ABSTRACT
Materials play an emphatic role in our current understanding of what makes
fashion and textiles sustainable. They are, more often than not, our starting
point for change and a key commodity for farmer, designer, manufacturing
industry, consumer and recycler. Indeed materials have been at the centre
of both recent waves of interest in sustainable fashion and textiles. In the
first, in the early 1990s, natural and recycled fibres dominated trade shows,
trend predictions and industry journals. In the second, in the mid part of
the 2000s, organic, Fair Trade and rapidly renewable fibres have led design
innovation, with many companies basing their collections on choice of
‘alternative’ materials. The fact that materials seem to dominate our ideas
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about environmental and social responsibility is not really surprising as, after
all, our industry’s product is material ‘stuff’ – fibre, fabric, textile product
and garment. For all of these reasons this chapter is the first in this book.
