Leading fashion educators speak out on remote education Part 2

In the second of this two-part report on remote teaching in which FashionUnited spoke with three educators, Simon Ungless, Executive Director, School of Fashion at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco; Elisa Palomino, Senior Lecturer of BA Fashion Print at London’s Central Saint Martins; and Shelley Fox, Director, MFA Fashion Design & Society at Parsons in New York City, the future of sustainability looks decidedly rosy. It seems, after about six weeks of students working from home, one of its pillars, upcycling, has elevated their creativity to unprecedented levels. Without access to conventional materials, students' creations are organically aligning with overarching environmental and societal needs. Palomino threw down the gauntlet when she created a brief entitled “Couture in Confinement,” which, she says, “urged students to rethink their status being confined at home with limited materials or technology, to reflect on overconsumption and waste, to commit to reverse the damage done by being mindful, and to recuperate, repair, reuse, recycle and upcycle.” One student responded by draping and sampling with two old shower curtains her mother hadn’t thrown out. Another used bed slats to make a mould and deckle and scavenged old tissue, dead insects, hair and pieces of soap to craft her own version of the Japanese tradition of washi paper making.