Mecanismos Bioquímicos de Resistencia

This construct, namely environmental sustainability in fashion design praxis, briefly contextualises approaches to the development and implementation of environmental sustainability in fashion design praxis. Welters (2008:7-29) mentions that sustainability in fashion per se is not a new concept. It made its appearance in 1960 during the hippie culture, which specifically rejected mainstream styles. She describes the development of sustainable fashion as coming from an age of consumption during the 1970s, the age of conservation in the 1980s and the age of environmentalism of the 1990s. Welters (2008) refers to the last four decades of the twenty-first century as the age of over-abundance, or ‘fast fashion’, or, as Brown (2006) suggests, the ‘throw-away economy’, where little emphasis is placed on producing fashion that lasts beyond a season.

In order to contextualise environmental sustainability in fashion design praxis, a brief introduction to the process of fashion design is needed.7 _{The fashion design process may,} depending on the size of the enterprise, be done by either a designer or a design team, and is informed by several aspects (Waddell, 2004:40; Greenberg Ellinwood, 2011:1-2; Bye, 2010:x- xi). Fashion design is the visual solution that integrates materials and functionality of the designed product, or a designed product in which aesthetic application is favoured over

6 _{Sustainable design, in relation to the environmental and broader social issues, is discussed in Chapter 3.} 7 _{The fashion design process is further reviewed in Chapter 4.}

11 functionality. Bye (2010:x) maintains that the fashion design process is more than merely aesthetics; it concerns the functionality of the garment, the emotional effect of the garment on the intended consumer, the understanding of the materials the garment consists of, and the manufacturing processes entailed in producing the garments. The design process, specifically in the development of volume clothing, edits and refines designed collections to suit the needs of the market it services (Greenberg Ellinwood, 2011:2-14). In such a system, the question of how feasible environmentally sustainable fashion design is, should be deliberated.

Breds, Hjört and Krüger (2002:27), in earlier discussions on environmental sustainability in fashion, mention that many role players, which include designers and retailers, believe that environmental sustainability and fashion are contradictory to each other in the discourse on eco-fashion. In a consumption-based culture of fast-moving fashion, constant new trends and products produced off-shore, consideration for environmental sustainability is questioned. Black (2011:15-19) refers to this as the ‘fashion paradox’, where the throw-away culture referred to by Brown (2006), perpetuates consumption and the faster and cheaper production of garments. Black (2011:14) mentions:

More importantly, fast fashion also puts pressure on the clothing manufacturers and their suppliers to squeeze more output in less time, impacting those at the bottom end of the production chain who actually make the clothes.

Black (2011:17) argues that current business approaches in a global environmentally sustainable fashion industry have to be based on careful and considerate use of resources, economic feasibility and fair trade and labour practices, thus combining “…ecological and ethical principles with concept innovation and a high level of design aesthetics”.

In the years since the eco-fashion movement of the 1990s, several environmentally sustainable approaches for implementation of environmental sustainability have emerged. Three examples are provided which each reflect on a different approach to implementing environmental sustainability in fashion design praxis. The first example, A-piece-of-cloth (APOC), is the style approach that Issy Miyake and Dai Fujiwara developed in the late 1990s, in which the designers endeavoured to use the entire length and width of a piece of knitted fabric for several garments in a wardrobe, in an attempt to reduce waste fabrics. The second example is the fleece garment produced by Patagonia and Cape Union Mart (mentioned in the introduction to this chapter), where a percentage of recycled polyester is used in the development of their fleece jackets (Black, 2011:52; Hethorn & Ulasewicz, 2008).

The Patagonia model is interesting as the company made a conscious decision to move to developing eco-fashion. The company is mostly known for the recycling of soda bottles to develop fibres for their fleece product range. This is also referred to as the ‘take-back concept’ (Locker, 2008:122). Owner and founder of Patagonia, a United States of America-based manufacturer of recycled soda bottle fleece jackets, Yvon Chouinard (as quoted by Hethorn,

12 2008:x), maintains that this approach is feasible and awards the company “…the opportunity to change the way business can be done, to reduce environmental harm…”. The Patagonia model is a good example where the cradle-to-cradle principle is successfully applied (McDonough & Braungart, 2002).8 _{The third example is from Nike, who developed an athletic} shoe from recycled materials that forms part of their NikeGO Places programme for increased physical activity in children of low-income communities (Loker, 2008:122).

Several authors (Lee & Sevier, 2008; Hethorn & Ulasewicz, 2008; Fletcher, 2008) emphasise that eco-fashion can be misinterpreted by the consumer. In addition, Breds et al., (2002:27) argue that changing the attitudes of the consumer largely depends on the designer and retailer of environmentally sustainable fashion. Many consumers associate ‘eco’ with ‘organic’, yet environmental consideration can be achieved by many other methods not entirely understood by the consumer. The consumer’s active role should be to specific lifestyle choices which could include use and laundering, re-use, and disposal of fashion products. Thus, to apply environmental sustainability in fashion design requires the implementation of eco- and social agendas in the business of fashion, extensive knowledge of components of the products, and the implementation of manufacturing processes, such as suggested by the National Cleaner Production Centre (NCPC), that adhere to sound environmental and social practices.9

Chouniard (as quoted by Hethorn & Ulasewich, 2008:xi), suggests the following:

To be sustainable means that you take out of the system the same amount of energy as you put in, with no pollution or waste. A sustainable process is one you can do forever without exhausting resources or fouling the environment, which is scary. There has never yet been, not is there now, a sustainable business or sustainable fashion on this planet. […]. We all need to do everything we possibly can do to reduce the harm we do to the environment in our work lives as well as in our personal lives. It’s even more important at work because the decisions we make play out on an industrial scale.

In summary, environmental sustainability could provide economic advantage but it requires a holistic approach that considers people, processes and the environment, the meta-challenge as suggested by Fuad-Luke (2009). Business approaches in a global environmentally sustainable fashion industry have to be based on careful and considerate use of resources. Environmental sustainability in fashion design can only be implemented by people

8 _{The ‘cradle-to-cradle’ concept is a product cycle that can also be described as a developed clothing product. At} the end of a product’s life cycle the product is re-used to develop another, not always the same type of product – the fleece top is therefore a good example. As indicated, this is referred to as a ‘take-back programme’ (Smal, 2007). The cradle-to-cradle design thinking strategy was brought to the fore by McDonough and Braungart (2002) in their book Cradle to cradle, remaking the way we make things. The opposite of cradle-to-cradle is cradle-to- grave, where the entire product is disposed of on the landfill with no further use.

9 _{The NCPC of the CSIR has developed two guides to assist mills and manufacturers in implementing cleaner} manufacturing processes. Cleaner production is also referred to as processes to minimize waste, prevent pollution and operate in an eco-efficient manner (Barclay, 2004; Barclay, 2008).

13 knowledgeable in the design and manufacturing field, and design development, which, as suggested by Hethorn and Ulasewicz (2008), starts with an integrated approach. What is interesting to note is that in all of the above conversations, design, sustainability, the integral, and the holistic, are concepts that re-occur, and are centred on the self (social), the global (economic) and the nature (environment). In all the above authors’ work, the spiral or three- pronged notion re-occurs, where the focus lies on resources (people, nature), what we do