Dissertation Proposal part 2 on Sustainable Fashion

DHTP Dissertation Proposal Part 2 & DISSERTATION TEMPLATE PART 2 & 3


Please save as a word.doc and change the title to your full name, e.g.: John Smith.doc - do not email the proposal without changing the file name. Copy Paste and Amend from your proposal part 1.

Sample template



Student Name Sarah Mowbray

Course Textiles

Supervisor name Paula Duplock

Email address (Supervisor)

Date (update as you go) 14/03/2011



Using the template

Enter your personal details in the box above. The email address will be used by your tutor and others to contact you. You must check this regularly for news on tutorial dates.

Read each heading carefully and type into the text box below.

Email your proposal to your supervisor and load it up on Safe Assignment of the VLE

Total final word count for Part 3: between 2000-2500 words (excluding bibliography).

Title (max 50 words)

This should give an outline of your research topic. If appropriate use a title and a subtitle. You need to get specific and refine the title to capture your research as best as possible.



Will Sustainable Fashion Become The Future of Fashion? -

How Are Current Designers Adapting to the Use of Re-cycled Materials in their Designs?

(Will it be as successful as previous Centuries?)



Summary (Stage 2 = max 1000 words, Stage 3 = 1500)

Here you should indicate what you already know about the topic. You should already have done some reading around it. Summarise this reading with regards to the research topic and describe the research area. This will provide the basis for a literature review.



Sustainable Fashion is a topic i have become immensely interested in. The more research i do on this topic, the more i am learning about how important this way of designing will become in the very near future. Sustainable Fashion is just a small part of the growing trend of Sustainable Design. This is where a product/garment is produced with careful consideration to the environment and the factors regarding social issues it may have in its lifetime. Sustainable Fashion has been around for Centuries. From the book by Janet Hethorn and Connie Ulasewicz, I read an essay written by Linda Welters: The Fashion of Sustainability. Within the essay she talks about how economical resources was the normal way of life from as early as the 1600's. It was not initially the designer of fabrics from the early periods that made fashion sustainably, but it was the people wearing the fashion that made them recyclable and reusable to adapt to on-going trends. It took a long time to produce fabric and that is why only the wealthiest of people could afford to participate fully in fashion. The poorest people however, would re-model their existing clothes to fit in with the changing trends. Some of the wealthy would also do the same and they sold un-wanted items In the second hand market. This raises the fact that if it was so easy to do in the past, where along the time line did we stop doing this? And how can we re-start it with a bang??!.... I have researched some current designers, who are adapting to the eco-fashion trend, such as Katherine Hamnett, Bora Aksu, Rebecca Earley, and Kathleen Tesnakis. Whether established or more recent, these Designers are to name but a few who are ready to steer us into the eco-fashion world. These designers have already made a huge impact on the design world and they have shown how possible it is to transform re-cycled materials into creative garments. Kathleen Tesnakis is a designer who uses 100 per cent re-cycled cashmere sweaters to transform them into individually designed pieces such as dresses, skirts etc. Tesnakis has received a few awards for her creative eco-fashion, one of which is the ACC award of excellence in 2007. Tesnakis takes careful consideration into her pieces, especially with investigation into where her raw materials come from. While browsing local news, i discovered a Santa Cruz designer called Emily Christensen, who is the designer of the women’s clothing line FILLY. She was invited to Canada’s Eco-Fashion week in Vancouver, British Columbia, on February 24 2011. Her collection of rich and vibrant dresses had the audience stunned. This is the sort of people that would be incredibly helpful in my research as they could outline how exactly they are able to transform vintage materials into modern masterpieces. Junky Styling is another modern sustainable fashion site I stumbled upon from reading a few articles. It has massively and successfully adapted to sustainable design. It was founded by self-taught designers Annika Sanders and Kerry Seager in 1977. Their inspiration came from the prevalence of recycling in places such as San Fran Sisco and Tokyo and the resourcefulness of the people of Vietnam and Thailand. Junky is a highly innovative design-led label. All garments are made from the highest quality second hand clothing, which is deconstructed, re-cut and completely transformed. A focus and belief in individuality means that no two garments are ever exactly the same, a design concept which led Vogue to describe Junky as a 'high fashion street couture'. I have also looked into a few journalists who write about fashion for a living. They have different views and opinions, but they all have one thing in common which is that they believe in Sustainability within fashion design. I came across Suzy Menkes who has been head fashion reporter and editor for the International Herald Tribune since 1988. Menkes declares that ''green is the new black''. She has created a metaphor for sustainable fashion and this metaphor creates a useful analogy between eco-friendliness and fashion. Wendyrosie Scott is freelance broadcast journalist, writer, lecturer and consultant based in London. She has some excellent insights into the ''Old becoming the New again’’; by this she means that recyclable fashion is back and is a rapidly growing trend. An increasing appreciation for vintage style is driving consumers not only to thrift stores and gypsy festivals, but to high-street shops like Liberty and Marks and Spencer’s. Scott believes that the drive from consumers adapting to eco-fashion is creating the styles of the future where parts and pieces of garments find clever homes in restyled, recycled clothing. From all the resources I have looked at so far, I am confident that I will be able to answer my proposed title question in depth.



(Continued over)

Aims: Why are you doing this? (max 100 words)

These are a general statement on the intent or direction for the research – why are you doing this? Refer to theoretical aims and practical ones where relevant. For example: How might this improve your design practice? How does it contribute to the discourses within your discipline? Who else might benefit from your research? Is it aimed at an academic or a wider audience? What do you hope your research will achieve? State your aims concisely, perhaps using bullet points.



• First of all, I will do a bit of background research into how sustainable fashion was used from the 1600’s to the present day, and how successful it was.

• From that, I will investigate some current designers who are adapting to eco-fashion at present.

• I will then look into how they are making these changes and if they are finding it to be successful or unsuccessful.

• I will also look at how they use these vintage materials and where they retrieve them from.

• I want to make my research interesting and accessible to my current and future use of yarns and materials, which will hopefully inspire me to become one of the ‘future eco-fashion/textile designers’.



Objectives: What will you produce? (max 100 words)

Objectives are the things you will produce in doing the dissertation, e.g. a review of the relevant literature, a collection and discussion of people’s experiences/opinions, an assessment of a debate or collection of work etc.

Like your aims, these will help your tutor (and you) assess your success. They may change over time but aims and objectives are useful to keep you focussed. Again be concise here – you may want to use bullet points.





• Research current designers who have adapted to sustainable designing

• Send e-mails to these designers, explain what I am doing and ask for some feedback on what they are doing at present with eco fashion, ask for some examples of their work, and get some interviews set up.

• Find local outlets that are using sustainable fashion

• Investigate these outlets, find somewhere that would be happy for me to shadow them for a couple of days so that I can really get to understand the process of using recycled materials

• Find examples of sustainable fashion

• Compare and contrast sustainable fashion with non-sustainable fashion

• Try and find ways to show effects from using re-cycled materials with non-re-cycled materials

• Gather information from people who use sustainable materials and compare with people who use non-sustainable materials

• Research books and journals from past and present



Keywords (min 5 and max 10)

This should be a list of key terms that help us see if you are aware of where your research ‘sits’. For example, if you are writing on depictions of women in advertising your list might include ‘gender, feminism, representation, advertising, semiotics’. Keywords will help you when doing electronic searched for research materials.



• Sustainability

• waste

• Eco-friendly

• Vintage

• Re-cycle

• Re-use

• Re-invent

• Production

• Consumption

• Environment



Expanded Bibliography (min of 24 books, articles, websites)

Place here alphabetically a list of materials which you intent to use for you dissertation. Format these according to the Harvard Method.

Please make sure you have critically assessed these as being appropriate for your topic and write a short paragraph for each one summarising the content and its relevance to your research area.





• Black, Sandy. 2008. Eco Chick: The Fashion Paradox. Black Dog Publishing



Current reviews of this book look promising. They state that it is a “must have” book for

Designers and fashion students who want to discover the world of eco fashion. I will definitely invest in this book for my research.



• Brown, Sass. 2010. Eco Fashion. Lawrence King Publishing, September 2010



I think this will be a good book to buy because it is very up to date as it was published

this Year. It talks about the different current designers who are making a difference with Eco-Fashion.



• Fehrenbacher, Jill. 2005. Inhabitant. Website; http://www.inhabitant.com



This website was created by Fehrenbacher so that she could document her endless

Search for new ways to improve the world through forward thinking, high tech and

Environmentally conscious design. On this website i also found a link to Stella

McCartney and her eco-friendly lines.

http://inhabitat.com/stella-mccartney-vegetarian-fashion/

She is great designer to look into for my research as she is very successful with her

Vegetarian fashion lines.



• Fletcher, Kate. 2008. Sustainable Fashion and Textiles: Design Journeys. Earthscan UK And USA



This book looks interesting for my dissertation research as it is about lifecycle sustainability Impacts of fashion and textiles, practical alternatives, design concepts and social innovation.



• Gwilt, Alison and Rissanen, Timo. 2011. Shaping Sustainable Fashion. Earthscan Ltd.



I came across this book that has just been released, but unfortunately the DJCAD Library do not have it in stock yet. From the blurb written about this book, it looks into use how the production use and eventual disposal of clothing becoming environmentally damaging.

The book synopsis states that it offers a practical guide to the ways in which designers

Are creating fashion with less waste and greater durability. A great source in which

It will point me in the right direction towards understanding how current designers

Think about sustainability.



• Hethorn, j and Ulasewicz, C. 2008. Sustainable Fashion; Why Now. Fairchild Books



This is an insightful book that covers a lot of areas within sustainable fashion, such as, factors, effects, who to consider, what to consider and how to change the readers thinking into a green way of thinking.



• Hubble, Leesa. 2010. Re-Fashion, Re-Purpose; Designing With Sustainable Style. Surface Design Journal. v 34 no 3(Spring2010) p16-21



This article goes into great detail about present designers using re-cycled materials to

Create sustainable fashion.



• Kilby, Jay. 2009. Eco Fashion Fabrics. Copper string Journals.



An insightful article on eco-friendly and non-eco-friendly fibres. This is good for me for many reasons as it will help me for the dissertation, but also with my current studio practice as I want to learn more on which fibres are better for the environment.



• Lee, Matilda.2007. Eco Chick: The Savvy Shoppers Guide to Ethical Fashion. Octopus



This may be a good book to read up on as it will offer me information on how other people like the author of this book, feels about eco fashion.



• Lee, Suzanne. 2005. Fashioning the Future. United Kingdom, Thames and Hudson Ltd.



An insightful book that looks at the future of fashion, by looking at the history of fashion.

This is exactly what I want my dissertation to consist of. Within the book it has interviews, Essays and statements from the biggest designers in the world such as Paco Rabanne, Issey Miyake and Chanel.



• Pledge, Earth. 2009. Future Fashion White Papers. Earth Pledge



This is a collection of essays by scientists, retailers, farmers, dyers, models, and others in the in the industry, including Diane Von Furtsenburg, Julie Gilhart and Shalom Harlow. This will be great research data for me as it holds thoughts and opinions of everyone related to the Fashion industry.



• Polder, Kim. Website: http://www.ecofashionworld.com



This is an eco-fashion website that is a great resource to all the designers, brands and

Stores involved in the eco-fashion world. The website is constantly collecting information and gathering photographs from all over the world. This is to create an exciting insight into the amazing possibilities for “green dressing”.



• Sanders, Annika and Seager, Kerry. Website://www.junkystyling.co.uk



This website was founded by Sanders and Seager in 1977. Their garments are made of

High quality second hand clothes brought in from customers. Their innovative designs

And use of recycled materials is extraordinary. They are very successful and have

Great ideas for the future of fashion.



• Shi, Amanda. 2008 Website. http://www.avitastyle.com


This is a website formed in aid of AVITA CO-OP which is located in Hollywood, California. It is a shop/website for sustainable fashion and uses only re-cycled materials such as re-cycled sweet wrappers, Coca-Cola bottles, re-cycled rubber etc. Everything is one of a kind.


Here is a list of current designers and labels with their websites who are adapting to eco-fashion at present. I discovered most of the designers from the recent London Eco Fashion Week. These designers will be vital to my research.



• Amana. Website. http://www.amanalondon.com/



• Beyond Skin. Website. http://www.beyondskin.co.uk



• Edun. Website. http//www.edun.com



• Fogle, Tamara. Website. http://www.beatuiful-soul.co.uk



• Greenabelle, Annie. Website. http://www.anniegreenabelle.com



• Hamnett, Katharine. Website. http://www.katharinehamnett.com



• Howies. Website. http://www.howies.co.uk



• Kuyichi. Website. http://www.kuyichi.com



• McCartney, Stella. 2001. Website. http://www.stellamccartney.com



• Ratty, Sarah. Website. http://www.ciel.ltd.co.uk