Fashion, Sustainability and Other Animals

Tuesday April 29, 9:00am – 10:00am PDT

In this talk, I will describe more than 25 years of work at the growing edge of design knowledge and practice of fashion and sustainability. I will do this with reference to birds, clothes, localism, usership and systems thinking among many other themes, building towards a sense of multiple interdependencies between ecological systems, design and change. I will also talk about life writing as an ecological research method and how garments can be a ‘way in’ to a changed natural understanding, binding us closer to the world in which we live.

Kate Fletcher (PhD) is a Professor at Centre for Sustainable Fashion, University of the Arts London, UK. She is the most cited scholar in fashion and sustainability and her work, like that on post-growth fashion, fashion localism and Earth Logic, both defines and challenges the field. She is co-founder of the Union of Concerned Researchers in Fashion and has written and/or edited nine books, translated into seven languages. Her latest work is about design, nature and clothing. She also is the proud recipient of an Honorary Doctorate from Emily Carr University of Art + Design.