Slow Fashion Studio: alternative approaches to fashion

Background: The social, economic and environmental impacts of fashion are immense and unsustainable. In recent decades, the industry has been intensified by the phenomena of fast fashion, a term that references a specific production and global distribution system of mass-produced fashion to deliver low-priced garments made for quick turnover and at high volume. The exhibition Slow Fashion Studio was conceived to investigate alternative fashion practices to fast fashion and was informed by research practitioners working within the field of fashion sustainability such as Kate Fletcher, Mathilda Tham and Timo Rissanen. It asked: How might a sustainable and ethical fashion system operate that is globally networked but centred on localised knowledge, skills and relationships? Contribution: The Slow fashion studio was the local component of the international exhibition, Fast Fashion, curated by Dr. Claudia Banz (Museum of Arts and Crafts Hamburg) in collaboration with DBU (German Federal Environmental Foundation) and the Goethe-Institut. Using Fast Fashion as a provocation, the Slow Fashion Studio brought together the work of nine fashion and textile design practitioners and researchers, who collectively created a social space for exploring alternative approaches to how fashion is produced and experienced. Each work reconsidered our relationship with materials and clothing. Alongside the exhibition was a public program of performances and floor talks. Significance: The Slow fashion studio received wide coverage through the national press, including the Age (reviewed by sustainable fashion writer Clare Press) Sydney Morning Herald, the Australian Financial Review, radio, and social media. As the curator I was interviewed about the exhibition on Radio National’s Blueprint for Living program, SBS Filipino radio, RMIT University’s Art Design and Media Podcast, and presented the exhibition at the 2017 ACTS conference.