ABSTRACT
During the last 30 years, fashion production and sustainability efforts have been largely activist- and industry-lead. Subsequently pursued as technical in nature, focused on “science-based” advances, in supply chains, material provenance, worker engagement practices, waste, and consumption.
Undergraduate fashion education sees students trained in building material outcomes/collections supporting the industry as it is. We argue that it is at the level of undergraduate fashion design education that we begin to change the thought that drives the larger systems.
This ongoing work is shifting curriculum from:
-teaching the craft of making to teaching the craft of use
-sustainable materials to material culture
-building collections to building alternatives to conspicuous production
-nurturing fashion designers to nurturing agency
-developing skills to developing self-confidence and values
-developing the knowledge of fashion to developing the language of science, ecology, decolonialism, and anthropology
We frame and detail how we have evolved our teaching to align with mounting ecological conditions, the state of fashion, student awareness and our own understanding of sustainability. We argue that by ‘staying with the good trouble,’ creative fashion design itself can invert the mantra of ‘solving problems’ to asking pertinent questions and using delight to inspire change.
