Reflecting on Place and Materials: Interdisciplinarity Practices for Fashion

Technological innovations and improved environmental, social and ethical practices are transforming the global fashion and textiles industry, fundamentally changing how clothes are made, consumed and experienced. Various industry reports (such as the Global Fashion Agenda, 2020) highlight challenges, as well as opportunities, facing the industry. These challenge the global fashion and textiles education community to rethink how it prepares graduates for industry. As educators, how do we adapt and transform curriculum offerings to provide graduates with knowledge and skills they will need? When considering future employability of graduates, three key considerations will inform and shape the fashion and textiles industry: (i) Sustainability and the shift to a circular fashion system requires new ways of working; (ii) A new material intelligence to support the analysis and development of the next generation of materials within a framework of sustainability, and (iii) Interdisciplinarity through a multistakeholder approach to support ‘Age of entanglement’(Oxman, 2016) ways of working. This paper outlines the conceptual philosophy for the learning design of two core courses co-delivered to all first-year students in the School of Fashion and Textiles. These courses seek to scaffold and complement students’ discipline-specific learning of fashion design and textile design, fashion enterprise, or technology (sustainable innovation). Both courses seek to promote interdisciplinary learning which enables students to develop shared language sets around sustainability and materials, and to recognise and establish relationships between disciplinary sectors. Furthermore, it is argued that interdisciplinary courses can provide opportunities to explore diverse strategies for actioning sustainability locally and in connection to global issues.