TED goes to Copenhagen this April

Becky Earley and Prof. Kay Politowicz have been accepted to speak at the Towards Sustainability in the Textile and Fashion Industry conference in Copenhagen in April.

Becky's paper is titled Upcycling Textiles: Adding Value Through Design and will propose new textile design theory for the practice of upcycling. The paper will reflect upon the Ever & Again project (2005 – 2010) that asked twelve designers to create recycled textile products that would have value added to them in the course of recirculation. The paper will consider: the research questions; the research methodologies utilised and developed; and the concepts that were developed by the designers in order to arrive at a definition of the upcycling of textiles, and a set of guiding principles for best practice. The paper concludes with visions for future practice, including the Twice Upcycled work which explores forward recycling concepts for the polyester economy.

Kay's paper is titled "We Cannot Afford Cheap Things": Teaching, Research and Enterprise and explores the relationship of teaching, practice-based research and enterprise in the education of textile designers. While UK Higher Education teaching budgets have been subject to cuts in funding, there has been a recent establishment in practice-based research activity amongst teachers on art and design courses that is just beginning to flourish.

This paper will outline several models for research into teaching, and teaching into research, that have been piloted through TED at Chelsea College of Art and Design.

We are always keen to stay in touch with our alumni, and fascinated to see the way our teachings about sustainable design thinking have an impact once our graduates go out into the world.

One recent graduate, Bridget Harvey, not only comes back regularly to TED to intern with us, but she is also organising the programme of talks at the Wapping Project's bookshop.

Bridget wrote her dissertation on Slow Design in 2009, (the abstract will soon be available to read on our new website coming soon!), and she developed her own 'manifesto' for what this means for textile production. It is currently being read and referenced by this years final year students.

Bridget has organised for a fellow Chelsea alumni, Tamasyn Gambell to speak about her work at The Wapping Project Bookshop on 2nd December. Tamasyn is a printed textile designer who works with ethically sourced materials, using environmentally sound processes to create bold accessories and stationary, that defy the stereotypical “eco aesthetic”. Using her experience working for large fashion companies and living and travelling the world, she draws on a myriad of influences to upcycle fabrics through print.

Amongst her other products are up-cycled luxury scarves and home textiles, and her company also supports a welfare project in Kerala.

Tickets are £5 and can be booked by emailing shop@thewappingproject.com

TED Member Clara Vuletich is off to Australia next week and will be giving some lectures and a few workshops at various places in Sydney and Melbourne.

Clara will be running a workshop on 'Digital Craft' techniques to the textile/fashion students at University of Technology Sydney (UTS) on Tuesday 12th October, and then a lecture on the sustainable fashion communities in London, on Wednesday 13th October. This is part of their programme 'Waste in the City', run by Prof. Marie O'Mahony.

Then to Melbourne, and Clara will be giving a lecture on the Upcycling Textiles project at Harvest Textiles and a one day workshop on screen-printed printed wallpaper.

Finally, Clara will head to RMIT and present the TED work to the textiles department staff on Tuesday 19th October.

Clara will be sending regular blog updates of her Australian adventures.

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

TED's D(urability)-Day

D-DAY! Friday 17th September 2010: After being inspired by the Martin Marjiela exhibition in the summer, TED staff decided to put their money where their mouths, or rather hands are, and get eco-creative in the print room at Chelsea. With reference to the beautiful white washed work on show at Somerset House, Kay Politowicz designed a day for TED's practice-based researchers to explore garment durability concepts using print techniques.

Garments: We were asked to dig around the bottom of our wardrobes over the summer, and come into college with clothes and accessories that we no longer wore. Some had stains on them, some were ripped and torn beyond repair, and some were 'freebies' deemed too ugly to wear. Others things that we brought in were too small, too big, too moth eaten, or simply too dull to be loved!

Techniques: We decided to keep it simple - white pigment and opaque binder, silver / gold / white / black foils, flocking paper - and use direct application techniques like hand painting, rollers, and open screens and stencils. The idea was to experiment to find simple, quick, but visually arresting ways to reinvent the clothes.

Outcomes: In the space of a few hours we came up with some really beautiful pieces. The things that caught my eye included the items pictured here...

Frances's unworn grey shirt printed with a stencil with opaque white
Kay's stained orange jumper rollered with glue and then foiled
Clara's plain white summer dress printed with an open screen and then foiled

Watch this space for the next installment - where we explore the ideas further by all remaking a set of identical items from a high street source - the next D-Day will take place in December 2010.

New upcycled work for Science Museum

The TED team is busy preparing some exciting new work which will be on show at an exhibition called Trash Fashion...Designing Out Waste in the Wellcome Wing at the Science Museum in London, from June till March 2011.

In true collaborative style, several members are working together to create two 'looks' - Melanie Bowles and Kathy Round are working on a beautiful digitally printed dress while Becky Earley has created one of her signature overprinted polyester shirts which will be shown with silver electroplated lace by Frances Geesin.

Kate Goldsworthy will also be exhibiting some new work using laser technology to resurface polyester fabrics as a seperate exhibit.

This has been a great opportunity for all the designers to push further the techniques and ideas explored during the Worn Again / Ever & Again project.

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.

Garment Lifecycles

Following on from our profiles of recent BA graduates, the next graduate we will be profiling is Julia Roebuck. Julia presented a strong conceptual collection of garments based on her explorations into upcycling and zero waste fashion.

She developed several mini-research projects in the lead up to her final collection. Inspired by a pair of old jeans that her friend was throwing in the bin, Julia began to explore ways to deconstruct and then reconstruct old clothes. A classic Burberry trench was reconstructed every evening for five consecutive days, and Julia wore it each day as a new garment, always using all the fabric at each stage to ensure she followed her zero-waste policy.

Julia also developed a series of digital prints using the old pair of jeans, which were folded and scanned to create new pattern, taking 3D garments and turning them into 2D textile samples.

Julia's studio work was a practical exploration of the ideas covered in her dissertation project which was titled Upcycling: An Uphill Struggle? an exploration into the development of Upcycling as a Model for Sustainable Garment Production, which looked at the huge amounts of clothing waste caused by fast fashion and the lack of consumer awareness for the re-use potential of old clothes.

Julia will be taking these ideas further as she goes on to do the MA in Fashion & Environment at London College of Fashion.

Julia's blog

http://juliaroebuckdesign.co.uk/about.htm

Slow Down Fashion ?

The degree shows are all finished now here at Chelsea and it has been an outstanding year for textiles. There was a wide variety of work, including several students who are exploring sustainability issues. It is not compulsory that students incorporate sustainability into their work however they are introduced to eco textile ideas from their first year, and this continues through to many of them writing their final year dissertations on the topic as well as exploring it on their studio work.

We will be featuring a few of these graduates on the blog in the next few weeks.

First up is Ania Szyszkiewicz, who produced a collection of simple dress shapes using second hand fabrics that she has quilted into squares, creating pixellated images of faces and the slogan 'say no'.

Ania really engaged with fashion and sustainability issues and also wrote her final dissertation on the topic. It was titled Slow Down Fashion – Utopia or the Way to Reconnect with the Environment and Ourselves? and explores the negative impact of fast-fashion on the environment and society. She analyses human needs in order to determine the reasons for why customers buy, keep and discard their clothes and also looks at possible solutions such as the slow design movement and case studies an Internet community of bloggers who incorporate the slow ideologies into their activities.

'Cultural Collage' project second stage

The second stage of the Cultural Collage project took place at Chelsea recently. As mentioned in a previous post, the project is a collaborative one between designers at UTS in Sydney, Australia and Universidad Diego Portales in Santiago, Chile. The first round involved all the groups choosing a plastic object and making some sort of 'design intervention'. These objects were then sent on, and we have just received the objects chosen by the Chilean designers.

The group had assempled in a room and the package sent from Chile was ceremoniously opened. The object that each designer chose by 'lucky dip' , is the one they now have to work on. Most of the objects seemed to be parts or forms from old shoes, either trainers or footbal shoes.

The designers have all taken their objects and will now go away and make another 'intervention' before it gets sent on to Australia.

New PhD student starts

The new Textiles Futures Research Group (TFRG) PhD student Jennifer Ballie has started her research and is based at the TED Project. Jennifer will be exploring the potential for a participatory design model which would allow consumers to upcycle fashion in their own homes thereby adding meaning and value to their wardrobes.

Jennifer will be looking at the ideas around co-design and experience design for inspiration and will also be running workshops with students from the University to explore the ways in which fashion consumers relate to their garments to help inform her research.

'Cultural Collage' project begins

The TED Project is part of an international collaborative design project called Cultural Collage. The project is led by TED's Visiting Professor Marie O'Mahony, and it will involve designers and design students from the University of Technology (UTS) in Sydney, Australia, Universidad Diego Portales in Santiago, Chile and TED designers and students.

Working around the central themes of recycling, mutli-disciplinary practice and cultural collaboration, the designers will be asked to choose a second-hand plastic object and this will then be sent to the group of designers in the next country to be worked on or transformed, while always maintaining its functionality. The reworked object will then be sent to the next group of designers to be worked on for a final time.

Participants will also be asked to keep a 'passport' of their ideas, a sketchbook which records their drawings and thoughts which will be sent on with the accompanying object.

TED recently hosted an introductory workshop with presentations from Marie OMahony, Kate Goldsworthy, Emma Neuberg and Prof. Kay Politowicz. Other participants include textile designer Katherine Wardropper and Nigel Bents, a graphic designer and tutor at Chelsea. We will post regular updates once the participants choose their objects and start working on them.

The final pieces will be exhibited as part of PassionTour, a design festival in Santiago in September 2009.

TED team member at London Design Festival

TED member Kate Goldsworthy was showing the most recent samples from her 'Materials Recreation' research project at 100% Materials at 100% Design last week. 100% Materials is a unique window into the world of materials for designers and architects that are looking to source the building blocks of the products and environments of the future.

Kate has been working on laser welding different recycled materials together and has created some inspiring new designs.

Kate also gave a presentation on Thursday 18th September on her latest upcycled material innovations at the Design Council's Greengaged event, along with other sustainable materialists. Greengaged was a series of events and spaces dedicated to sustainable design, organised in conjunction with [re] design and the Design Council.