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.

Joanne Peacock

Joanne Peacock is a twenty two year old illustrator and fashion designer based in London. Her clients include Chicks on Speed, Oxfam, and the BBC to name a few.

List of Trend Forecasting Sites

Mpdclick is an online fashion trend forecasting service for design, fashion and retail professionals. They offer global creative intelligence which follows changing fashion and consumer trends.

MMU students You now have access to the MPD Click Trend site. To access the service, go to this link:
http://www.library.mmu.ac.uk/eresource/rbmpdc.php
Click on "Access the service"
Enter normal MMU Log in details
Note down MPD Click's special username and password (these are regularly changed)
Continue to service (MPD site), click on "sign in" (on the left) and enter the username and password that has just been noted down.

Cool Hunting interprets stuff from around the world. Their global team of editors and contributors sift through innovations in design, technology, art and culture for those looking for inspiration.

Trendwatching is a Netherlands-based forecasting agency which offers free trend updates to subscribers on a monthly basis

Gary Graham

Gary Graham Gary Graham Spring Summer garments are designed to be worn either individually or combined and layered interchangeably to create multiple wardrobe options and colour combinations. The incorporation of quilting, embroidery, patina and patchwork with chunky knits and leathers create a highly individualized look with impeccable finish. Signature prints and jacquards are designed to incorporate visual clues that articulate the underlying themes of each collection.

Si Scott

Si Scott is a UK based Illustrator. Although his intricate hand drawings look like he uses the computer, his unique style requires little to no technology to complete his drawing and believes:

"Computers are great as a tool but I do believe that a lot of people rely on them far too much."

Moo Printfinity

Moo Printfinity offer packs of bussiness cards each one displaying a different image. Interesting way to present a mini portfolio...

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.

Aware: Art Fashion Identity Exhibition

Aware: Art Fashion Identity exhibition at London's Royal Academy of Arts

2 December 2010 – 30 January 2011

The exhibition examines how artists and designers use clothing as a mechanism to communicate and reveal elements of our identity. The exhibition includes work by 30 leading international practitioners and is divided into four sections: Storytelling, Building, Belonging and Confronting and Performance.

Above image: Sharif Waked (Confronting and Performance)
Chic Point, 2003

In much of his work the Palestinian artist Sharif Waked confronts the difficulties faced by his people and the complexities of the political situation in the Middle East. In these video works, clothes designed to reveal areas of flesh

are seen alongside images of Palestinian men being subjected to body searches at Israeli checkpoints. Playing on the glamour of the catwalk, Waked uses the sense of identity and dignity associated with clothing to make a powerful political comment about its removal.

Bronwen Marshall

Menswear fashion designer Bronwen Marshall is interested in the tension between opposite forces; between the future and the past, between the natural and unnatural. This collection was inspired by the horrific facial injuries of World War I, where recognisable features were distorted and made abstract. She has also taken natural forms like horses and birds and combined their organic forms with geometric shapes to create powerful graphic menswear.

Anthony Burrill

Anthony Burrill’s persuasive, up-beat illustration and design has been commissioned by cultural, social and commercial clients around the world from New York, to London to Tokyo. He has also gained a following in the design world for his innovative collaborations with friends and fellow artists, designers, print-makers and film-makers. Burrill works across a range of media, including posters, moving image and three-dimensional work. He combines an instinctive handling of colour and composition with a witty approach to words. He regularly collaborates with musicians and animators to make films, music promos and animations, using his distinctive visual vocabulary and passion for fusing sound and image. His installations and 3-D work have been commissioned by Colette in Paris and The Design Museum in London among others.

Camille Cortet

Camille Cortet is a French designer based in Amsterdam that recently graduated from Design Academy Eindhoven. Nature is one of her biggest inspirations when it comes to fashion. More specifically, she is challenged by the idea of transformation and tries to find the parallelisms between animals and humans. The transformation project looks at the way animals change their color and skin or the behaviors they use when they want to capture the attention of their love companions. This includes a series of body-ornaments that are an attempt to adapt animal behaviors to our culture and to create new gestures and new body languages within clothing and ornaments.

itunube

itunube design studio works in projects of product design, window campaigns, research, events, design concept and accessories. Recent projects includes flowers made out of paper in 32 different variations. The studio also offers 10 second video clips which explore different themes for all to use as design inspiration.

Claire Scully

Claire Scully

Claire Scully (AKA The Quiet Revolution) graduated from the MA Communication Design degree at Central Saint Martins in 2006. She takes her inspiration from the often overlooked within everyday life and puts it through a process of mutation and subversion to create a mix of playful humour with sinister undertones of conflict. Using a mix of drawing, painting, screen-printing, photography, digital and more recently moving image, Claire’s personal work depicts the relationship between both herself and nature with her urban environment.

New Power Studio

New Power Studio

Established menswear stylist Thom Murphy and womenswear designer Ebru Ercon have joined fashion forces to become New Power Studio a unisex clothing brand. The brand focuses on casual relaxed clothing promoting their work through instillation and fashion video to produce a humorous, youthful and highly conceptual aesthetic.

Thom Murphy talks about why he thinks fashion videos are going to destroy fashion shoots >

James Long

James Long is best know for his knitwear and use of mixed textiles. His S/S 2011 collection features gradients on loose knits and psychedelic dip-dye shirts, a colourful and laidback collection inspired by a recent trip to Woodstock where spirited people inspired him.

Manish Arora

Manish Arora is known for his vivid palette of riotous colours and kitsch motifs. His garments combine contemporary silhouettes with a range of traditional Indian craft methods including embroidery, appliqué and beading.

Lorenzo Petrantoni

Lorenzo Petrantoni

Lorenzo Petrantoni was born in Genoa, Italy, in 1970 and then moved to Milan, where he graduated from a graphic-design school. He started working as an art director for Young and Rubicam France and later on moved back to Italy, where he now lives and works. His passion for the period of the late 1800s led him to create illustrations throu the assembly of images retrieved from old dictionaries of that period.

Tina Berning

Tina Berning is a Berlin-based illustrator. She started out by designing album covers for the music industry. Soon afterwards, she began to concentrate on her own picture worlds and found her expression in painting and illustration. Her work has won numerous awards and is published in countless renowned anthologies. In addition to designing campaigns for clients such as Coca-Cola, Smart, Mercedes-Benz, Shiseido and Davidoff, she works regularly for magazines such as Die Zeit, New York Times, Nylon, Playboy, SZ and Vogue.

Olivier Kugler

Olivier Kugler studied graphic design in Germany and Illustration as Visual Essay at the School of Visual Arts in New York. He exhibits his work and illustrates for editorial, book and design clients.
He was led to become an illustrator by comics he read as a child and was also encouraged by his artist father. The artists Hergé, Jean Giraud, Loustal, Otto Dix, George Grosz and David Hockney inspire him. His interest in travel and reportage photography is evident in his work style.

Nienke Klunder

Nienke Klunder is an artist who offers a provocative look at modern American popular culture. Born in California and raised in the Netherlands, Klunder has used her role as both European and American citizen in providing an outsider/insider stance on pop culture, giving her audience a one-of-a-kind perspective on women and their roles in society. Known for working in series and sequences (what she calls “visual essays”), Nienke Klunder tells stories in a cinematic fashion with her photographs. She also creates sculptures and drawings that are sprinkled into her exhibitions to fully communicate her stories.

C-Neeon

Berlin based fashion company C-Neeon are Clara Leskovar (textile designer) and Doreen Schultz (fashion designer). Their women's wear collections make extensive use of engineered digital prints; previously these were often very geometric and graphic, but recent collections have been more textured or softer.