Innovation Textiles

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In this thesis I define sustainability as a situation in which environmental and social capital are of the same or higher value than economic capital (McNeill and Wilhite, 2015; Smith, 2010; Engleman, 2013; Jackson, 2009; Daly, 1977/1991). This was not necessarily the way in which the people with whom I met during my fieldwork would define sustainability, however, nor how they would approach the question of whether environmental and social sustainability is feasible within the context of capitalist faith in continuous growth. Taking this stance on sustainability—as well as leading to interesting and sometimes slightly heated discussions—has no doubt had an impact on my work, both in terms of my approach to the field and my analysis.

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heard being elaborated and drawn upon in Marie’s presentation—by far the most

inspiring presentation of the day, and also the one with which I felt most familiar (which of course, may also have been one of the reasons I found it the most inspiring).

I soon found myself in conversation with Marie, eager to understand more about InnoTex’s work. This initial conversation turned out to have a decisive impact on the direction of my research. When I first embarked upon my PhD, it had been my plan to work inside a fashion brand to explore challenges and opportunities to organizational change towards practising sustainability. However, I soon became aware that working inside a fashion brand would entail considerable restrictions on my research, and this was confirmed by Marie, who informed me that it would be difficult to gain permission to conduct an in-depth study of a fashion brand since they are known to keep their cards close to their chest and would almost certainly require me to sign elaborate

non-disclosure agreements (NDAs). Following several subsequent conversations about our respective research interests, in which Marie expressed her own interest in learning more about the methods and theories of the social sciences, the suggestion arose that I might conduct a case study of InnoTex, focusing primarily on the work they would be doing as part of the Swedish research project. Marie assured me I would be granted access to the InnoTex studio and that I would have full permission to use my empirical data. The chance to do fieldwork with a group of designers who were using design thinking as a tool to facilitate organizational change towards practising sustainability was a unique opportunity to combine three of my core interests: fashion, sustainability and the role of designers and design thinking in processes of change. I soon resolved, therefore, to take up this offer and to adapt my research questions accordingly.

InnoTex was established in the mid-1990s. At the time of my research, from 2012-2015, the group comprised eight textile design researchers and project-managers, all of whom were based in a recognized Art and Design University in London. The eight researchers constituting the core group were as follows: Marie, the Lead Researcher; Scarlett, the Founder and Lead Academic; Anika, a PhD student; Rosie, the Senior Research Assistant; Annalisa and Tilly, both Research Assistants; and Gwendolyn and Henrieta, Research and Project Managers. In addition, InnoTex worked with an extensive network of researchers and practitioners. All team members were on part-time contracts. During

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the time of my fieldwork, for example, Scarlett was in the process of cutting back on her working hours in preparation for retirement, while Marie was dividing her time between InnoTex and another London-based textiles research centre, and both research assistants were engaged in freelance projects and/or independent art and textile projects. (Table 2.1, below, outlines the team, including titles, nationalities and professional

backgrounds.) English was the mother tongue of Marie, Scarlett, Anika, Rosie and Gwendolyn, while it was a second language for myself, Annalisa, Tilly and Henrieta.

InnoTex was created in response to the frustration felt by Scarlett and her previous colleagues with the practices of the textile and fashion industry, as well as to their own lack of knowledge about how to create more sustainable textiles and fashion. In one conversation with Scarlett, I asked her what had motivated the group to start working with questions of sustainability at a time when sustainability was considered at best as a limitation on designers’ creative freedom. Her reply was as follows:

But we couldn’t escape the idea that, what was rumored to be true, was that textile production was causing a huge amount of pollution. We could see that in our own set up at the college. The students were pouring dyes down

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the sink and we knew that that wasn’t going into some kind of processing plant but that it was going into waste water - and that was just part of it. So we were aware of the ecological damage potentially. And we kept hearing about it from the industry—the little we knew of the industry at the time.

(Interview with Scarlett, July 2013)

Over the years, InnoTex’s research has led to the development of a set of ten sustainable design strategies targeted at textile and fashion designers. Rather than purporting to be

‘the solution’ to achieving sustainability, these ten strategies provide a framework for thinking, and range from approaches that rely on material, process and technological solutions to more conceptual strategies encouraging radical innovation (see Figure 2.1).

These design strategies have become InnoTex’s starting point for work in education, research and consultancy. The group apply them through what they call ‘layered thinking’, meaning that you start with one or two strategies and later, once these are in place, you can connect them with others. In this way the strategies are designed both to stimulate immediate inspiration and also to provoke further thought about the subject in the future. Marie explained that the ten strategies reflected InnoTex’s definition of sustainability. Taken together they present a quite strong definition, encouraging environmental, social and economic sustainability (Braun, 2012). However, the

malleability of the strategies also encourages users to break the concept down into bits and pieces, most often resulting in weaker definitions of sustainability—i.e.

compromising issues of social sustainability.

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Being based in London, one of the world’s ‘Big Four’ fashion capitals (Paris, Milan, New York and London), InnoTex is part of a community long recognized for its design schools and cutting-edge fashion—and also a community increasingly known for its explorations into sustainable fashion. Over the last couple of decades the city has seen the establishment of a number of research centres and higher educational programmes focused on sustainable fashion, including the Centre for Sustainable Fashion, Textiles Environment Design, the Textiles Futures Research Centre, and Innovation Textiles.

Other initiatives include the development of the ‘Sustainable Clothing Roadmap’ by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) and Marks & Spencer’s setting up of ‘Plan A’. In addition to offering unique opportunities for knowledge exchange and collaboration, this is also a competitive environment marked by

competition for funding and ongoing struggles concerning the meaning and practice of sustainable fashion. For example, InnoTex’s activities in the summer and fall of 2013 were strongly influenced by Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2014 , a new system introduced by Britain’s four higher education funding bodies to assess the quality of

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research in the UK’s higher education institutions.¹ Following assessment, the four higher education funding bodies would use REF 2014 to inform the selective allocation of research grants to the institutions they would fund from 2015–2016. The 2014 Framework used “a single framework for assessment across all disciplines, with a

common set of data required in all submissions, standard definitions and procedures, and assessment by expert panels against broad generic criteria” (REF 02.2011, p. 4). In the course of my fieldwork with InnoTex it was my experience that the REF brought with it an increased focus on and pressure to publish in recognized, academic journals. As part of the arts and design field that has traditionally communicated research results through physical objects and exhibitions, publishing in academic journals was new to InnoTex and something that put Marie under considerable pressure at this time. For this reason she was eager to take up opportunities to co-author articles.