Forward and Up

Becky Earley and Kate Goldsworthy will be in conversation next Wednesday 5th June at 5: 15pm, in the Lecture Theatre at Chelsea, as part of the CCW Graduate Encounters series.

The presentation will trace the eleven years of conversations and collaborations – Becky and Kate worked on research projects together before Kate's PhD project began in 2005 – and will look at the way in which their ideas evolved along parallel paths, both approaching the recycling of textiles from different creative perspectives.

Kate’s PhD Material Re-creation: forward recycling of synthetic waste for the luxury textile market , uses laser technology to create new textile surface treatments and applications, enabling a monomaterial approach to design for reuse of textiles.

Becky’s Top 100 project work explores the reuse of polyester clothing, and has created new theory for upcycling textiles. Each set of shirts has been subject to experiments which explore ecodesign theory in practice. Technically the project has demonstrated upcycling polyester through the use of: digital overprinting; digital dye sublimation overprinting; heat photogram overprinting; laser etching and welding (with Kate); sonic cutting and slitting; detachability and multifunction; low launder; locality; emotional durability, and most recently co-creation.

In 2008 Becky and Kate created the Twice Upcycled shirts together (pictured) – taking recycled shirts from Becky’s Top 100 project and giving them another new life. The presentation will focus on this work, exploring the way in which the collaboration inspired the researchers to go on to pursue new independent work.

Becky Earley will be talking about her use of digital technology within her textile practice, at Metropolitan Works next Wednesday 12th January.

Metropolitan Works offer a whole host of digtal technologies including digital printing, 3D printing, laser and water jet cutting. The event will also include a tour of these facilities.

The event is free and you need to book here.

Eco Textiles in Tilburg

The work of several TED members is currently on show in reTHINK!: Eco Textiles at the Audax Textile Museum in Tilburg, Holland.

The show is an overview of the lifecycle of textile production from a sustainability point of view and includes the work of independent designers as well as commercial textile companies from the Netherlands.

Several of us showed pieces that were made during the Ever & Again project, or work that was developed after, in response to all the ideas and new thinking the project generated.

Becky Earley is showing one of her upcycled polyester Top 100 shirts, Mel Bowles is showing her Wallpaper Dress, Clara Vuletich is showing her Love & Thrift coat and Gary Page is showing two items from his wonderful 1-2-5 Collection of dresses.

Kate Goldsworthy, who is also showing a new garment made using laser technology to re-invigorate polyester, is also running a one day workshop on using laser technology for upcycling in January.

There is a good review of the show in Dutch site Design.nl.

TED's Sustainable Design Strategies At Work

Becky Earley has recently been out and about promoting TED's Sustainable Design strategies to commercial clients. In March this year Becky introduced the strategies to designers from the Gucci Group at a TFRC event, and in May to a larger range of professionals at a PPR group event in Cambridge.

Last week's workshop at the Sustainable Fashion Academy in Stockholm, Sweden, was attended by twenty delegates from industry. They were designers, marketing and innovation managers from a broad range of Swedish companies, including H&M.

Yesterday’s one-to-one sessions were part of Becky’s return visit to the Future Factory project in Nottingham, based at Nottingham Trent University. Five local businesses had 40 minute sessions to further explore sustainable design concepts that they had been introduced to in the spring this year.

For all the delegates the work and information around materials and manufacturing are so important, but being introduced to the ‘soft’ eco design concepts prove to be just as useful. One Swedish participant wrote back last week:

“I thoroughly enjoyed yesterday… When I got home last night, I honestly couldn't stop thinking about the Seven Design Strategies that Becky presented during the day and the in particular the ideas on ‘Replace the Need to Consume’ and ‘Design Activism’. From my perspective those two areas seems to be as much about communication as production and with my background in communication, pr and marketing those ideas triggered my creativity. After listening to Becky I believe that there are plenty to do in those areas as well...”

If you would like more information about the consultancy workshops TED run, please contact Clara on ted@chelsea.arts.ac.uk

Roundtable Discussion, EFS Paris

Last week's roundtable discussion proved to be an interesting experience for TED member Becky Earley. Eleven designers / experts were on the platform at the Ethical Fashion Show in Paris, for two hours, discussing new textile technologies and their potential for creating more sustainable products.

The discussion began with a presentation by designer Florence Bost who gave a succinct overview of the fields of study and activity - a kind of history of smart textiles – which briefly covered the 1940s to the present day. The other speakers, each talking about their work in turn for five minutes, addressed:

Interaction design and smart clothing (Francesca Rosella, Cute Circuit)

Upcycling textiles and technologies (Becky Earley, TED)

LED / wind sensitive textiles (Stijn Ossevort)

Detailing menswear to prolong life (Doris Hartwich)

How luxury brands are building a new materials resource to help them with product design innovation (Alexandre Cappelli, speaking about Louis Vuitton)

PUMA’s better shoebox concept – a fabric bag – and the lifecycle analysis project (Karsten Bleymehl, Material ConneXion)

The current state of fibre development and impacts through manufacture and usage (Michael Kininmonth, Lenzing Fibers)

Carbon detecting textiles and the The Climate (CO2) Dress (Hanne Louise Johannesen, Diffus)

Fashion aromachology and our future well being (Dr Jenny Tillotson)

Artistic material explorations (Tzuri Gueta)

Questions from the floor ranged from concerns over the impacts from battery powered smart textiles at the end of life stage, to whether smart textiles were being used for ‘green washing’ by big brands.

It was a short but sweet session, and a real pleasure to hear from designers and experts who are passionate about the future of textiles. To end the roundtable Dr Isa Hofmann (chair) asked the experts to offer one word to the audience, a guiding principle if you like, to inspire progress and innovation. The words were:

Education… Reduce Waste… Dematerialise… Avoidance… Detailing… Accidental… Appreciation… Lifestyle… Well Being… Desireability...

Image: TED’s summary slide from the Worn Again / Ever & Again project, 2010

TED Designers Featured in new Eco Fashion Book

Becky Earley and Kate Goldsworthy are featured in Sass Brown's new book about sustainable fashion, titled 'Eco Fashion' and published by Lawrence King this month.

Becky and Kate collaborated on two shirts in 2008, as part of the Top 100 and Ever & Again projects. The over-printed and laser treated polyester garments represent an approach they termed 'twice upcycled'. You can learn more about the project at www.upcyclingtextiles.net, and of course in Sass Brown's new book...

"Brown’s remarkable overview of ecological and socially responsible work deals with the subject of sustainability in fashion in a way that for once does justice to the true diversity of the pioneering and entrepreneurial work done within a field too much engaged in sustaining models and practices from which there may be nothing or little to sustain. It is bold attempt to encourage real change in fashion."

Dr. Clemens Thornquist, Chair of Fashion Design at Boras, Sweden

Round Table Discussion at the Ethical Fashion Show, Paris

Becky Earley will be contributing to a round table discussion next Monday, 27th September 2010, at the Ethical Fashion Show in Paris. She will be talking about upcycling textiles and the creative and innovative approaches that the TED designers explored through the Ever & Again project.

"Sustainable management is no longer a marginal phenomenon; it has become the starting point for companies that wish to reposition themselves by fully accepting the responsibilities they carry for the environment and for society...

"Textile innovation is unequivocally compatible with the principles of sustainable management. The round table on innovation aims to prove that the new technologies and the innovative new materials in the field of intelligent textiles that have appeared during the last decade are compatible with the criteria of sustainable management (social and environmental responsibility).”

Dr Isa Hofmann, quoted above, is an expert in the field of new, innovative textile technologies. She will lead the session, and will be joined by:

Florence Bost, textile designer based in Paris

Michael Kininmonth, Lenzing Fibers

Hanne Louise Johannesen, Danish design company Diffus

Francesca Rosella, founder of CuteCircuit

Stijn Ossevort, wearable computing

Karsten Bleymehl, Director Library & Materials Research Material ConneXion Cologne

Alexandre Cappelli, Head of Environment Affairs Department, LVMH

Doris Hartwich, German designer of menswear

and Tzuri Gueta, textiles designer

For those of you who will be in Paris next Monday, the discussion will take place between 2pm and 4pm at -

Cité de la Mode et du Design

34, Quai D’Austerlitz

75013 Paris

The work of several TED Members including Becky Earley, Melanie Bowles and Clara Vuletich is to be included in an exhibition called reTHINK! at the Audax Textile Museum in Tilberg, Holland.

The exhibition will be exploring the lifecycle of textiles from a sustainability perspective and will include examples from fashion, interior and product design. other designers being showcased include Christien Meindertsma, Atelier NL, Suzanne Lee and Kate Goldsworthy.

Becky Earley will be making a new piece of work based on her Top 100 series over the summer so watch this space!

New work from TED members has gone on show at the Science Museum's new exhibition Trash Fashion: Designing out Waste which is open till March 2011. We attended the launch last week and the exhibition is fantastic!

Aside from the pieces from TED members, there is a new piece from Suzanne Lee's BioCouture project who makes garments from fabric that she 'grows' and a new knitted piece from Sandy Black's Considerate Design project.

There are also some really insightful videos of interviews with some of the designers and their working process.

More images here.

Several TED members were at the Slow Textiles Conference at Stroud last weekend. Emma Neuberg, Clara Vuletich and Becky Earley all gave presentations on their interpretation of Slow Textiles.

Emma Neuberg's presentation was first and was titled 'Why Slow, Why Now?'. She talked of her personal motivations for setting up the Slow Textiles Group (STG) which included her frustration at trying to find teaching/research work in universities and colleges that are prepared to consider a broader notion of design that includes the psychological, cultural, and environmental aspects. She then went on to explain the cultural and material reasons for setting up the group including the fact that by 2015, new legislation has meant that no textiles will be allowed to go into landfill in the UK. By teaching what she calls 'Extended Life Textile Techniques', people will gain new skills to use in their everyday lives and possibly contribute to a reduction in landfill.

She also highlighted the fact that there is a large, growing demographic of people (mainly women) over 50 years of age, who already have traditional textile skills and who are keen to connect with others. Emma's suggestion was that groups like the STG could be spaces for people to connect and potentially contribute to the re-use/upcycling of all the wasted textiles being generated.

Clara Vuletich discussed her emerging design practice as a 'slow design practitioner' and how there are three elements to her practice - producing hand printed wallpapers/textiles, researching and writing about sustainable textile design and working collaboratively with textile collective bricolage. Crucial to all of this design activity is reflection, and Clara emphasised how important this is to any type of 'slow' design activity.

Becky Earley then presented her Top 100 project, a slow fashion project over 10 years. Although she has presented this project to many audiences before, this time it was intertwined with her own personal life journey and how events in her personal life have been reflected and integrated into her design practice.

This was a major theme of the day - for any designer wanting to integrate sustainability and 'slow' principles into their design practice, that old saying is true - 'the personal is political'. How you live your life both outside of work and within it, carries the same values and qualities of environmental respect, balance, responsibility, openness and reflection.

For more information on 'Slow Design,' see Slowlab, Alistair Fuad-Luke's website SlowDesign or Emma Neuberg's Slow textiles Group.

Image: www.slowtextiles.org

TED Postcard from Tel Aviv 3

Becky Earley wrote: Today was spent in a group crit with 15 of the 60 final year students from Shenkar College. We looked at a wide range of work, but in summary the highlights for me were:

- a collection of cube partition / lighting objects made from recycling black drinking straws (pictured)

- a project using pressed and dried flowers that focussed on the ghostly remains, digitally printed onto fabric with the background devored away leaving a deconstructed floral print on the cloth

- a carpet concept based on childhood feelings of lying in wild flower meadows, and rendered into sculptural form through felting and using factory discarded threads

- and a collaboration between a weave student and a print student who have created exquisite modern / antique interior fabrics using stunning ink drawings and fabrics woven using linen and metal fibres.

Tomorrow I meet a group of the tutors to reflect upon the workshops and lectures, and discuss what sustainable textiles means to them.

TED Postcard from Tel Aviv 2

Becky Earley wrote: Today I gave my lecture to the whole college and talked about some of my projects from 1994 to today. I also introduced the TED strategies and the Design Stories. The talk went well, and I was pleased that it was not only the textile students who were inspired by it - the industrial design students, graphics, and fine art students also came along.

After lunch I gave a Top 100 workshop, with 12 of the textile students using lace to overprint polyester shirts from my collection. It is 7.10pm now, and they are still queuing up for the transfer presses to finish their creation before 8pm. Attached here is one by Ela - a work in progress. This shirt was given to her by her aunt and she brought it in to show me, but I made her work on it!

TED Postcard from Tel Aviv

Becky Earley wrote: It's Day 1 of the 'Masterclass in Sustainable Textile Design', Shenkar College of Engineering and Design, Tel Aviv. I've had a lively session with students discussing the Textile Lifecycle lecture in the morning, followed by 6 hours of the interconnected design thinking workshop in the afternoon. Twenty students worked through ideas about fast and slow, ethical production, new technologies, multifunction, and systems and services design, to come up with concepts for new upcycled textile buisnesses.

The group worked in 3 teams and generated ideas about: upcycling and loaning umbrellas in Tel Aviv for the tourist industry (it has been raining here a lot lately!); a new website representing a collective of designers working with upcycling but also co-ordinating local waste streams for local industry; and a city centre project about re-designing business parking spaces to be multifunctional and to become urban garden spaces at the weekends where festivals for swishing could take place. I did have time for lunch - the head of textiles, Uri Tzaig, took me for lunch to Tel Aviv's new port, to see the Israel fashion design label comme il faut and their design centre which plays host to a number of stylish and enterprising businesses.

More to follow on Becky's time in Tel Aviv shortly.

The latest edition to Becky Earley's ongoing slow fashion project - Top 100 is now online. For the Taking Time exhibition at Birmingham Gallery last October, Becky developed a 'digital book' which documented the Top 100 project over its ten year life span.

These images are from the Template shirt collection created specifically for the Taking Time show.

Becky Earley and Kay Politowicz have been invited to deliver a series of workshops and lectures to design students at Weissensee Kunsthochschule, Berlin in April 2010.

TED's 'Design Stories' workshops will be open to a multi-disciplinary student audience including fashion, product and textile design students.

TED has been invited by Dr. Zane Berzina, Professor for Conceptual Development of Materials and Surface Textiles at the college.

Ever & Again project completion

The Ever & Again:Rethinking Recycled Textiles project officially ended on 30th November 2009, after four years. The project has seen the development of ground-breaking research into ways that designers can upcycle textiles and has included an exhibition of design prototypes in 2007 and a major symposium in 2008.

The final outcomes from the project are being compiled into a publication, Upcycling Textiles which is due out later this year, edited by Rebecca Earley, with a foreword by John Thackara.

The publication will include 22 illustrated essays by leading international academics and designers including: Dr Otto von Busch, Professor Stephen Scrivener, Dr Dorothy Maxwell, Cyndi Rhoades , Tamsin LeJeune, Dr Emma Neuberg, Helen Carnac, Amy Twigger Holroyd, Dr Jessica Hemmings, Kate Goldsworthy, Clara Vuletich, Professor Marie O’Mahony, Dr Lucy Norris, Dr Jo Heeley and Professor Mike Press and Professor Kay Politowicz.

It will be available through the TED website and there will be more information shortly.

Thrifty approaches to textile reuse in Japan and UK

Becky Earley has been up in York presenting at the Japanese Sashiko textiles conference which coincides with a major exhibition of sashiko textiles at York Art Gallery. Becky presented her Top 100 upcycled polyester shirt project, which is currently on show at the Taking Time: Craft and the Slow Revolution exhibition in Birmingham.

The word 'sashiko' means small stitches and the curator of the exhibition Michele Walker, had studied English quilting techniques and saw the similarities - both techniques had arisen out of necessity and had involved women who were creating new garments from old clothes and textiles, mostly cotton workwear. As Michele Walker explains, "Sashiko evolved from a need
to conserve and repair garments at a time when cloth was a precious commodity".

Becky's pioneering work re-using polyester blouses is set in a completely different historical and cultural context to Japanese sashiko, however the same motivations apply - how to reuse textile waste and to conserve resources. However, Becky has taken on one of the hardest challenges for a designer in the current context - how to re-use the excessive amounts of polysters which exist in the UK, as over 50% of the world's fibre production is petroleum based.

Becky's Top 100 work has also been made into a 'digital book' which is currently showing alongside the pieces in Birmingham, and the book will be available online shortly.

Craft and Slow exhibition opens with TED member work

What would a Slow fashion collection look like? Instead of the fast paced fast-fashion cycle of a new collection every three weeks, how can designers work against this system? Becky Earley has been working on a ten year fashion collection called Top 100, and the collection is now on show at the exhibition Taking Time: Craft and the Slow Revolution at Birmingham City Gallery.

The work also features in a podcast interview of Carl Honore, the author of the seminal book In Praise of Slow, who is reflecting on the exhibition and the theme of Slow and Craft.

Student Workshops in Hamburg

TED recently gave a presentation and led a design workshop for textile students at HAW college in Hamburg, as part of the Ever and Again: Rethinking Recycled Textiles research project, that Becky Earley has been leading.

Becky, Kate Goldsworthy and Clara Vuletich gave an evening presentation to students titled IMPACT: The Lifecycle of Textiles and the following day a workshop which explored the design themes being explored in Ever & Again, including Upcycling, Ethical Production, Short/Long life, Systems and Services Design and New Technologies.

Students worked towards developing an idea for a 'real-world 'concept, or new business model, which combined some or all of these design strategies.

Conversations on (a) Slow Craft

The TED team recently took part in a small research project devised by Becky Earley, to coincide with the Taking Time: Craft and the Slow Revolution exhibition which is opening at Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery in October.

The idea behind Conversations on (a) Slow Craft was to take a group of textile designers and send them on a barge trip along a canal, while they discussed Slow and what it means to them and their practice as textile designers. The TED group were also joined by wallpaper designer Linda Florence, furniture maker David Gates and the whole conversation was audio recorded by artist Russell Martin.

The group were then led through a workshop in Japanese Sashiko embroidery by Emma Neuberg, which is part of her Extended Life textile workshop series.

The idea is for the format to be repeated at the different cities where the Taking Time exhibit tours to. A group of jewellers may all travel together on a horse and cart and talk about Slow or a group of ceramicists on bikes.

The audio recordings and transcriptions of the conversation will be available soon. In the meantime, there are some previous audio recordings of conversations between artists about Slow on the Taking Time website.