FUTURE OF FASHION

Pierre Cardin: “The clothing I prefer is the one I create for a life that does not yet exist, the world of tomorrow”. In this project we were asked to think about future scenarios. What will tomorrow look like? What would we need? In my scenario case I will talk about ditching fashion, which would lift a huge burden off our planet. We’d save water and carbon dioxide emissions. And we’d also prevent pollution from the fertilisers and pesticides used in cotton farming, and hazardous chemicals used in dyes. We can reduce our fashion footprints by donating old clothes and buying secondhand, but that’s not enough of us do this – we’re too obsessed with ‘newness’ nowadays. Future everyday fashion is centered around well-crafted, utilitarian garments that are kept and worn for long periods of time. Transformable Wardrobe would be a conceptual fashion collection, questioning our future wardrobe and investigating what is more than clothing? Imagine an utopian world where there is no boundaries and people would love to wear the weirdest combination which seems fine to them. Art is the key and I believe that re- using trash will save us all from destroying the future world. This creates new mutations and is the start of the melting together of all sorts of DNAs. The essential tool of the project is an open source system that consists of different shapes and garments. Every shape and material is an addition to a growing collection of clothing-pieces that can be assembled into a variety of garments. Each piece, made by someone else, can easily be assembled, exchanged and re-assembled. The possibility for everyone to join in as a maker, and then to re-arrange the pieces of each outfit as a designer and wearer, playfully but critically questions the characteristics of the fashion system.

I had this idea to get a collective of designers and makers together so we could work on actually making sustainability accessible and inclusive. A few years ago, it’d be difficult to imagine designers sharing their intellectual property so freely. Now, it feels like the logical next step towards a more open, community-driven fashion industry. I would love to challenge people to think more critically about what they’re buying and how they engage with items which they are already own and be self-sufficient. A huge part of my process became about analyzing a material and deciding upon how it could be best utilized, inventing alternative fastenings and fabric manipulation rather than sourcing a specific color or material. My designs are attractively strange in their chaotic-ness. It is like a war on symmetry, but still wearable and controlled chaos for everybody. To allow for longer cycles of garment development and translation into production. The collection incorporates everyday life objects into (electric wires) the context of clothing. This makes the clothing able to transform from one shape to another. An approach to design that is based on emotional decisions, unpredictability and expression. The collection is designed with the intention of visually showcasing an alternative way of thinking and adding value to materials that we do not consider to be valuable, although for myself, value is added through creativity.