Research And Development For Film And TV Sets And Costumes

People just love coffee (me included). It's one of the few things that bring us together across borders, classes and cultures. As a result, a staggering 3.5 billion cups of coffee are consumed daily worldwide. I suppose it's no surprise that this obsession with coffee presents a lot of business opportunities, but did you know that there's a growing industry for coffee in design... and I'm not talking about packaging, I'm talking about fibres! Suddenly, coffee-drinking is both oh-so-satisfying and eco to boot!

The UN's Sustainable Development Goal 2: Zero Hunger, looks at ending hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition, and promote sustainable agriculture. There are organisations that are building practices to reach these targets. So in our Masterclass on this topic, we spoke to a range of experts to learn about fashion’s impact on food sources, crop health, farming communities and local processing plants, alternative regenerative fibres for fashion fabrics, and the ways designers can support regenerative agriculture practices and a traceable leather industry.

One aspect of this is producing textiles from food, growing textile crops alongside food crops, and utilising byproducts from the agricultural sector. In this article we take a look at some of the talked about "food fibres" on the market today, and their pros and cons when it comes to sustainability and ethics.

We first came across Valentina in February this year when we received a lovely professional and caring email from her on our ticket desk, introducing who she was and her work, plus a suggestion of an upcycling workshop after seeing the one we hosted with Emma of Socko. Unfortunately, the plans we had started making for the workshop had to stop being made. In the interim, Valentina's website is now full to the brim with the most beautiful of pieces that could honestly bring tears of joy.

As someone who dabbled with knitwear during my fashion degree, I understand the attention that is needed to create even the simplest of pieces. But, even to someone unaware of the amount of steps - and time - needed to build what we would class an an "everyday staple", Valentina's designs stand out as being considered and emotional. Valentina uses solely surplus yarns, or "deadstock", and produces made to order knits in her London studio. They are gender-neutral, utterly playful, and the craftsmanship is that "spot on" hand gesture.

We caught up with Valentina to see how the business was doing, and decided to ask a few questions on her perspective on surplus yarns, engagement in knitwear repair, and designing such radical sweater artworks.

Each year, thousands of gallons of milk are poured straight down the drain—sometimes because it's spoiled, other times because it's surplus or simply growing too close to the sell-by date. It’s a wasteful problem to say the least. What if the solution is an unusual fabric that's taking the fashion world by storm? Milk fabric, not as recent a development as we might think, is a wonderful idea that transforms week-old milk into silky-smooth, high-end fashion fabric.

"Zero waste" might be a popular buzzword these days, but the practices behind it have been around for millennia. Thanks to the crucial research of historians like Jenny Tiramani and The School of Historical Dress, we’re able to incorporate ideas and practices from earlier eras of clothing production into what we make today. In times when resources were less easily attainable and people worked in closer contact with raw materials, wasteful habits were uncommon, even frowned upon. From pattern cutting, to textile production, to hand-me-downs - this lesson uses specific examples of historical garments to find out where we started to use our resources more flippantly and to seek practical techniques that will revive less-wasteful practices, for a more sustainable fashion future. 

About the speaker:

Jenny Tiramani is an award-winning costume and stage designer and a leading researcher in historical costume practices. She is also the Principal of The School of Historical Dress, which boasts Dame Vivienne Westwood among its patrons. Jenny has designed and made costumes everywhere from Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in London to the Belasco Theatre on Broadway, where she won a Tony Award for ‘Best Costume Design in a Play’.

Find Jenny and The School of Historical Dress at:

www.theschoolofhistoricaldress.org.uk

Instagram: @theschoolofhistoricaldress1

Even as our food resources grow scarce, food wastage continues to be a rising global problem. The 2011 SIK study puts the global food waste at almost 1.3 billion tonnes per year, while British IME 2013 report estimates that anywhere between 30% to 50% of the food that is produced for human consumption is wasted. It's just staggering! This recent article in the Wall Street Journal outlines the issues with collating figures and tackling the problem.

We were joined by the founding partners of MaterialDriven, a design agency and materials library to learn from Adele and Purva how to and why we should work with so-called "healthy materials": those that are bio-based, waste-based and envelop responsible practices and positive impacts in their production and life cycle.

Recycled materials that come from synthetic-based i.e. fossil fuel feedstocks provide us with a comparative outcome that will slot easily into various applications, including fashion though also stretching to buildings and furniture. When it comes to "biomaterials", "bio-based materials" and "waste-based materials" there is a lot of uncertainty in a realm that feels new. There are innovations abounding here, but in actual fact, a lot of the technology and feedstocks are based on traditional methods and materials, just updated to be, for instance, beneficial in a circular system.

MaterialDriven provide a materials library, education and consultancy for brands and designers across all industries, including architecture, interiors, packaging, fashion and product design. In this lesson, Adele and Purva take us through the exciting materials commercially available on the market, along with considerations to make if you are interested in using them for your own product, and how these less-known feedstocks can have positive impacts socially, economically and environmentally. Along with providing you with a USP, if you can understand how to utilise healthy materials over synthetics or recycled synthetics, it will provide you with a much more creative and systemic approach to design.