This week Julinka was keen to do some research into how we could have a more sustainable approach at Story. It was good to see that this was a concern for the company and that they were conscious of the consequences of unsustainable fashion. This is something I had been toying with a lot in my head throughout the internship. Because, ultimately I was having an amazing time, learning so much and pursuing things that I never thought I would get to do like designing. But in the back of my mind was always the issue of sustainability. More so than not all of the designs that we were producing in house in a socially sustainable way (because all of the artilliers in India were paid a fair living wage and Julinka had vetted the facilities and the working environment before she chose the production houses that she went with), the samples were then being sold onto high street fashion companies that would then go to mass produce these designs.
On one hand this is amazing because when somebody buys your design you’re in awe of the fact that you could be walking down the street and see someone wearing your design. But if this isn’t done in a sustainable way – we are still contributing to fast fashion and the sustainability crisis. I think here comes the very tough decision that we have to make as designers if this sits well with us and if we are ok with this. But then if we are not ok with this then if you decide to go into this role of a small business designing textiles – how on earth do you earn a living from this?
To be honest with you I still don’t know the answer and where I sit with it all despite my time interning in industry. I just know that I have addressed it within myself, which I think is a positive thing.
But, as I said, this is something Julinka wanted Story to start working on and she really wanted to tap into plastic free embellishment. She tasked me with find out what was out there already in this area. I did a lot of research into this over the course of the week and what I found was very very slim considering how much of an issue we know that sustainability is. There is one small company that has started to work on recycled plastic sequins, which sounded great. However, when you looked further into it you saw that it was only a small percentage of the sequin that was recycled, not the whole thing. They were also at an extreme premium cost, which after learning about the costs already to the company, didn’t seem like something attainable to Story at this moment in time.
From learning this we decided to try and tap into alternative embellishment like wooden beads, rafia embroidery and fabric manipulation. Julinka was very keen for us to keep these kinds of thing in mind when designing the next samples for the collection. Because of this, we began to make a moodboard that we could go to inspiration for the following weeks.