DIGITAL FABRICATION FOR FASHION - De /construct

Today I learnt many new phrases - Circular fashion, Open-Source, Post-couture culture,reverse engineering, Fashion hack and sharing economy. I'd heard of some of these phrases before, but have never had the time to fully investigate what their respective meanings are - thank goodness there is a summer school paper dedicated to finding out it, right!

The things that stuck with me today is both the concept of the European Post-couture Culture - and the NZ based Make/Use website. The concept of returning design back into the hands of consumers is a concept which I find deeply fascinating... I intend on exploring in more detail as I enter into my forth and final year of study at Massey University. Make/Use explains:

' In conventional garment production, an average of 15% of the fabric is unused. In 2015 alone, it is estimated that this will add up to around 60 billion square meters of discarded cloth worldwide, from the making of around 80 billion garments. Embodied in each scrap of wasted cloth is the resources used in its own production – when you consider that the amount of water used to make a single T shirt could sustain one person for three years, the accumulative impact is staggering. This understanding of the true value of materials underpins the zero waste philosophy. '

These are numbers I cannot truly fathom. I have always known that fast-fashion is not good for anybody, from the people that grow and pick the cotton, to the people that create the garments, all the way through to the minimum waged workers who work in the retails stores, however when put in the above context it is only highlighted to me even further that the only way forward for fashion design is to utilize digital fabrication processes and think outside the box in terms of its usual production chains.

Today saw me deconstructing a cape I brought at an op-shop about 10 years ago- I have already altered it in the past, made it shorter and cut shoulder darts to give it more definition, however in the past 2 years I have barely worn it as it is cumbersome to wear and slops about my frame far too much. Time for a make over!

Please note, in classic Carissa fashion I have somehow managed to misplace the collar in the event of taking it from Uni to home. I'll make sure I have a hunt around uni for it tomorrow after class.