no planet no fun

wetransfer presents a bunch of illustrators who have produced work to discuss what they would miss the most - if we had no planet!

Some inspiring and thought provoking work, check it out at: https://wepresent.wetransfer.com/story/no-planet-no-fun/

The Next Black: A Film About The Future of Clothing

With the objective of anticipating future washing needs and contributing to making the clothing industry more sustainable, ‘The Next Black’ is a 45-minute documentary that explores the future of clothing, produced by home appliance manufacturer AEG together with production company House of Radon. Some of the most innovative companies express their opinions on clothing and its future whilst answering questions such as: Will the mass consumption of clothing continue to escalate? Or will we return to creating quality and caring about what we wear? Will the future be centered around smart clothing and new technologies? Or will we find innovation within organic and traditional methods?

The progressive people that are answering these questions include Rick Ridgeway, environmentalist, mountaineer and Vice President of Environmental Initiatives at Patagonia one of the most sustainable companies in the fashion industry,Nancy Tilbury, co-founder and director of Studio XO, a company that specializes in the area where fashion meets technology, Matt Hymers, project manager of Team Elite System, one of adidas’ latest inventions (who demonstrates the system of woven sensors in the shirt that send real-time data of the players’ performance), Suzanne Lee, the founder of Biocouture Ltd, which works with materials grown from living organisms and lastly, Sophie Mather, Innovation Director of the Yeh Group which has pioneered a new way to dye clothes using zero water.

Junky Styling

Self taught designers Annika Sanders and Kerry Seager founded Junky Styling in 1997, inspired by the prevalence of recycling in places such as San Francisco and Tokyo and the resourcefulness of the people of Vietnam and Thailand. The company began in an exposed studio on a shop floor, reflective of a completely transparent working practice. Junky is an innovative design-led label. All garments are made from the highest quality second hand clothing, which is deconstructed, re-cut and completely transformed. The New Yorker described it as ‘an eccentrically chic line of mutant couture’. A focus and belief in individuality means that no two garments are ever exactly the same, a design concept which led Vogue to describe Junky as ‘high fashion street couture’

Kate Goldworthy

Kate Goldsworthy is a textile designer and researcher, working in the area of new finishing technologies, materials R & D and design for recycling. Her passion lies with tools for sustainability in the textile world, particularly the recycling and reuse of polyesters. She is currently completing a practice based PhD as part of the AHRC funded project 'Ever & Again; rethinking recycled textiles' with the Textiles Environment Design research cluster based at Chelsea College of Art & Design. Her project explores technologies that could potentially change the way we recycle our textile waste, placing the designer at the centre of a process of multidisciplinary design thinking and enterprise. By focussing on the concept of 'life-cycle design', her aim is to create beautiful and functional synthetic materials, while preserving them as monomaterials, suitable for future recycling.

Product’s physical longevity

Emotional attachment: Developing lasting relationships with our belongings. These days, a product’s physical longevity will not prevent it from being thrown away if the owner no longer wants it. To avoid unnecessary waste of otherwise useful goods, is it time we should start to form emotional bonds with them? An article by Jonathan Chapman (a Senior Lecturer at University of Brighton, UK) discusses how waste is produced by products failing to sustain an emotional attachment to their users.

Design and Emotions

A teacup that shivers in response to its tea going cold. A chair that warms when you sit in it, revealing its aspirations to be soft and comfortable. A pan whose handle becomes impossible to grasp when it becomes hot to the touch. The animate characteristics of these everyday objects allow them to facilitate meaningful interactions with their users by actively responding to their environment and evolving through their conditions of use. Tara Mullaney

Emotions guide, enrich and ennoble life – they provide meaning to everyday existence and render the valuation placed on life and property. Moreover, with the power to entice us to select one particular item from a row of similar products, emotions have a considerable influence on our purchase decisions. Not only are emotions involved in our reasoning about what product to buy, but they also have a significant effect on post-purchase satisfaction and product attachment. In addition, the emotions we experience daily, including those we experience in response to the designed objects that surround us, have been shown to be main determinants of our general well-being. (Marco van Hout)

Through interviews with designers and experts Design and Emotions discuss the emotional content and effect that products, brands and design have.

Suzanne Lee

Suzanne Lee, London based Senior Research fellow in the school of fashion and textiles at Central Saint Martins in London and creative director of BioCouture, creates garments from cellulose bacteria which grow in a bathtub using only green methods to address ecological issues and to explore the future of fashion design in conjunction with technology. She mixes a green tea solution with sugar solution and introduces yeast which then produces fibers, which in turn form a compact leathery like layer. This layer is then taken and dried out to take the final form. Lee also uses fruits and vegetables like blueberries and beetroot, completely natural products in order to make stains onto the fabrics creating patterns and designs.

Ada Zanditon

Ada Zanditon uses a range of organic and natural fabrics as well as innovative waste reducing and energy conscious solutions to create sculptural, elegant fashion. The fabrics she uses are ethically sourced and builds personal relationships with small units that manufacture the clothing. All the fabrics she uses are dyed with AZO-free dyes, which mean they won't turn into cancer causing chemicals.

Ivana Helsinki

Ivana Helsinki

Finnish IVANAhelsinki is an independent art and fashion brand.

Behind the brand is the artist Paola Ivana Suhonen whose work includes prints, graphics, short movies, art direction - everything that is involved with the visuals. Paola runs the family-owned company with older sister Pirjo.

BBC2 Programme - Cool Hunters: Levi's

TD4F Level 4 Students: Slow Fashion

BBC2 Programme - Cool Hunters: Levi's

Please watch this video as part of your initial research for unit 3.

Second programme of a three-part documentary on those employed to spot future trends in food and clothing. Christine Detlefsen and Frederik Willems are the designers behind Levi's 'Engineered' jeans range, which halted a slump that had left the company in debt. The program follows the duo scouring the world for new ideas and materials, to create a successful follow-up line. Please Note: you can only view when logged onto the MMU network.

Christopher Raeburn

Christopher Raeburn recycles militarily parachutes and turns them into whimsical creations for a rainy day. You can find his pieces in both Liberty and Browns in London.

Christopher Raeburn: Designer 2 Watch from SRmanitou on Vimeo.

Levi Strauss & Co

Levi Strauss & Co

According to Levi Strauss & Co, sustainability is deeply embedded into their products and are currently aiming to reach beyond the boundaries of the company to influence not only what people wear but the way people think, act and care for our planet. Their website presents current projects and ideas illustrating how the company is addressing these issues, including the current waterless project:

Big Ideas That Changed The World - Consumerism

Jonathon Porritt talks about how consumerism has created unsustainable inequalities and threatens to tear apart the fabric of our society. He explains why he thinks consumerism is now more powerful than any cause or even religion and how it has reached into every corner of the globe."Our love of shopping, quite literally, threatens the end of the world as we know it today. As our population grows and we go on consuming more and more, the eco-systems on which we depend are now close to collapse. It's all down to the power of modern consumerism". Jonathon Porritt

Oat Shoes

At Amsterdam’s International Fashion Week, Oat shoes presented its “Virgin Collection,” a line of bio-degradable shoes that can be planted in the ground to sprout trees. Its materials break down easily and the seeds are embedded somewhere inside the design. The concept won second prize at the Green Fashion competition. OAT Shoes was founded by designer Christiaan Maats. One of its goals is to help people connect with the environment in imaginative ways.

The North Circular

The North Circular

This luxury eco-friendly knitwear label was founded by English model Lily Cole and friends, Katherine Poulton, Alice Ashby and Isobel Davies. The brand rescues rare Wensleydale Longwool sheep, which graze on organic land whilst a team of knitting 'grannies, girls and a few strong men' turn their super-soft wool into ready-to-wear garments and accessories.

Barbara i Gongini

Barbara i Gongini is a Danish designer. She uses paper patterns based on geometric circles and squares to achieve sculptural and three dimensional effects. Garments are mainly made of jersey, textured knitted fabrics and recycled materials. If you interested in creative fashion photography check out the video below. The full version is on her website.

List of Eco-related websites

A list of websites with a specific interest in eco-related trends and themes:

Inhabitat is a weblog devoted to the future of design, tracking the innovations in technology, practices and materials that are pushing architecture and home design towards a smarter and more sustainable future. It was started by NYC designer Jill Fehrenbacher as a forum for investigating emerging trends in product, interior, and architectural design.

Treehugger is a media outlet dedicated to driving sustainability mainstream. Partial to a modern aesthetic, they strive to be a one-stop shop for green news, solutions, and product information. They publish a blog hosting weekly and daily newsletters, weekly radio interviews and regularly updated Twitter and Facebook pages.

Ecouterre is a website devoted to the future of sustainable fashion design. They are dedicated to showcasing and supporting designers who not only contemplate cut, form, and drape, but also a garment’s social and environmental impact, from the cultivation of its fibers to its use and disposal. Their ethos: To follow the evolution of the apparel industry toward a more environmentally sound future, as well as facilitate a conversation about why sustainable fashion matters.

Thread is a BBC online ethical fashion guide dedicated to eco style.

Centre for Sustainable Fashion Set up in 2008, the Centre for Sustainable Fashion challenges the way in which the fashion industry thinks, designs, practices and learns.

Karen Ingham

Artist Karen Ingham’s love for insects has produced a series of dresses designed to aid shrinking populations of bees and other pollinators, a growing environmental crisis that threatens our global food system. Featuring electron-microscopy images of pollen, Ingham’s “Pollinator Frocks” are treated with a nectar-like sugar solution that attracts and nourishes bees and their brethren. She has created outfits for separate occasions: day-wear to draw bees and butterflies and evening-wear for nocturnal critters such as moths.

Lika Vilkova

Lika Volkova is Co-founder and designer for SANS a fashion company that are producing eco friendly garments and are receiving rave reviews from many sustainable design communities. Despite this Lika disagrees and argues that her line is not an eco-fashion company for the simple reason she feels eco-fashion doesn’t exist.

“How can fashion possibly be good for the environment? You produce things – you make them. All garments, with the exception of secondhand clothing, produces waste, expends energy and exploits the earth – things that can hardly be called eco.”

The company offers digital patterns, which you can buy and download to make yourself - aspiring to green fashion and encouraging others to do the same. You can watch a video where Lika discusses her beliefs behind the concept at: SANS

Keep and Share

Keep and Share is a small UK knit company, dedicated to 'slow' fashion. Designing knitted garments outside trends for long-term use, which are less environmentally harmful.