Fashion and sustainability: design for change

This book examines how sustainability has the potential to transform both the fashion system and the innovators who work within it.

Sustainability is arguably the defining theme of the twenty-first century. The issues in fashion are broad-ranging and include labour abuses, toxic chemicals use and conspicuous consumption, giving rise to an undeniable tension between fashion and sustainability.

The book is organized in three parts. The first part is concerned with transforming fashion products across the garment's lifecycle and includes innovation in materials, manufacture, distribution, use and re-use. The second part looks at ideas that are transforming the fashion system at root into something more sustainable, including new business models that reduce material throughput. The third section is concerned with transforming the role of fashion designers and looks to examples where the designer changes from a stylist or creator into a communicator, activist or facilitator.

Includes a foreword by Paul Hawken, International authority on economic development, industrial ecology, and environmental policy.

Kate Fletcher is a Reader in Suatainable Fashion at London College of Fashion and director of design for sustainable fashion consultancy, Slow Fashion. Her work, in business, education, policy and research has been at the forefront of sustainability ideas and research practice in fashion for the last 15 years. She advises and paticipates in fashion and sustainability initiatives around the globe. Kate is author of 'Sustainable Fashion and Textiles: Design Journeys'.

Lynda Grose is a practising designer, consultant, educator and assistant professor at California College of the Arts. She co-founded ESPRIT's ecollection line, which was the first complete ecologoical clothing line developed by a major corporation. Lynda has advised clients across the non-profit, private and government sectors on issues of sustainability for almost two decades, including Patagonia, Gap, Sustainable Cotton Project, Aid to Artisans, Armenian Crafts Council and UNDP.