Saturday Supplement: Textiles go Green
Saturday 25 April
Time: 11am-4pm
Saturday Supplement: Textiles go Green
Saturday 25 April, 11am – 4pm
Free no booking required
11-11.30am – Tour: Deputy Director and Textiles Curator Jennifer Harris will address the many meanings of green in a tour of the Whitworth’s Textiles exhibition.
1pm – Panel discussion: An expert panel will address issues relating to ethical and sustainable fashion today.
The panel will include:
Katharine Hamnett – Designer and considered a pioneer of ethical and environmental fashion since 1989.
Jocelyn Whipple - Sustainable fashion and textiles specialist and consultant on the Whitworth’s current Textiles exhibition.
Kate Fletcher - Professor of Sustainability, Design and Fashion at the Centre for Sustainable Fashion, London College of Fashion.
Nick Hall - Senior Lecturer in Fashion Business, Manchester Metropolitan University, Department of Apparel.
2.30-4pm – Workshop: Textile Artist and Lecturer Victoria Wheeler will lead a hands-on up-cycling session inspired by the Whitworth’s textiles collection.
More information
Katharine Hamnett is a British, global, designer brand founded in 1979 and considered the pioneer of ethical and environmental fashion since 1989. Famous for making great clothes that combine fashion, innovation, utility, sex, quality and glamour Hamnett has used excess media attention to campaign on political, environmental and social issues.
“My mission is to change the world through fashion, make product as ethically and as environmentally as possible, with the best supply chain, the best social, environmental and cultural impact, alleviating poverty, and preserving traditional skills” Katharine Hamnett
www.katharinehamnett.com
Jocelyn Whipple is a sought after specialist in the fashion and textile industry with unique expertise, who champions the established as well as the zeitgeist social and environmental standards in this arena.
Since 1999 Jocelyn has been part of a movement that is challenging the current norm, which is very often an environmentally damaging, unethical and non transparent approach to fashion and textile production.
Jocelyn guides and advises brands, retailers, producers and individuals to promote a view point that considers style, quality, environment and social justice as mutually important ingredients, in turn creating a new version of value and credibility within this industry.
In 2013 Jocelyn became a founding member on the Global Coordination team of Fashion Revolution Day.
www.jocelynwhipple.com
Fashion Revolution is a global coalition of designers, academics, writers, business leaders and parliamentarians calling for systemic reform of the fashion supply chain.
On 24 April 2013, 1133 people died in the Rana Plaza catastrophe in Dhaka, Bangladesh. A further 2500 were injured. They were killed while working for familiar fashion brands in one of the many ‘accidents’ that plague the garment industry.
Fashion Revolution sees the Rana Plaza disaster as a metaphorical call to arms, and Fashion Revolution Day, to be held annually on the 24th of April, will keep the most vulnerable in the supply chain in the public eye.
www.fashionrevolution.org
Kate Fletcher is Professor of Sustainability, Design and Fashion at London College of Fashion where she has a broad remit spanning enterprise, education and research.
Urban by birth with an ecological spirit, Kate Fletcher’s work is both rooted in nature’s principles and engaged with the cultural and creative forces of fashion and design. Over the last 15 years, her original thinking and progressive outlook has shaped the field of fashion, textiles and sustainability and come to define it. Kate is one of the founders of the ‘slow fashion’ movement and instigator of directional sustainability projects, including Local Wisdom.
Kate has over 50 scholarly and popular publications in the field. She is author of Sustainable Fashion and Textiles: Design Journeys (2008). Readers call it “inspiring,” “beautifully written,” “the foundation for a radical new perspective” and “a must read” and it is in active use in commercial design studios and is the principal text in academic seminar rooms around the world. She is also co-author of Fashion and Sustainability: Design for Change (2012).
www.katefletcher.com
Nick Hall is a Senior Lecturer in Fashion Business at Manchester Metropolitan University. His background is in Product Design and Innovation Management. Nick’s passion for sustainability is routed in understanding the complex social institutions and business eco-systems that govern our markets and how these can be changed through social and technological disruptions toward the creation and adoption of sustainable, equitable economies. Nick believes that our current race to the bottom for cheap, poor quality and dull fashion is good for no one. It might be cheap, but it is costing us our health, our happiness and garment workers lives.
Victoria Wheeler is an artist and Creative Practitioner at the Whitworth. Since 2005 Vicki has facilitated a number of collaborative projects between the Whitworth and the School of Materials, University of Manchester where she is a Lecturer in BSc (Hons) Textile Design and Design Management programme. Recent projects include Vicki working with a group to create up-cycled cotton garments as a contribution to the Cultural Olympiad exhibition COTTON: Global Threads. Vicki also teaches fashion illustration to the Design Management for Fashion Retail students and is a design specialist for the Master of Enterprise programme.
Textiles Go Green
Up-cycling workshop
Saturday 25 April 2:30-4:30pm
Vicki Wheeler
We often think about potentially upcycling and adapting clothes so they can be of use once again to us. However, furnishing fabrics and objects around the home can also often be utilised in new ways.
As fashion and interiors move closer and closer in terms of sharing trends, seasons and purchasing patterns, we could think about how we can be more thoughtful and ultimately imaginative with our belongings to save on waste and unnecessary purchasing.
This session will introduce you to the idea of upcycling, preserving or breathing new life into your belongings, re-fashioning old items and giving them a new life as perhaps something entirely different, whilst thinking about current trends or accessing the past for inspiration.
During the session you will be given the chance to think about objects you own that have lost their initial functional or decorative uses, but you feel could still look good , or maybe they have sentimental value and you would like to see them brought down from the attic.
You may bring in objects yourself, or a photograph of the object, anything from shoes, cushions, books, clothes, ornaments, furniture, abstract or family pictures, both in/out of frames or indeed anything else which is hanging around your home which you believe has potential.
The workshop will give you the chance to think about a number of different options and ways to rethink your old ‘stuff’.
Using some initial demonstrations as an icebreaker, and then one to one tutorials, this workshop will give you the ideas and ‘thinking tools’ to turn your granddad’s silk pyjamas into a beautiful child’s toy or hula hoop into a decorative wall piece.
