Exploring sustainable fashion
Solutions for ultra-fast disposable and ultra-slow heritage fashion
Recent graduate Jessica Strain developed a fashion collection (Nature Reclaiming Spaces) for her final year project to showcase the two extremes of contemporary sustainable fashion – ultra-fast disposable fashion and ultra-slow heritage fashion.
Have you ever wondered what happens to your clothes when you throw them out? Do you donate them to charity shops, to textile rag banks, or simply throw them in with the general waste?
Her pieces include a digitally embroidered heritage kimono created from organic cotton flannel and hand-dyed in an indigo vat, then digitally embroidered with viscose threads. The kimono has been designed to be passed down through generations. At the other end of the scale, she designed a kimono made from crepe paper, showcasing how non-woven cellulose materials can be used to create ultra-fast fashion garments, intended for disposal after one use.
Sustainability is at the heart of Jessica’s design process for her collection. She experimented with natural dyeing using onion skins and spent hundreds of hours embroidering and beading her pieces by hand.
Merging the old with the new, the delicate with the bold – this is what our planet needs for a fresh start.
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