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University of the Arts London (UAL) is a pioneer of research into both design-led practice and the theoretical concepts underpinning sustainability across the fashion and textile sectors. Work focuses on design strategies for sustainability, textile recycling and upcycling, new manufacturing practices, systems and processes, greater understanding of consumer behaviours, and how to develop informed consumer engagement with fashion and textile products and their use. Research aims to empower designers through education and innovative best practice to make better informed decisions and choices, to question the status quo, create significant improvements and foster radical changes to the existing system. Publications and collaborative projects have impacted on industry, influenced policy debate and practice within Government, and enhanced public understanding of issues surrounding fashion and textiles sustainability.
Heriot-Watt University (HWU) led the development of a supportive infrastructure for the sustainable advancement of Technical Textiles (the fastest growing textiles sector in an industry worth $25bn globally and £3bn per year to the UK economy). 452 companies have had their products or processes created or improved. (e.g. patents awarded, new companies established and research and development sustained). The research transformed how Technical Textiles were understood as marketable products in their own right; from purely functional entities to materials that operate at the interface of design and technology. This enabled the development of new technologies that enhance wellbeing and quality of life, e.g. in the health and defence sectors.
Research in electronic textiles, described in five granted worldwide patents, is having impacts in the health, sports, defence and fashion sectors. The central impact claimed comprises bringing second generation electronic textiles into manufacture through knitted garments for older people for vital sign monitoring that have been commercialised by a spin-out company, SmartLife Technology Ltd, and the development of a conductive suit for the Ministry of Defence. Work in the unit has also underpinned the development of electrically heated gloves by EXO2 Ltd and a new test for a hip protector system based on an advanced 3D spacer structure by Baltex Ltd. Baltex Ltd and EXO2 Ltd also plan to use the technology to develop additional products.
`Threads of Feeling', a major exhibition of the textile tokens left with abandoned infants at the London Foundling Hospital in the mid-eighteenth century, was curated and based on original research by Professor John Styles. Displayed at the London Foundling Museum in 2010-11, it received 19,132 visitors in six months. A permanent online presence from 2011 extended its reach, and when it travelled to the USA in 2013, a further 46,619 people saw it over two months. Its public popularity, enthusiastic critical reception and role in inspiring textile practitioners in particular have all ensured significant public awareness of this previously little known aspect of social history.
This case study covers the work of five researchers at University of the Arts London (UAL), who have played a role in establishing a field of academically rigorous fashion research with a new relevance for industry and society. This has been achieved through innovative curatorial practices, publications, collaboration with practitioners, and interaction with broadcast, print and new media. The work of this group of academics has influenced the way fashion is presented and communicated within the museum, gallery and publishing sector, and in the fashion industry itself, both nationally and internationally.
Angela McRobbie, Professor of Communications at Goldsmiths since 1998, is an expert on urban fashion start-ups. Her research chimes with government interest in self-employment among `young creatives'. It has shaped policy and thinking at the DCMS and London Fashion Week, and the Centre for Fashion Enterprise in East London. She has played a direct role in the development of start-ups in Germany, Austria and Italy across the full range of creative industries. Many of her now classic articles are key references in policy debate, and her original work has `handbook status' for young independent fashion designers. She has shaped thinking on newcomers and start-ups in the context of high youth unemployment across Europe, on the rise of 'new fashion cities' and on urban cultural policies including Fashion Weeks.
Research on sustainability in this unit is helping to extend the lifetime of clothing and other consumer products (durables/ semi-durables) by informing government policy and influencing manufacturers to reduce waste and over-consumption. Our findings on key policy instruments have fed into new government guidelines, prepared in the context of EU legislation, on the potential to reduce waste by increasing product lifetimes. Our clothing sector research has been disseminated to policymakers and industry stakeholders through studies on public understanding of sustainable clothing, clothing behaviour and designing clothes for longevity. Together they have culminated in a Government-funded initiative to create an industry-supported Clothing Longevity Protocol.
Based at Birkbeck between July 2009 and June 2013 and undertaken in partnership with Instituto de Lengua y Cultura Aymara in Bolivia, the AHRC funded research project `Weaving Communities of Practice' has made a substantial impact on cultural life by creating new systems of cataloguing and digitising collections of Andean textiles and developing a digital, online database to manage complex visual information. Two museums in the UK and 10 in Latin America (Bolivia, Chile and Peru) have directly benefited from the project both in the development of the database and in the training provided; rural communities in Bolivia have also benefited from the recognition and recovery of their traditional craft.