Sustainable Fashion and Textiles

Second Edition
Over the last two decades, Kate Fletcher’s original thinking and progressive
outlook have infused fashion and textiles with ideas and practice of design
for sustainability, and come to define them. Her pioneering work, rooted
both in nature’s principles and the cultural and creative forces of fashion and
design, ranges from developing ‘slow fashion’ concepts to exploring ‘post
growth fashion’ and understanding the ‘craft of use’. Kate works with corpo-
rations, educational institutions and organizations to foster change towards
sustainability. She has a PhD from Chelsea College of Art and Design and is
Reader in Sustainable Fashion at the Centre for Sustainable Fashion, London
College of Fashion.
Now in its second edition, Sustainable Fashion and Textiles: Design
Journeys is recognized as the defining text in the field and brings together
design thinking, information about lifecycle sustainability impacts of fashion
and textiles, social innovation and systems change. This edition features new
and updated content which reflects on and critiques the latest improvements
in the field and examines potential future developments, positioning the
book deep within sustainability change.

Kate Fletcher is Reader in Sustainable Fashion at London College of Fashion

and director of design for sustainability consultancy Slow Fashion.
Sustainable Fashion and Textiles

Design Journeys
Second Edition

Kate Fletcher

from Routledge

Routledge
Taylor & Francis Croup
LONDON AND NEW YORK
First edition published 2008
by Earthscan

This edition published 2014

by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

© 2014 Kate Fletcher

The right of Kate Fletcher to be identified as author of this work has been
asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs
and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or uti-
lized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or
hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered

trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to
infringe.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Fletcher, Kate, 1971- author.
Sustainable fashion and textiles : design journeys / Kate Fletcher. -- Second
edition.
p. cm.
Originally published: London ; Sterling, VA : Earthscan, 2008.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Fashion design. 2. Textile design. 3. Sustainable design. I. Title.
TT507.F583 2014
746.9’2--dc23
2013022135

ISBN: 978-0-415-64455-6 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-0-415-64456-3 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-85793-0 (ebk)

Typeset in Avenir by
Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire
For Mark, Jude and Cole
This page intentionally left blank
Contents

List of Figures, Tables and Images IX

Acknowledgements XIII
Preface to the Second Edition XV

Introduction 1

Part 1: Sustainable Fashion and Textile Products 5

Chapter 1 Material Diversity 7

Chapter 2 Ethically Made 51

Chapter 3 Use Matters 91

Chapter 4 Reuse, Recycling and Resource Exchange 113

Part 2: Sustainable Fashion and Textile Systems 137

Chapter 5 Fashion, Needs and Consumption 139

Chapter 6 Local and Light 163

Chapter 7 Speed 189

Chapter 8 User Maker 221

Conclusions 239

Image Credits 249

Index 254
This page intentionally left blank
List of Figures, Tables and Images

Figures

1.1 Energy and water consumption in the production of selected

fibre types 21
1.2 Environmental impact of textile consumption in Europe on three
indicators 22
2.1 Map of key processes, inputs and outputs in the textile
production chain 57
2.2 Negative feedback loop 75
2.3 Positive feedback loop 76
3.1 Lifecycle impacts for a women’s polyester blouse 94
3.2 Types of sustainable design innovation 96
6.1 Changing the scale at which we view an issue or activity impacts
upon how they are perceived 164
7.1 Layers of activity in a resilient human civilization 192
7.2 Energy requirements per wearing of a polyester blouse for a
range of use scenarios 202

Tables

1.1 World fibre production in 2010 10

1.2 Textile fibre types 12
1.3 Environmental cost of each stage in the lifecycle of a cotton T-shirt 23
1.4 Toxicity profile of a conventionally grown cotton T-shirt 27
1.5 Average natural fibre production per hectare 34
2.1 Types of pollution associated with dyeing a range of fibres 62
2.2 Summary of developments in dye chemistry 64
3.1 A rough guide to relative impact of textile products throughout life 93
5.1 Fundamental human needs 145
7.1 Characteristics of ecosystems in different stages of evolution 205
List of Figures, Tables and Images

Images

Eco jeans in 100 per cent organic cotton with sustainable product
components and production processes by Levi’s 28
White 100 per cent African cotton dress by Noir 31
Organic wool tweed by Isle of Mull Weavers 33
Bette hemp dress by Enamore 35
Woven fabric in 100 per cent peace silk by Denise Bird Woven Textiles 36
T-shirt in 100 per cent Ingeo by Moral Fervor 37
Suit in lyocell by Linda Loudermilk 39
Yarn made from 50 per cent recycled London textiles and 50 per cent
pure new wool, by EcoAnnie 42
T-shirts in 100 per cent Fairtrade mark cotton by Marks and Spencer 74
ONE T-shirt made from 100 per cent Lesotho cotton by EDUN 77
Pillows produced by Armenian craftspeople supported by Aid to Artisans 78
MADE-BY button indicating supply chain transparency 80
Purple hooded sweatshirt by American Apparel 81
Slip dress in 100 per cent silk by Dosa 83
Modular garments designed for low laundering 101
No Wash top from the 5 Ways Project 104–5
Stain dress by Lauren Montgomery Devenney 106
Windows blanket by LoooLo 115
Back2Back dress by Junky Styling 121
Reused yarn vest by Muji 123
Synchilla Snap-T fleece by Patagonia 129
Zero waste pattern cutting concept shirt to address wastage, by
Andrew Hague 131
Upholstery fabric in wool and ramie by Climatex Lifecycle 132
Caress Dress produced as part of the 5 Ways Project 148
Organic cotton T-shirt and jeans by howies 152–3
Green contrasting stitching on organic cotton T-shirt by American
Apparel 157
Modular concept top by Ariel Bishop 158
Skull dress by Project Alabama 170–1
Jacket made from 100 per cent hemp grown in England from fibre
grown and processed by Bioregional 175
Fly skirt in organic tweed, part of the Ardalanish Collection by Anja
Hynynen for Isle of Mull Weavers 177

X
 List of Figures, Tables and Images

Moth blanket by Joanna Notkin 178

JP Donleavy shrug, Spring/Summer 2005, 100 per cent cotton by Keep
and Share 182
Eugenia dress, Spring/Summer 2006, 100 per cent cotton by Keep and
Share 195
Blue velour pleated furnishing fabric by Sigrid Smits 199
Oversized labels and clothes rails in Itaylan Avlusu project swap ‘shop’
set up by Otto von Busch 200
One-night wonder. Design scenario from the Lifetimes project 209
Fancy pants. Design scenario from the Lifetimes project 211
Who wears the trousers? Design scenario from the Lifetimes project 213
Great coat. Design scenario from the Lifetimes project 215
Hand-stitched recycled quilt by Alabama Chanin 225
High bag pants by Wronsov a.k.a. Otto von Busch 231
Short sleeve suit, vest suit and oblique collar shirt by Wronsov a.k.a.
Otto von Busch 232
do shirt by do/KesselsKramer 234
Updatable T-shirt from the 5 Ways Project 235
The story ‘Colour Connections’ from the Shared Use category of use
practices in the Local Wisdom project 244

XI
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Acknowledgements

Unbounded thanks to my trusted group of friends and advisors whose

wisdom, enthusiasm and indefatigable creativity continue to keep me
going, including Lynda Grose, Dilys Williams, Ann Thorpe, Otto von Busch,
Timo Rissanen and Mathilda Tham. My gratitude to Lucy Batchelor, whose
support, friendship and illustrations have made such a difference and
have been so gratefully received. Thank you to the team at the Centre for
Sustainable Fashion for being there and being home, and to the many
students I have taught over the years, from whom I have learnt so much. I am
hugely grateful to all those who supplied images for this book and who work
with innovation and passion to affect change towards sustainability in the
fashion and textile sector. I thank all those people with whom I have cut my
design-for-sustainability teeth over the years, in particular Emma Dewberry
and Phillip Goggin. I am grateful to Laura Williamson at Routledge for com-
missioning this second edition. I also thank Katelyn Toth-Fejel for her stellar
work on other projects, enabling me to direct attention here.
Most of all I thank my husband and sons – for book writing is nothing if
not a family experience – who have embraced it and my scattered presence
with amusement, magnanimity and a lot of football.
Preface

XIV
Preface to the Second Edition

In the five years since Sustainable Fashion and Textiles: Design Journeys
was first published, many of its themes now occupy an altogether differ-
ent position in the attitudes and activities of the fashion and textile sector.
Where it used to be marginalized and of limited cultural capital, the power to
affect change towards sustainability in the sector has now begun to coalesce
around large corporations eager to protect and augment the reputation of
their brands, and has also found a platform and a presence at fashion weeks
stretching from London to Addis Ababa. Long-favoured themes, such as
those of materials selection, resource flows and supply chain efficiencies,
have become sites of innovation, not just opinion, and dominate a broad
span of creative, industrial, academic and political agendas. A recent gov-
ernment-funded initiative in the UK for example, the Sustainable Clothing
Action Plan, commissioned research into new and emerging fibres,1 recy-
cling2 and garment durability.3 Beyond the shores of the UK, these recurrent
themes also prevail and include: the development of agricultural initiatives
to improve the resource efficiency of established fibre crops, like cotton, for
mass-market consumption by supporting farmers to adopt practices, seeds
and approaches that best suit local soil conditions and climate;4 the introduc-
tion of novel fibres such as those based on, for example, corn starch;5 new
generation dye and process chemicals and associated methods of applica-
tion that now reduce both resource inputs and pollution outputs;6 work to
track and trace supply chain information to promote greater transparency of
manufacturing processes;7 cross-brand initiatives like the Higg Index from
the Sustainable Apparel Coalition to develop a pre-competitive common
approach for measuring and evaluating fibre and fabric efficiency, and
improve supply chain performance industry-wide.8
The speed and breadth of change to the technical and organizational
structures of the fashion and textile sector is essential, welcome and impres-
sive. And yet even from a vantage point within this shifting space, sustainabil-
ity continues to be elusive in fashion and textiles. It evades us not because
we lack the technical expertise to produce fibre, fabric and garment more
Preface

efficiently; on the contrary, we have many of the necessary technologies to

reduce resource consumption in development, if not already in place. But
rather because we target our efforts (and our imaginations) at parts – at
independent entities – of a system operating separately from a whole, the
performance of which is not scrutinized. Yet the whole is the problem9 – the
cumulative values, discernments, habits of mind, industrial practices, busi-
ness models, economic logic, deep societal forces and aggregated individual
practices that make up the fashion and textile sector – and it is the whole we
must understand before we consider the functions and needs of its elements.
Sustainability is dependent on how the parts work together, not on how
the parts work in isolation. Without changing how fashion and textiles are
thought about, aspired to and perceived, both as an industrial sector and as
a set of individual and social practices, the very issues that cause unsustaina-
bility will prove resilient. Our challenge is to trade in our long-held preference
to improve situations by taking them apart, and instead develop the skills and
thinking of synthesis, to foster change through the actions of putting things
together. And in so doing, we will deal in big thinking, broad imagining and
political vision, indelibly shaped by patterns of power, economic logic and
social conditions.
Our present day is indexed by the forces of advanced capitalism and
globalization and by consumerism, individualism, materialism, commoditiza-
tion, that define and shape our daily experience of them. But these forces tell
us little about the situation we find ourselves in. Instead, they speak about
the quantity of our lives, rather than their quality. They convey scant infor-
mation about the health of global systems, the resilience of society, or the
aliveness and satisfaction of everyday life as expressed in our achievements
and the cohesion of our communities. A recent study of biophysical planetary
boundaries suggested that of the nine planetary boundaries identified, three
– climate change, rate of biodiversity loss and changes to the global nitrogen
cycle – have already been transgressed, with others approaching the thresh-
old.10 The likely consequences: non-linear, abrupt environmental change
within continental- to planetary-scale systems. In the face of such effects, an
alternative framework for life is essential and pressing. The study’s conclu-
sions state that such a framework can be found if we, ‘shift our approach . . .
away from . . . minimizing negative externalities, toward the estimation of the
safe space for human development’.
It is into this animated, stirring space of persistent global challenges and
a shifting of approach that the second edition of this book is offered up. As
with the first imprint, the book’s ambition remains to foster a more rela-
tional, complex and holistic understanding of sustainability processes and

XVI
 Preface

aspirations in the fashion and textile sector that leads to both action and
change. Here, facts are important, and the pages that follow contain many;
but to make the acquisition of information our sole goal is a backwards step,
for we also need to become practitioners of the relevant skills. For what is
the point of knowing something, if we fail to understand what do with it? We
need to train a critical eye, a questioning habit; to foster the skills of anticipa-
tion, rigorous imagination and resilience. Further we need to cultivate a sense
of personal responsibility, an aptitude for listening and watching out for each
other. Such an aptitude is undermined too easily by ready-made sustainabil-
ity solutions – a label, a checklist, a ten-point action plan – that invite us to
outsource our responsibility and let others do the figuring out for us. Yet it is
in the act of figuring things out for ourselves, that our world becomes more
intelligible to us, and we can begin the process of becoming more responsi-
ble for it. The process of sustainability is a process of internalizing the busi-
ness of watching out for each other.11
I live in gratitude that the first edition of this book found resonance
with so many designers, fashion and textiles professionals and students. I
am thankful for their support and constantly inspired by the work they do.
The book continues to be in active use in commercial design studios and
is the principal text in academic seminar rooms investigating sustainability
in fashion and textiles where it maintains a course between defining and
evolving the field. It was also transformed into an exhibition called ‘Fashion
Footprints: Sustainable Approaches’ at the Centre for Contemporary Art and
the Natural World in 2010.12 Many ideas in the book have also helped seed
and contextualize various programmes and projects of research. Concepts
that have found especial traction and ‘stickiness’ include: the framing of
materials questions within ideas of diversity which promote an array of
alternatives over a single preferred solution (Chapter 1); the application of
systems thinking to opportunities for change in the sector, which helps give
context to present-day choices and their effects (Chapter 2); the explora-
tion of use phase, usually the territory of anthropological studies or home
economics, in a book about fashion and textiles (Chapter 3); the holistic
and interconnected treatment given to material and social flows (both Part
I and Part II); and perhaps most significantly, the use, throughout the book,
of design thinking to explore and expose to view opportunities for innova-
tion through a focus on needs, speed, participatory practice and localism
(Chapters 5 to 8). Indeed, combinations of and excerpts from these latter
chapters have been reprinted numerous times in edited books, anthologies,
scholarly journals and popular magazines and in several languages, reflecting
their ongoing relevance and unique perspective.

XVII
Preface

In the second edition, the book’s original structure has been maintained,
the contents updated and new material added throughout, including, for the
second edition, a chapter of reflections and conclusions. I am often asked for
a definition of ‘sustainable fashion and textiles’ and while I remain absolutely
convinced that sustainability requires not one but many narratives, stories,
visions and definitions for different audiences and contexts, I offer a lone
definition here, which I hope others will then make their own: sustainability
in fashion and textiles fosters ecological integrity, social quality and human
flourishing through products, action, relationships and practices of use. I am
also sure that these narratives require that we pay special attention to the
words we use; for language helps shape our thoughts – our words influenc-
ing how we perceive and imagine the world. It seems to me that when, for
example, we only speak of sustainability in the fashion and textile sector
in terms of materials and process efficiency and optimization, it directs our
thoughts down a route where we think these are the things that matter. When
we only give quantitative data and language a platform, it makes us think
only in terms of things that can be numerically measured. And when we only
talk about sustainability as a supply-side concern, with a lexicon of technol-
ogy, indexes and global value chains, it will always remain a production issue.
Instead, in the pages of this book I try to use language that leads us to mul-
tiple ideas about fashion and sustainability, to ideas that convey a patchwork
of material, individual, economic, social and political creativity and action.
Such multiplicity reflects the themes we are exploring, stitching connections
between them as moral, ideational, political and technical challenges. Please
pick up your needle and join in.

Kate Fletcher
Bollington, March 2013
www.katefletcher.com
@katetfletcher

Notes
1 Turley, D.B., Copeland, J.E., Horne, M., Blackburn, R.S., Stott E.,
Laybourn, S.R., Harwood, J. and Hughes, J.K. (2009), The Role and
Business Case for Existing and Emerging Fibres in Sustainable
Clothing: Final Report to the Department for Environment, Food and
Rural Affairs (Defra), London: Defra.
2 Morley, N.J., Bartlett, C. and McGill, I. (2009), Maximising Reuse and
Recycling of UK Clothing and Textiles: A Report to the Department for

XVIII
 Preface

Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Oakdene Hollins Ltd, London:

Defra.
3 Gracey, F. and Moon, D. (2012), Valuing Our Clothes: The Evidence
Base, WRAP, Online http://wrap.org.uk/clothing (accessed 1 March
2013).
4 Better Cotton Initiative, Online http://www.bettercotton.org/ (accessed
1 March 2013).
5 Farrington, D.W., Lunt, J. and Blackburn, R. (2005), Soya Bean Protein
Fibres: Past, Present and Future, in R.S. Blackburn (Ed.), Biodegradable
and Sustainable Fibres, Cambridge: Woodhead Publishing, pp191–
220.
6 See for example, Ecotextile News (2010), Water Saving Dyes Make A
Big Splash, 39, pp20–23.
7 Historic Futures, Online http://www.historicfutures.com/ (accessed 1
March 13).
8 Sustainable Apparel Coalition, Online http://www.apparelcoalition.
org/ (accessed 1 March 13).
9 Ehrenfeld, J.A. (2008), Sustainability by Design, New Haven: Yale
University Press.
10 Rockström, J., Steffen W., Noone K., Persson Å., Chapin III, F.S.,
Lambin, E., Lenton, T.M., Scheffer, M., Folke, C., Schellnhuber, H.,
Nykvist, B., De Wit, C.A., Hughes, T., van der Leeuw, S., Rodhe,
H., Sörlin, S., Snyder, P.K., Costanza, R., Svedin, U., Falkenmark,
M., Karlberg, L., Corell, R.W., Fabry, V.J., Hansen, J., Walker, B.,
Liverman, D., Richardson, K., Crutzen, P. and Foley, J. (2009),
Planetary Boundaries: Exploring the Safe Operating Space for
Humanity, Ecology and Society, 14(2), article 32, Online http://www.
ecologyandsociety.org/vol14/iss2/art32/ (accessed 1 March 2013).
11 Ideas of attentiveness are explored in Smith, J. (2012), Road Map –
Other Ways of Thinking About Auto-mobility, in R. Tyszczuk, J. Smith,
N. Clark and M. Butcher, Atlas, London: Black Dog, pp118–123.
12 Centre for Contemporary Art and the Natural World, Online http://
www.ccanw.co.uk/past-exhibitions.htm (accessed 1 March 2013).

XIX
XX
 Introduction

This book explores sustainability issues in fashion and textiles. It does this
from the perspective of design. Here design is understood in its broadest
sense, not just as a stylist or shaper of things (though this too has an impor-
tant role), but also as a promoter of social change. Thus, while this book
is about design, it is not just for designers. It is relevant to anyone who is
interested in taking action and cultivating change towards sustainability.
Sustainable Fashion and Textiles: Design Journeys explores this action and
change through the complex, creative and consumerism-dominated world of
fashion and textiles.
Introduction

The aim of this book is to promote a broad, pluralistic view of sustainabil-

ity ideas, issues and opportunities in the fashion and textile sector. The goal
is to showcase a wealth of alternatives for building long-lasting environmen-
tal and social quality through the design, production and use of fashion and
textiles that go beyond traditional ideas or expectations. After all, the chal-
lenge of sustainability – that is, of integrating human well-being and natural
integrity – is such that we can’t go on as before. Business as usual, or more to
the point, fashion as usual, is not an option. So what should we do instead?
The answer, described in the pages that follow, can be found in embracing
a multiplicity of starting points, involving many different people, operating
across a range of different scales and rhythms. The effect is to produce an
array of more diverse, engaging and resourceful fashion and textiles that
provides a creative practice for designers and users, secures employment for
millions of workers and gives manufacturing industry an opportunity to trial
and develop cutting-edge technologies and approaches that dramatically
reduce resource use.
This book offers eight different starting points or ‘design journeys’ from
which we can begin to explore these opportunities. Each journey is explored
in a separate chapter and covers different, though interrelated, sustainability
ground. The journeys described in this book evoke a sense of a landscape.
As an analogy, the world of sustainability themes in textiles and fashion is a
place of mountains, valleys, plateaus and swampy ground. The mountains
rise up like beacons or navigation points and show us ideals, values and
direction (where do we want to head?). The valleys in between represent
where we are now, at the beginnings of our journey, in the rich, fertile and
enthusiastic soil of ideas and possibilities, and still perhaps a little unsure of
how the landscape will unfold. The swamps and plateaus represent the dif-
ficult terrain where progress is slow. Perhaps it is uncharted territory, a dead
end or the start of a potentially exciting new area of investigation. Yet no
matter how bogged down we become or whichever vantage point we climb
to, we have a sense that no part of this world exists in isolation from the rest.
The landscape is a whole and it unfolds before us, changing, eroding and
rising up over time.
The design journeys in this book begin in Chapter 1 by navigating the
complexities of sustainability impacts of materials, and conclude in Chapter
8 with a voyage into participatory design and open-source initiatives relevant
to fashion and textiles. None of them deal with entirely new or futuristic
ideas. All of them, or at least almost all of them, already exist to a greater or
lesser extent in the fashion and textile sector today. This book draws them
together into a holistic, multilayered and more sustainability-oriented vision

2
 Introduction

for the sector. This is a radical vision, but not an extreme one. Such a vision, in
the words of industrial ecologist John Ehrenfeld, ‘brings us back to our roots
– the meaning at the origin of the very origin of “radical” – and is the natural
way to go’.1 This roots-based, nature-inspired and interconnected vision is
developed throughout the book.
There are multiple value systems or world views that influence the
approach we take to sustainability.2 Perhaps the most common is described
by pursuing an approach of ‘more of the same, but more efficient’ and
involves making incremental changes to our present-day institutions and
practices to bring about improvements. Other approaches frame sustain-
ability as contingent on ‘something different’; that is something different
to greater efficiency, also involving fundamental personal, social and insti-
tutional change. This book steers a course between these two views. It is
structured around ideas from the ‘something different’ paradigm but infuses
this framework and ambition with many of the pragmatic, resourceful tech-
niques and experience that have been developed from incremental change
in today’s fashion and textile sector. The result is a collection of long-term
and short-term solutions that help us ground our work in intergenerational
sustainability values and yet still be able to make decisions today that are
simple, practical and insightful.
Sustainable Fashion and Textiles: Design Journeys brings together infor-
mation about lifecycle sustainability impacts of fashion and textiles, practical
alternatives, ecological concepts and social innovation. The book defines the
key relationships between sustainability and the fashion and textile sector
and it also challenges the sector to change. Arranged in two parts, the first
four chapters of this book represent key phases of the textile product lifecy-
cle. Chapter 1 explores the impacts of cultivating or extracting textile fibres;
Chapter 2 focuses on the production phase of the lifecycle or conversion of
fibre to product; Chapter 3, the use phase; and Chapter 4, issues associated
with end of life. Each of these chapters explores opportunities to improve the
sustainability of that lifecycle phase supported by data and case studies and
reframes the issues in a holistic context. The remaining four chapters focus
on the sustainability of fashion and textiles at the systems level and explore
opportunities to influence the root cause of many sustainability problems.
Chapter 5 considers the relationship between fashion and consumption,
including fundamental human needs and flourishing. Chapter 6 explores the
possibility of developing local products and those that are more resource
efficient (i.e. light). Chapter 7 investigates issues associated with speed and in
particular describes slow fashion. And finally Chapter 8 surveys participatory
design and examines its potential for promoting sustainability.

3
Introduction

While each of the chapters in this book is complete in and of itself, they
are not autonomous or separate from each other. The first four lifecycle-
focused chapters clearly relate to each other in a dynamic way; and the final
four seek to influence the overall system of which the first four are a part.
Thus, the chapters’ real value comes from what they represent together;
innovative ways of thinking about fibre, fabric and garment based on sus-
tainability values and a broad, interconnected view of design. This broad
view of design has been described by the scientist Herb Simon: ‘Everyone
designs who devises courses of action aimed at changing existing situations
into preferred ones’.3 So in the context of this book, any actions or ideas that
help facilitate change towards sustainability are embraced as design. This is a
broad category and includes the work of community groups, big companies,
individual consumers as well as professional designers. What the authors of
these actions and ideas have in common is that they are using practical skills
and creative thinking to innovate (normally with a group of other people) to
produce products, ways of working or visions compatible with sustainability.
Giving form to sustainability in any or all of these ways is vital if it’s to become
a reality. As the Nobel Prize-winning economist, Amartya Sen, said: ‘it is dif-
ficult to desire what one cannot imagine as a possibility’. The hope is that this
book can help us both desire and imagine sustainability better.

Notes
1 Ehrenfeld, J.R. (2004), Searching for Sustainability: No Quick Fix,
Reflections, 5(8), pp1–13: p10.
2 Pepper, D. (1996), Modern Environmentalism: An Introduction,
London: Routledge, p37.
3 Simon, H. as quoted by Thackera, J. (2005), In the Bubble, Boston: MIT
Press, p1.