Fashion is a manifestation of the importance of our connections. We use the visual signals of our clothes and style to relate to others and to our evolving world, society and culture.
Strategic Repair explores the idea of reciprocity through the act of making together and connecting within our communities, using an existing starting point of value and developing that value.
Dilys Williams, Director Centre for Sustainable Fashion
Course Director, MA Fashion and the Environment, LCF
The repaired fashion items will feature alongside stunning photographs of the students wearing their garments within their communities in this fantastic exhibition developed and curated by the students.
Fashion is a vehicle of identity in the social play of everyday life. As a commodity the fashion garment and accessory enacts wishes for imitation as well as autonomy and its ephemeral qualities make us continuously re-enact social relations.
As an effort towards sustainability, fashion needs to embrace repair as a designed feature for everyday clothes. If sustainable fashion takes repair seriously, designers might be able to reengage communities in strategic collaborations for repair; using the broken object to mend the social fabric scattered by the status anxiety of fashion.
Otto von Busch
School of Design and Crafts, University of Gothenburg
The work will be showcased:
On: Saturday 14th May – Sunday 15th May 2011
At:
Foundation Showroom
49-59 Old Street
Unit 1
London
EC1V 9DA
March 16, 2011 by Hatty
Somewhere Else – Ailleurs
11 February 2011, 8 May 2011
Espace culturel Louis Vuitton, Paris, France
Group Exhibition
The Espace culturel Louis Vuitton is offering a new variation on the theme of travel and choosing to reveal the Somewhere Else of eighteen “expeditionist” artists.
The nature of the expedition to which these artists devote themselves may vary widely. In this movement, in this encounter with new environments and cultures — sometimes distant, sometimes near, but always “other” — the artist finds the opportunity for a singular creation that is primarily characterised by its offset nature.
Lucy + Jorge Orta present a selection of artworks: Drop Parachute, Dome Dwellings and drawings from the series Antarctica, resulting from their incredible journey to the continent, where they installed the ephemeral artwork Antarctic Village – No Borders. The in-situ installation of dwellings took place during the Austral summer 2007 and was aided by the team of scientists stationed at the Marambio Antarctic Base situated on the Antarctic Peninsula.
Antarctic Village and the many artworks resulting from their artistic research draw attention to plight of those struggling
by Hatty
The Centre for Fashion Science at London College of Fashion is currently researching the beauty of age, an increasingly important aspect of contemporary culture.
The Centre is looking for female volunteers aged sixty and over. Researchers are interested in hearing from two major groups of women, whose skincare regimes involve either:
• some form of medical intervention (e.g. regular use of prescribed topical Vitamin A products, dermatological beauty treatments ranging from deep peels to skin fillers and botox, any form of facial cosmetic surgery, HRT)
or
• other forms of skincare, not requiring involvement of medical professionals (e.g. use of various skin products including cosmeceuticals, facial treatments, hair removal, massage)
The project is non-commercial and focused on bringing positive attention to age and to the beauty of age.
All your personal data will be kept in strict confidence. Research will be based in the Cosmetic Science laboratories at Oxford Circus. Your participation in the project would require approximately two days in late March/early April 2011. To thank you, we will arrange a professional make-up and photography session for you at the end of your second day with us. For further information and to register, please contact
Jo Sait; 020 7514 2097 or j.sait@fashion.arts.ac.uk
March 14, 2011 by Hatty
Dilys Williams, Director of the Centre for Sustainable Fashion, was interviewed on the BBC Radio 4 Woman’s Hour programme today and shares her views on the synthetic fibre polyester. Marking 70 years since British chemists patented “polyethylene terephthalate”, the basis of the fibre, the programme examines how polyester has been used in the past and the ways in which it will be used in years to come. Check out the interview on BBC iPlayer
December 6, 2010 by caralee
Fashioning the Future Awards 2011 Fashion’s Campaign for ‘Unique’
Fashioning the Future Awards 2011 website is now live!
www.sustainable-fashion.com/fashioning-the-future
Fashioning the Future Awards 2011 invites students and recent graduates to provoke and nurture ‘Unique’ ways to create our future. Fashioning the Future Awards is the leading international platform for celebrating innovation in design for sustainability.
5 Awards Categories
Download the full list of confirmed categories with guidelines and submission deadline.
Step 1 – Register to access the details of each category and its brief
Step 2 – Download the awards briefs. Read your chosen brief(s) and
eligibility guidelines carefully
Step 3 – Submit your work online by 15th June 2011
December 2, 2010 by caralee
LCF Performance – The Skin Tellers
Dates: December 06 2010
An exclusive evening performance and roundtable discussion in celebration of London College of Fashion’s partnership with The Royal Academy of Arts, Aware: Art Fashion Identity exhibition.
The Skin Tellers serves as the latest incarnation of Italian artist Claudia Losi’s Balena Project, which she began in 2004 with the creation of a 1:1 scale model of a fin whale, made from men’s suiting fabric. With the participation of fashion designer Antonio Marras the whale has now been transformed into a number of suit jackets, embroidered with the stories the whale collected along its journey and worn during this exclusively commissioned performance. The jackets will be on display as part of the GSK Contemporary exhibition at the Royal Academy.
Admission: FREE
RSVP: events@fashion.arts.ac.uk
Venue: Saint Mary’s Church, London, W1H 1PQ
Nearest tube: Edgeware Road / Marylebone
18:00 – 18:30
Registration & Mulled Wine reception
18:30 – 18:45
The Skin Tellers
A performance by Claudia Losi, in collaboration with Antonio Marras
19:00 – 20:00
Roundtable discussion Chaired by Christopher Breward with Jonathan Watkins, Mark Henderson, Philip Hoare, Tom Baker, Carol Alayne and Shaun Cole
Links:
GSK Contemporary Exhibition
http://www.royalacademy.org.uk/aware
November 16, 2010 by caralee
DesignCamp 2010 – New Ways of Transportation
You can read about the camp here:
http://www.designskolenkolding.dk/index.php?id=3277
Kolding Design Camp 2010
It has been 14 intense days here in Kolding! Students have worked with great spirit and a lot of power and intensity! There were all together 38 students from 10 countries – but I have no idea how many nationalities we had! E.g. from our school we had students from Cuba, Italy and USA among the “Danish” students ! And we had a Canadian from India!
Friday was the Grand Finale where the students presented their work for people from the industry and we had 3 specialists judging the students. The specialists were a professor from DTU,( the Danish Technical University) the design manager from DSB,( the Danish RailWay) and designer Cordy Swope from IDEO.
The students discovered that public transport needs to be more beautiful, more fun and more comfortable
E.g. some suggested a combination of busses and taxis, beautiful waiting rooms, e.g. family rooms/can (see above), busses with haddocks or with more room for your shopping. They were taught to ask questions such as How might we??
You can see the student projects here: http://www.designskolenkolding.dk/index.php?id=3298
Friday DSBs design director Mikael Fuhr praised the students that they had gone up in a helicopter perspective and had made “design before design.” – You have asked all the necessary questions and with this approach you will have much more influence as designers than if you just finish the processes by only making things beautiful, he said.
Hanne Lindegaard from the Department of Planning, Innovation and Management at DTU, was pleased to see the students’ team spirit. – When working with designers, I often feel that designers sell themselves. You have worked well together and presented the whole project with pride. It was a good experience, she said.
Cordy Swope said he never before experienced a design camp, where students have worked so well together as on this camp. He was pleased that the students had been crazy and brave enough to work on such difficult projects and thought that all had landed on their feet.
We will now put together all the material and will publish a book and a video is being edited at the moment. We will put that on the website.
August 16, 2010 by Hatty
London College of Fashion has been working with the University of Moratuwa since 2002 and, with funding provided by the British Fashion Council, an incredible opportunity arose for our MA Fashion and the Environment students to visit Sri Lanka; to experience and learn about the Sri Lankan fashion industry and gain an understanding of the sustainability challenges and opportunities within it.
And so on the 31st July four of our fantastic students – Beth, Kate, Saida and Zoe – set off to spend a month in Sri Lanka, conducting research which will inform their Major Projects and, to discover first-hand the contrasts between small cottage industry and large-scale factory manufacturing, interrogate traditional craft techniques and to gain an invaluable insight into workers experiences of co-operative enterprise and factory environments in the country, as well as much, much more…
The students have been travelling extensively during their time in Sri Lanka however the University of Moratuwa, located 19 kilometres south of the capital Colombo, is acting as a base for them during their visit. The University, one of 12 government-funded Higher Education institutions in Sri Lanka, boasts the brilliant Department of Textiles established just over 20 years ago. Dr Nirmali de Silva, Head of Department, has been responsible for leading new curriculum initiatives for Sri Lanka and will be providing support to our students throughout their time there.
This dynamic foursome have certainly been making the most of their time in Sri Lanka so far, taking the opportunity to develop a unique appreciation of diverse areas within the fashion supply chain including design, pattern construction, garment production and management, craft, photography and customer engagement.
And we’re lucky enough to be able to share in their experiences as they continue on this amazing journey. They’ve been doing us proud, blogging away since day one… and their posts make compelling reading! So why not follow their progress as they endeavour to develop a holistic understanding of the Sri Lankan fashion industry and each person’s role within it. Read their blog here:
http://connectsrilanka.blogspot.com/
… the CSF team are totally hooked!!
The students will also be presenting their research at the end of the project to the British Council and faculty members at the University of Moratuwa and on their return to London College of Fashion in September so keep checking the CSF bulletin for up-dates about this.
