ABSTRACT
I trained and am practised as a fashion designer, taught to evolve and apply skills and imagination in the creating of collections of desirable, press-worthy and sellable pieces. I have travelled across Europe, Asia and the US, leading teams in the making of runway, retail and wholesale collections, enjoying fantastic experiences and creating pieces for the enjoyment of wearing along the way. This journey has involved intersecting networks of makers, finance and press, to assimilate collection after collection as marks of success. But most of those pieces now lie redundant, probably in landfill, a slur on the landscape, owing to my ability to capture, but not to hold, the intention of design: to delight, connect and have meaning in the world. So I came to question what I have done to honour those whom I involved and to ask, what if, in the race for sales, I and others like me have lost the essence of what I set out to do and to be? In questioning fashion through the lens of sustainability, I have drawn together a collective of curious minds, connected through a deep engagement in nature and humanity as a means for exploring fashion’s expressions of our lives and times. In creating a place for exploration to take place, by establishing the Centre for Sustainable Fashion, now a University of the Arts Research Centre, I am now able to guide the world’s first academic research centre with sustainability as its starting point and fashion as its means of application.
