Bibliography

Rissanen, Timo, and Holly McQuillan. Zero Waste Fashion Design. Bloomsbury Academic, 2016.

Two categories of textile waste – Waste created by the industry and waste created by the consumer

“Zero waste fashion design” means that the design wastes no fabric by integrating pattern cutting into the design process

Wasting textile is a more modern, post-industrialized concept

During times that the creation process of a garment took much more time and skill, more thought was put into using every piece of fabric available

Many non-Western garments utilized the zero-waste concept. Saris and kimonos are a prime example of using as much fabric as possible – instead of the construction of the garment being the focus, the construction of the fabric is what is more important

Because of the focus on using all of the fabric, sustainability becomes a huge part of the design process.

This source was a helpful introduction to different choices that fashion designers have to make in order to create a product that creates no waste. It provides a great amount of visual patterns and photos of finished products that really helped me to be able to formulate my own upcycled designs. I was particularly inspired by the technique that folds fabric in order to create shapes that would normally need to be cut. I was able to implement this into my own silk vest project and I am very pleased with the outcome.

  • Rinaldi, Francesca Romana, and Salvo Testa. The Responsible Fashion Company: Integrating Ethics and Aesthetics in the Value Chain. Greenleaf Publishing, 2014.

New consumption paradigm – ‘consumers can be involved in the role of production-designer-client because they have gained knowledge and awareness from which the company can learn a great deal, translating them into development of goods and services.” – Fabris (2008)

New business model involves consumer in the production process

Neo-consumer (Fabris, 2008): infidelity to the brand, nomadism, competences, needs, and selectivity, price sensitivity

Sharing and shared consumption – working around price as a community

Fashion logic is no longer individualistic but instead pertains to a community – looking at environmental and social impacts of the product

LOHAS (Lifestyles of health and sustainability) – a type of consumer that pursues through daily choices, a lifestyle dedicated to ecological sustainability and and on attention to their own health and that of the planet

Neo-consumers are still hindered in their dedication to sustainability because of: little awareness, lack of transparency, and poor supply

“Stakeholder” aims to include all the people who might affect the attainment of corporate objectives or be affected in turn by corporate actions

Stakeholder view proposes that corporate goals aren’t just for profit maximization but also takes the needs of stakeholders into consideration

Primary Stakeholders – “without their continuous participation, a firm’s survival would be compromised” (Clarkson, 1995)

Secondary Stakeholders – inessential for the survival of the firm. but which affect and are affected by its activity, such as competitors, the media, public opinion, and public and political institutions

3P model – profit (economic dimension), people (social dimension), planet (environmental dimension) – summarized by John Elkington as the ‘triple bottom line’

First definition of sustainability – (world commission on environment and development) implies meting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs

Bottom line translates as ‘net income’ – environmental, social, and economic benefits all count as income

CSR Pyramid – (bottom to top) economic responsibility, legal responsibility, ethical responsibility, philanthropic responsibility

Value concept broadens to non-financial criteria and to long-term temporal perspective – shared values involves creating economic value in a way that also creates value for society

Documenting sustainability is necessary for proving the impact of a companies choices and certifications

Third party auditing can further validate this – international standards include: WRAP (Worldwide Responsible Apparel Production), SA8000 (Social Accountability 8000), GOTS (Global Organic Textile Standard

This book was the basis for determining how to go about conducting business in the fashion world from an ethical standpoint. I really appreciated how in depth they went in all of the different aspects of sustainability – ranging anywhere from materials used, labor practices, and how to market to an educated consumer. Overall, this is one of the most useful sources that I found in regards to holistically weighing the pro’s and con’s of the different areas of sustainability. 

  • Brown, Sass. ReFashioned: Cutting-Edge Clothing from Upcycled Materials. Laurence King Publishing, 2013.

The average American throws away 68lbs of clothing a year – 85% of it is destined for landfill

Wool releases methane during decomposition

Atelier Awash – created the first zero impact wool product (not actually zero impact though because they purchased carbon credits)

Christopher Raeburn creates garments out of re-approriated military fabrics

This book was primarily picture-based and almost imitated a magazine layout. It was good for getting design ideas and a lot of the clothing featured was practically art rather than clothing that one would were on a practical basis. However, its for that reason that I felt it wasn’t quite what I was looking for in regards to the sustainability of the pieces. They were definitely made with ‘sustainable’ methods, but they did cater towards a very specific demographic of the Western world and weren’t quite concerned in issues of sustainability across the board. 

  • Hopkins, John. Basics Fashion Design 05: Fashion Drawing. AVA Publishing, 2009.
  • Pérez-Cabal, Ma Ángeles., et al. Fibre Production in South American Camelids and Other Fibre Animals. Wageningen Academic Publishers, 2012.

Alpaca raising the highlands of Peru is a main source of income for many farmers

Due to various social, political, and economic factors, alpaca herding has dropped by 90% in the past 40 years

Raising a course fibered alpaca costs the same as raising an ‘improved fiber alpaca’ but the latter can fetch up to 10x the price.

Pacomarca project – breeding program dedicated to establishing a breed of fiber that meets the needs of the fiber market today

Two main tools of genetic improvement are selection and mating systems

Wool production (particularly traditional sheep farming) in South America has led to serious environmental concerns – land erosion, degradation, and endangered species.

The guanaco is the wild ancestor of the alpaca – it is recently in decline due to forage competition with sheep.

Now, guanacos are being used for fiber production in order to facilitate the population growth. Every year the wild guanaco population is trapped and shorn then released back into the wild.

The time at which guanaco fiber is harvested does not seem to affect the quantity or quality of the fiber

When the animal is in a bad condition due to lack of water, they – produce less fiber but of greater quality. This implies that they are able to make optimal use of poor land in which many other livestock could not survive

This book was helpful in determining the economic uses of camelid fiber animals. It provided a focus that was not necessarily on sustainability, which was actually helpful in troubleshooting what some issues with that process might be. This was written to highly camelids in South America particularly, but the problems that it described could easily be applied to any herding business.

  • Asrai, Reza Imani, Stephen T. Newman, and Aydin Nassehi. “A Mechanistic Model of Energy Consumption in Milling.” International Journal of Production Research 56, no. 1–2 (January 17, 2018): 642–59. https://doi.org/10.1080/00207543.2017.1404160.

 The milling machine is considered as a thermodynamic system (concerned with heat and temperature and their relation to other forms of energy and work)

Milling machines result in an error of less than 1% – leads to saving energy and money

Strategies for sustainable development three major technological changes – energy saving on the demand side, efficiency improvements in energy production, and the replacement of fossil fuels by various sources of renewable energy

US Department of Energy classifies industries according to their global energy consumpting – energy-intensive manufacturing, non-energy-intensive manufacturing, and non-manufacturing.

Energy is consumed in all four stages of a machine tool’s life-cycle

Using diamond-like tools can reduce energy consumption by up to 36%

A significant amount of energy is saved by turning off underutilized machines

Framework for energy consumption of machining manufacturing systems based on hierarchical description of the holistic energy flow in machining manufacturing systems in three layers of machine tool, task, and auxiliary production

Optimization of process parameters can allow reduction in energy consumption to a factor of 1.1 (i.e. a 10% increase)

Identifying the optimum process parameter requires knowledge of the behavior of a machine tool’s energy consumption as a function of the controllable process parameters

Admittedly, this article was a bit advanced for me since engineering is not my area of expertise. However, I was able to take away the basic concepts from it. It also provided me with a fundamental understanding of the way milling machines operate and how energy is wasted/conserved. Through this, I was able to follow those leads to different articles that put the terminology of the article into layman’s terms.

Kaltex mill uses BCI cotton blended with Tencel Repreve (wood pulp fiber) and recycled cotton
Prosperity China – ‘Sustainable’ mill – produces sweet indigo color produced without hydrosulfite
No dramatic difference in energy needed for milling per fiber type:

Thermal energy per meter – 4,500 – 5,500 Kcal, Electrical energy per meter – 0.45 – 0.55 KWH – translates into “huge” quantities of fossil fuels

Fossil Fuels needed for both to create energy directly or to produce heat and steam and power air conditioners

Machinery is expensive and therefore not updated frequently – this creates a huge lack of efficiency in energy consumption

Embodied energy in production of fibers + processing:

Material Energy use in MJ per KG of fiber Per KG of fabric Total
Flax 10 92 102
Conv. Cotton 55 92 147
Wool 63 92 155
Viscose 100 92 192
Polypropylene 115 92 217
Polyester 125 92 217
Acrylic 175 92 267
Nylon 250 92 342

It takes approx. 30 gallons of gasoline to produce 25 yards of nylon fabric

This blog post was extraordinarily helpful for me to really get a grasp on how much energy is used to produce textiles. It isn’t an academic journal, but with all of the more science-y articles I have been reading, it was necessary for me to find a source that put the information into layman’s terms since I am certainly not a physics nor engineering student.

  • Needles, Howard L. Textile Fibers, Dyes, Finishes, and Processes: A Concise Guide. Noyes Publications, 1986.

Textile originally defined woven fabric and processes involved in weaving

Expanded to: “staple filaments and fibers for use in yarns or preparation of woven, knitted, tufted or non-woven fabrics”, “yarns made from natural or man-made fibers”, “fabrics and other products made from fibers or from yarns”, “apparel or other articles fabricated from the above which retain the flexibility and drape of the original fabrics”

Fibers are made up of of millions of individual molecular chains of discrete chemical structure

Molecular arrangement is what affects the properties of different fibers

Fibers are broken down into two categories – natural and man-made – more categories stem from these two parent categories

Natural: plant (cotton, flax, other), animal (wool, mohair, silk), mineral (asbestos)

Man-made: regenerated (rayon, cellulose esters, proteins, glass, rubber), synthetic (polyamides, polyesters, acrylic, polyolefins, vinyls, spandex, etc.)

Fiber can also be classified by chemical structure without regard to its origin: cellulosic fibers (cotton, flax, rayon), Polyamide fibers (nylon 6 and 6,6, aramid, etc.), Cellulosic ester fibers (acetate, triacetate), Protein (wool, silk), polyester fibers (polyethylene terephthalate, poly 1, 4-cyclohexylenedi-methylene terephthalate), etc. etc.

Flax:

Flax fibers freed by a fermentation process called retting

Spinning fibers are 12 – 15 inches in length

Flax is nearly pure cellulose – similar to cotton

Wet flax is 20% stronger than dry fiber – fairly elastic at very low elongations

Has a higher regain than cotton, 12% is observed at standard conditions

High rigid – tends to crease on bending

Lustrous linen fabrics can be obtained by pounding the linen with wooden hammers (beetling)

Good resistance to acid, basis, and chemical bleaches

Resists insects and microorganisms and only under severe moist warm conditions will it be attacked by mildews

Decomposes as similar temperatures to cotton

Flax production tends to take extensive labor and is expensive but is superior to cotton in strength

Thermal properties and chemical resistance make it suitable for consumer applications

This book is a perfect resource for the basic structure and properties of the different kinds of fibers that I have been encountering through this study. It also covers the pros and cons of different fibers which has allowed me to get a better understanding of which textiles tend to be more practical and less labor intensive.

  • Poldner, Kim, Paul Shrivastava, and Oana Branzei. “Embodied Multi-Discursivity: An Aesthetic Process Approach to Sustainable Entrepreneurship.” Business & Society 56, no. 2 (February 1, 2017): 214–52. https://doi.org/10.1177/0007650315576149. 

Study argues that traditional entrepreneurship models don’t totally cover the world of sustainable entrepreneurship, particularly in terms of fashion

Importance of acknowledging and managing tensions between economic, environmental, and social aspects of conducting ethical business

Sustainable entrepreneurship is often emotionally charged – a call to perform higher than just yielding a profit. However, scholars who study the subject try to keep emotions, values, and subjective interpretations out of the picture.

Aesthetic inquiry – allows focus not only on the process of production, but also on the product that comes in the form of observable visual materials. Involves all the human senses.

The business aspect of a sustainable entrepreneur’s decision making becomes part of their portfolio – it becomes an art to work with environmental and social restraints

Often, emotions that inspire the entrepreneur are passed on to the consumer through the product created

This work was a great start for approaching fashion and design from a holistic standpoint. The authors go in great detail regarding both the business of fashion and the actual design process. It includes a good deal of actual studies that serve to back up the hypotheses that the authors make regarding different methods to revolutionize the current fashion market. 

Ideas of water vs. oil are changing due to farming practices and recyclability

British farmers use just 3% water withdrawals while Indian farmers rely on irrigation for nearly 90% of their farming needs

Synthetics use less water – also less water and energy use during laundering

Lyocell – a cellulose fiber made from wood pulp. Results in a fine yarn that offers high moisture management.

Agave – has strong fibers that can grow up to one meter in length. Particularly good for countries with poor soil quality. The decortication process is water intensive and prone to causing pollution.

Plant residue from textile production could potentially be converted into biogas to create electricity for housing

Hemp – renews soil rather than draining of its nutrients, can be grow without pesticides, biodegradable

Cheaper fashion can encourage over-consumption and over-production

Tailoring – provides an in-person, customized approach to creating a garment specifically suited to a certain consumer. Handsewn, highly customized process allows for a durable lifelong garment. Customers build relationships with the tailor and often return for further creations.

Jonathan Chapman and Nick Gant – “Degrees of sustainability” – encourages thinking of ways to improve during the creative process.

Fast-fashion involves little creativity or risk – simply ripping off high fashion but produced at a cheap cost. Producing products rapidly in response to new trends replaces “values such as exclusivity, glamour, originality, luxury, and lifestyle” with “massclusivitiy and planned spontaneity.”

“Our egotistical attitude to innovation is more or less responsible for the environmental and economic mess we are currently in”

“We as designers need an openness to adaption and to adopt a more holistic approach to design.”

Clothing does not need to be designed with a specific ‘end product’ in mind

Design, pattern-making, construction, and production do not need to be mutually exclusive entities

If fashion becomes a fully integrated discipline it is possible to produce zero waste

An aspect of sustainable design is to be okay with an element of unpredictability

The current fashion market aims to play it safe by predicting social, aesthetic, manufacturing, and economic trends in order to create a product. Sustainable fashion aims to create those trends through intuitive and conscious design.

This book was actually the last source I found about the sustainable fashion market but by far the most extensive and helpful. The different models explored were incredibly useful for my own research and helped me to put my activities into context. I was also thrilled to find that the authors reiterated something that I concluded last quarter – sustainability needs to be worked into every step of the design process.