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At the CFDA Fashion Education Summit, Materials Matter

By Jackie Mallon

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Now in its 7th year, the aim of the CFDA Education Summit is, according to its promotional material, “to foster unity between education and industry, and activate dialogue around relevant issues.” To this end faculty members from twenty of the most prestigious fashion programs nationwide converged on Manhattan’s Crosby Hotel to engage with the topic “Materials Matter.” Steven Kolb, CEO and President of the CFDA, introduced the event, and Sara Kozlowski, Director of its Education and Professional Development got things underway by reminding us that by 2050 there will be more plastic in the oceans than fish. She coined the phrase “creative Darwinism” to describe the urgency with which the fashion industry must adapt in this new industrial revolution and ushered in a line up of speakers with a variety of experiences to describe just how they are rising to the challenge.

Purpose and Repurpose

Emily Adams Bode, recently graduated from Parsons, creates menswear which repurposes 1940s handkerchiefs, napkins, and other domestic textiles which she says preserves “personal narrative and historical techniques that aren’t always recorded.” Parlay For The Oceans have given themselves a deadline of 9 years to clean up the ocean of plastic and their motto is “Purpose is the new luxury.” Plastic was long thought of as a great idea because it did what they said it would––last forever––but this is the very reason founder Cyrill Gutsch calls it a “design failure.” Now he’s coming for our skinny jeans because it’s not just bottles and cups at fault but the plastic providing the stretch in our clothing. Marc Dolce of Brooklyn Farm agrees, calling all creators to be change makers so that the effect will pollinate the rest of the industry. His successful partnership with Adidas making shoes from repurposed materials has taught him that we don’t need to strive for perfection immediately as incremental change is often what drives the most progress. Do what you can is the message, however small the effort seems.

Descience is the future

Yuly Fuentas-Medel, the Executive Director of Fashion Descience rejects the idea, which is often instilled in kids at school, that we can’t be both analytical and artistic. “Creativity is intelligence having fun,” she says, and began her merging of fashion and science by imagining a scenario in which Yves Saint Laurent and Albert Einstein were having a conversation. The idea spawned pairings of 61 fashion designers with scientists all around the globe forcing creative dialogue between two people who would never traditionally have had a conversation, leading to remarkable results.

From lab to life

Exciting developments are already being implemented. Orange Fiber, a silky fiber made from the waste of Italy’s robust citrus industry, has already been adopted by Salvatore Ferragamo. Mango Materials is producing a biopolymer from methane gas which can become a material that will biodegrade back to methane in a closed loop process, charmingly becoming known as “manure couture.” Dye can now be extracted from old discarded fabric to color new clothes, and the leftovers from winemaking can be used to create a synthetic leather. Making something out of thin air is not as ridiculous as it sounds: 10XBeta is making a footprintless shoe from Co2, creating a material that would replace conventional petroleum-based polyether. Pili creates lab-grown ink, sampling the dna from organisms with the most exotic natural colors.

New fashion hubs

While many tend to focus on bringing the garment industry back to New York City where it thrived for over a century, the new generation is identifying need and potential elsewhere. The founders of start-up, Genusee, Ali Rose Van Overbeke and Jack Burns, met at Parsons and were inspired by the Flint water crisis. Their soon-to-lunch eyewear is made from recycled water bottles in manufacturing plants around Flint that used to make car parts and medical tools, and a portion of their sales will go to children effected by the water crisis.

The New York fashion community has historically been quite tight-lipped about their connections and processes but in a city whose annual budget for waste management is upwards of 2 billion dollars, the new generation of sustainability-focused designers are trading information freely. They recognize they are all working towards the same goal––to eradicate the excess and emphasize the essential. Cross collaboration benefits everyone: and the meeting point for those who want in on the action is the junction between the physical, digital, biological and ecological. New dialogues are underway, and a crossover of craft, between scientist and artisan, between the lab and the luxury house, might be the most effective way to design ourselves a better world.

Photos: FashionUnited

Fashion editor Jackie Mallon is also an educator and author of Silk for the Feed Dogs, a novel set in the international fashion industry.

CFDA
Education
Sustainability