TED - TEXTILE ENVIRONMENT DESIGN

We now have a new blog!

2011-10-18T04:44:00.001-07:00

Dear TED blog followers! We now have a new blog! Please look for new posts on our new blog, and please follow us on our new website as well. You can sign up with TED on our homepage in the top right corner.

2011-10-14T11:00:00.000-07:00

The TED blog has got a new home.

Please go to www.tedresearch.net to see the new website and latest news.

TED's TEN at Fashion Colloquia

2011-09-22T05:53:00.000-07:00

Becky Earley was at the Fashion Colloquia at LCF this morning presenting TED's TEN to an audience of students, designers and journalists.

The Colloquia is an event organised by four institutions including Parson NY, LCF and The Domus Academy, Italy to explore the fundamental issues around fashion as all the international fashion weeks take place this month.

Becky finished her presentation by asking the audience to contribute to a questionnaire being developed as part of the MISTRA Future Fashion project by the Copenhagen Business School - What questions would you like to ask fashion designers about sustainability? Do you want to know how other designers think about sustainability?

If you would like to contribute email us at ted@chelsea.arts.ac.uk and your contribution may become part of this exciting research project.

Chelsea graduates in best of UAL design show

2011-08-24T10:25:00.000-07:00

Kay Politowicz and Judy Lindsay (CSM) have been working with fashion designer Giles Deacon on the selection of the best design graduates from the UAL this year, that will be showcased in British-ish, at the V& A for London Design Festival.

The show will include Chelsea BA textile graduate Haruka Miyamoto, who produces beautiful installations made from old plastic bags and food packaging, that are twisted into tiny threads, using an ancient Japanese craft technique. A podcast of Haruka in conversation with Becky Earley is here .

Another graduate on show is Chelsea graphic designer Joshua Osborne who has made a short film that explores the traditional world of English men's tailoring.

The show is on from 17th - 25th September.

Top image: Joshua Osborne
Bottom image: Haruka Miyamoto

New website coming soon

2011-08-16T10:09:00.000-07:00

We are hard at work on getting the new TED website up and running. It is only a few weeks away now but here is a sneak peak of our new look!

There will be all the latest news and updates on our activities and a great archive section of TED projects going back to 1996, all beautifully shown with images and our writing. Our resource section will include our well developed Resource Sheets and a whole new area dedicated to TED's TEN, our set of design strategies for fashion/textile designers, which we are now helping several large fashion brands to use as starting points for sustainable innovation, within Sweden and the US.

Fashion theory for dummies

2011-08-16T09:32:00.000-07:00

Although TED has been lucky enough to secure funding for the next four years as part of the MISTRA Future Fashion project, we missed out on an opportunity to collaborate with the great Otto von Busch, a fashion hacktivist and researcher based in Sweden, who unfortunately will not be part of our project. However, news has just come in that Otto has now been offered the post of Associate Professor of Integrated Design at Parsons New School of Design in New York, which is great news for everyone at Parsons. We hope there will be an opportunity for us to work with Otto soon.

In the meantime, Otto has just sent us copies of a small series of booklets on fashion theory he has produced, using simple illustrations and stories to make fashion theory accessible for students and dummies.

As the blurb for the Virus of Fashion booklet says: "How come fashion has such influence on us? In this short story we will follow the virus of fashion and see how it infects us with desire."

Download the booklets here

Sustainable Textiles short course at Chelsea

2011-08-03T04:22:00.000-07:00

Clara Vuletich has designed a new short course at Chelsea called Sustainable Textiles, that runs over four days in October and February 2012. The course will consist of morning seminars on all the key sustainable textile design ideas followed by afternoon sessions of low impact printing and dyeing in the print room at Chelsea. This is a great chance to make some of our research available to a wider audience and the content of the course comes from Clara's experience delivering TED's Interconnected Design Thinking Workshops and her workshops with textile collective bricolage.

This is a great opportunity if you are a fashion/textile designer or craft maker wanting to find out the latest ideas and extend your own practice.

More information and to book here.

Slow Summit lectures this Friday

2011-07-05T10:43:00.000-07:00

The TFRC/Craftspace Slow Summit Open Lecture is this Friday and we are looking forward to seeing Alastair Fuad-Luke and Helen Carnac's presentations. There are still places available for the lectures which are taking place at 272 High Holborn, Friday 8th July at 10:30am.

The event is co-curated by Becky Earley and Helen Carnac, and examines the emergence of the Slow Movement, within a context of design, making and art practice. The two guest speakers will map out the ground that this new creative thinking occupies, both addressing the theory and the practice, as well as the local/global economics and politics that fuel the movement.

Beauty and sustainability

2011-06-27T07:27:00.000-07:00

The BA Textiles Graduate Show here at Chelsea last week was a real triumph of talent and new ideas and techniques. There was also evidence of some really strong sustainable design concepts, mainly hidden from view (as they often are!) but the ideas and concepts the students have been developing over their time here at Chelsea was so exciting to see.

Here at TED we believe passionately that textiles and objects/garments have to be beautiful and well made first and foremost. The 'sustainability' of how a garment or fabric is designed and produced is obviously important but if the final piece does not engage us, or inspire us, there is no point. You could say the ideal is 'human-centred, low impact' textile/fashion design!

Another aspect of this design approach, is that the 'sustainability' of a design or concept is about how the designer thinks - not just in their choice of 'eco' fabrics or re-use of materials. At TED we base all our research on this notion - aware that over 80% of our decisions as designer's affect the environmental impacts of a product, but also re-thinking the role of our designs/textiles in people's lives, and our role as designers.

This can be explored in a multitude of ways - which is what the ideas behind many of the works on show at the Graduate Exhibition revealed. Can a designer become a design facilitator in a country like India, to work promoting the traditional, craft skills while also bringing new opportunities and markets to local communities? Can a designer bring her innate skill and hand techniques to create new, delicate fibres from waste plastic while also communicating an old cultural tradition of thrift and resourcefulness?

We have done some interviews again this year of some of the Graduates who have been exploring our idea of sustainable textile design, and these will be edited and developed into podcasts soon.

Top image: Imogen Houldsworth, Bottom image: Jo Fowles

Future Fashion comes to London

2011-06-21T05:42:00.000-07:00

Last week we hosted 14 of the researchers who are part of our new research project, MISTRA Future Fashion. We had two days of workshops and discussions and heard from each of the eight different Projects within the consortium.

There is a group of social scientists and economists from Copenhagen Business School specialising in sustainable consumption; political scientists from Malmo University, who will be exploring the policy structures around making the fashion industry more sustainable; a group of fibre technologists who are developing a new sustainable fibre based on a viscose process and other researchers from Swerea/IVF and Konsfact.

TED ran a 'Speed Dating Workshop' for the group of researchers to get to know one another and to begin to explore and map the multi-disciplinary nature of the project and how we will all work together.

We are the design element within the project and will be using our TED's TEN to plug into the new research being generated throughout the project - creating new design concepts and garments.

Slow Summit event

2011-06-10T04:02:00.000-07:00

The fourth event in the 2011 TFRC Open Lecture series, run in conjunction with Craftspace, is the Slow Summit, on July 8th with Prof. Alastair Fuad-Luke and Prof. Helen Carnac.

The event is co-curated by Becky Earley and Helen Carnac, and is an Open Lecture followed by an invitation-only workshop session. The event examines the emergence of the Slow Movement, within a context of design, making and art practice. The two guest speakers will map out the ground that this new creative thinking occupies, both addressing the theory and the practice, as well as the local/global economics and politics that fuel the movement.

Prof. Alastair Fuad-Luke is a renowned sustainable design theorist and writer and author of Design Activism, the Eco Design Handbooks and newly appointed Professor at Aalto University, Helsinki.

Prof. Helen Carnac is a maker, writer and curator of Taking Time: Craft and the Slow Revolution, an touring exhibition from Craftspace.

The Open Lectures will be at 272 High Holborn, Lecture Theater, 10:30am - 1pm.

Forward and Up

2011-06-03T07:22:00.000-07:00

Becky Earley and Kate Goldsworthy will be in conversation next Wednesday 5th June at 5: 15pm, in the Lecture Theatre at Chelsea, as part of the CCW Graduate Encounters series.

The presentation will trace the eleven years of conversations and collaborations – Becky and Kate worked on research projects together before Kate's PhD project began in 2005 – and will look at the way in which their ideas evolved along parallel paths, both approaching the recycling of textiles from different creative perspectives.

Kate’s PhD Material Re-creation: forward recycling of synthetic waste for the luxury textile market , uses laser technology to create new textile surface treatments and applications, enabling a monomaterial approach to design for reuse of textiles.

Becky’s Top 100 project work explores the reuse of polyester clothing, and has created new theory for upcycling textiles. Each set of shirts has been subject to experiments which explore ecodesign theory in practice. Technically the project has demonstrated upcycling polyester through the use of: digital overprinting; digital dye sublimation overprinting; heat photogram overprinting; laser etching and welding (with Kate); sonic cutting and slitting; detachability and multifunction; low launder; locality; emotional durability, and most recently co-creation.

In 2008 Becky and Kate created the Twice Upcycled shirts together (pictured) – taking recycled shirts from Becky’s Top 100 project and giving them another new life. The presentation will focus on this work, exploring the way in which the collaboration inspired the researchers to go on to pursue new independent work.

E-co textiles

2011-05-28T04:00:00.000-07:00

DIY mania was in action last weekend at the Future Everything Craft event in Manchester, with Mel Bowles and Jen Ballie introducing audiences to their co-design textile/fashion projects.

Also at the event were projects including Pics to Knits a web based project which allows a user to convert any image to a knitting pattern which forms a blanket or throw and David Littler's sampler-cultureclash an international collective of sound artists, DJ’s, embroiderers, textile designers, performance poets, machine hackers and dancers who are exploring the connections between textiles and sound and the cultures of embroidery and DJ-ing.

Creative Transition launches

2011-05-23T09:00:00.001-07:00

Last week saw the launch of a small research project we are involved in called Creative Transition that brings together staff and students across CCW (Chelsea, Camberwell and Wimbledon) who are interested in notions of sustainability and resilience in art and design education.

The event was called 'The Keys are Under the Mat', and it was a day of presentations and discussions between staff and post-graduate students from across the three colleges. The first speaker Ian was from Transition Heathrow, an activist group based in the communities around the proposed runway expansion at Heathrow. Ian described the activity that the Transition group have been involved in and introduced us to the ideas and tools that have been developed by the Transition Towns network.

Andy Merritt from the Farm Shop then spoke about the urban food growing project set up in an empty shop in Dalston, by collective Something & Sons. They are exploring hydroponics, aquaponics and soil based growing and they are a great example of a collective approach to trying out new ways to sustainable urban living.

We have spent some time debating the terms sustainability and resilience amongst the group. The term resilience has been widely used lately, from designers to economists to politicians, and there are many definitions and insights about what it means. Rob Hopkins, the founder of the Transition Town movements has written an article here on resilience thinking and there is even a Resilience Centre based in Stockholm, Sweden, that has a wonderful explanation of resilience with some insightful videos here. (Coincidentally, this Centre is also funded by MISTRA who are funding our new Future Fashion research project).

The Creative Transition project will be continuing the conversation we have already begun across the colleges with some workshops and more events planned in the next 6 months.

Textiles & Co Design at TED

2011-05-11T07:05:00.000-07:00

TED member Mel Bowles and PhD student Jen Ballie are both going to be at the Future Everything event this weekend in Manchester.

Mel will be running her workshop 'The Peoples Print: the empowerment of the consumer through Digital Textile Design', where participants will be encouraged to create their own digital textile print.

Jen Ballie will be presenting her interactive workshop called The Scarf Project, where you will be encouraged to rip and mix past and present fashion trends to make and style your own bespoke scarf.

Mike Press talk now available

2011-05-11T04:44:00.000-07:00

Mike Press - Handmade Knowledge, March 25th 2011 from Textiles Environment Design on Vimeo

The recent lecture given by Mike Press that we hosted here as part of the TFRC Sustainable Textiles Seminars is now available as a Podcast, also available here.

We are also in the process of editing and preparing recordings from speakers who were part of our IMPACT series this year - this included the founders of AO Textiles, Amy Twigger Holroyd from Keep & Share and Cyndi Rhoades from Worn Again.

Transition fashion

2011-04-19T13:51:00.000-07:00

Stage 2 BA students held their Fashion Show last week in Brixton Market. The project was called 'Transition' and was inspired by the Transiton Town concept of low carbon, resilient communiites and approaches. A whole host of different creative textile reponses to the theme of transition were paraded through the wonderful indoor market.

We will be trying to capture some of the projects and their themes being explored by some of the students.

More images are on Mel Bowles' flikr site

Images: Mel Bowles

2011-04-11T03:08:00.000-07:00

A few competitions and projects have been coming our way which we would like to share:

Victor Papanek Social Design Awards are launching this year and the competition is open to designers and students who have developed a product, in realised or protoyped stage, which "aims to achieve net zero environmental impact, or which offer social benefit to underserved segments of society or which are driven by socially responsive considerations".

The judges will also consider Design Concepts not yet fully realized or produced but in development "which address transdisciplinary design perspectives on urbanization, in areas such as housing, transportation, accessibility (inclusive design), communication, social and medical care, and the implications of national and international migration."

Perhaps the textile/fashion students who are entering the VF/TFRC Competition may have developed design concepts that would be approporaite for this Award as well. The winners will be exhibited in exhibtions in both Autsria and at the Museum of Arts and Crafts in New York, and the application deadline is June 1st.

Nottingham Trent University has announced the following opportunities to study for an PhD under the supervision of Professor Tim Cooper. The first is a PhD Studentship in Consumers and Possessions: A Cross-Disciplinary Exploration of Sustainable Practices. This is a cross-disciplinary studentship involving research into how people use their possessions and the built environment with regard to sustainability and the implications of this for design practice. One of its key elements will be to relate knowledge in sustainable architecture, sustainable fashion and sustainable product design. For further information please visit here The closing date for applications is midnight on Friday 15 April 2011.

The other offer is the Vice Chancellor’s PhD Studentships – Sustainable Design / Sustainable Consumption / Product Longevity. Research proposals are invited for entry to a competition for one of twelve Vice Chancellor’s PhD studentships. Proposals supported by the Sustainable Consumption Research Group may be on any theme relating to sustainable design or sustainable consumption. Proposals relating to the life-span of consumer durables are especially welcome. For further information please visit here. The closing date for applications is Monday 18 April 2011. Image: Alistair Fuad-Luke's Design Seeds Workshops 2009

TED Wins Research Bid

2011-04-04T09:52:00.000-07:00

We are very excited to announce that TED is part of successful bid for a large research project titled Future Fashion , funded by MISTRA, a Swedish government organisation. The TED project is one of eight individual / interconnected projects, and our research will specifically address the question 'How can sustainable design processes be created and embedded within companies and gain the participation of consumers?'.

The project will see TED work with a consortium of different partners including SV, Chalmers University, Copenhagen Business School, and H&M on exploring TED's ten sustainable design strategies for textiles. We will be working with CelluNova, a new cellulose fibre made using wood from the old paper making industries in Sweden.

The project will launch here at Chelsea in June, and TED will begin researching, documenting, promoting and disseminating soon after, through a new website – www.textiletoolbox.com. More info to follow shortly!

Designer in Residence Exhibition

2011-04-04T05:04:00.000-07:00

Chelsea graduate Tope Tijani, has been the Designer in Residence here in the digital print department, as part of the AA2A scheme. The final show opened at Camberwell, and Tope showed some lovely digital prints that she mounted on the wall and made into a summer dress.

Tope also creates a range of fashion accessories using digitally printed plastics and the range is now available on new online retailer Bengt, that supports emerging designers.

The AA2A show continues at Camberwell College of Art until 19th April.

Craft isnt soft!

2011-03-29T04:41:00.000-07:00

We hosted Prof. Mike Press last Friday for the TFRC Sustainable Textiles seminar series. We had a great turn out with over 100 people attending. Titled 'Handmade Knowledge', Mike talked about the value of craft, as not only being embedded in the finished object, but in knowledge of processes, materials and ways of thinking that can be applied to other contexts and disciplines.

He talked in the context of the current university and government cuts, where most emphasis is being put on STEM subjects - Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths, and the value and strength of 'soft' subjects like craft. He showed how craft defies this 'soft' label by highlighting the work of crafts people who had radically impacted on culture through their thinking and making. A podcast of Mike's talk with his presentation will be available soon once we have finished editing.

Mike Press to speak at Chelsea

2011-03-08T05:50:00.001-08:00

We are very excited to announce that one of our design and craft thinking heroes Prof. Mike Press, is coming to speak at Chelsea College of Art & Design, as part of the TFRC Sustainable Textiles Research Seminar series. It will be an Open Lecture titled 'Hand-made Knowledge' on 25th March in the Lecture Theatre, 2 - 3pm.

Mike is Associate Dean of Design at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design and has written and researched widely on design, innovation, contemporary craft and the management of creativity.

He has authored three books, including The Design Agenda: a Guide to Successful Design Management and The Design Experience.

His research and writing spans three areas: design and crime, the future of craft, and co-design. He is also an experienced supervisor and examiner of PhDs in design, and has been an advocate of practice-based approaches to design research.

Most recently he has been involved in a scoping project to develop a design school in Rwanda.

Image left: Mike Press
Image right: Kntted Remotes, Hazel White

Transition Student Project

2011-02-22T07:14:00.000-08:00

Here at TED we have been very interested in the Transition Town movements that have been emerging all around the world, where local communities are working together to build a low energy future to live and work in and to encourage a more sustainable life. The second year textile students here at Chelsea are working on their next project which is titled Transition.

The first Transition Town was founded in Totnes in Devon and there are now several London boroughs that have also joined up. Brixton has now become a Transition Town and several TED members have been involved in initiatives there including Clara Vuletich, and the textile collective she is part of bricolage, who had a temporary space in Brxiton Market last year.

The historic indoor market in Brixton has been transformed over the last year and had a 'community facelift'. Artists and small businesses were given empty shops for two months and there is now a thriving market of restaurants, cafes, theatre groups and independent boutiques.

The project will end with a fashion show of the textiles and garments produced and the show will take place in Brixton Market on Thursday March 31st. We will be following the progress of the project, which will also be documented on the Chelsea Textile Student blog.

TFRC/VF Competition launches

2011-02-22T06:19:00.000-08:00

The VF/TFRC Student Competition launch was a great success yesterday with over 120 students and tutors attending.

We heard from a wonderful range of speakers who all explored the latest innovations in textile and fashion design and research and for their last presentation slide they were all asked to reveal how they would spend the £250 if they won a mentoring prize.

Dr Emma Neuberg presented her reasons for setting up the Slow Textiles Group, a group of people who meet regularly to learn and exchange textile skills and knowledge . For her, 'slow' is about quality rather than time and Emma explained the many benefits of encouraging re-use and hand skills including an improvement in well-being and reduced stress. Emma said she would spend her £250 on generating good primary research to support the project proposal.

Alex Deschamps - Sonsino, an interaction designer, summarised the most interesting interaction projects around the theme of 'Responsible Living'. For students who are thinking of using new technologies in their proposals, Alex emphasised that they understand the technology properly and that the appropriate technology has been chosen for the right reasons. Alex would spend her £250 on a Arduino Lilypad, a microcontroller board designed for wearables and e-textiles.

Adam Thorpe from Vexed Generation and Design Against Crime used Mazlow's infamous 'Hierarchy of Needs' to structure his exploration of the theme 'protecting what I value', through some of the many varied projects he has worked on as a designer delivering garment and material innovations for urban environments. Adam would spend his £250 on a second hand bike from ebay as its the best way to get around town and is a primary research tool for garment design for urban mobility.

Di Mainstone is a fashion designer who designs 'artefacts' or garments for the body that are used in performance. Di explained her recent interest in exploring objects and garments that have a multifunctional or modular application and how her design processes were very often co-designed with collaborators from other disciplines.

Suzanne Lee was the final speaker, and she presented her BioCouture project, and outlined the current emerging field of researchers who are designing using living organisms. Suzanne would spend her £250 on making sure the project and the 'back story' was well communicated whether it is through good images, a website or a short film or animation, and emphasised that this was often the most overlooked area for textile and fashion designers.

The Application Form is now available on the TFRC Project blog, on the right hand column.

Competition launch event on Monday - places going fast!

2011-02-18T11:34:00.001-08:00

Places are filling up fast in the 150 seater Lecture Theatre for Monday's launch event. If you would like to reserve a space please email tfrg@tfrg.org.uk.

The competition aims to encourage and support student work that explores future focused design questions for fashion and textiles. The judges are looking for entries that show new fashion / textile work that has been generated:

· Through original research and investigation

· By experimentation with technique and materials

· With an innovative approach to technology

The Five Themes - The entries should consist of textile and fashion concepts, designs, visualizations and objects that embody the theme that you have chosen to work with. There are a number of research questions within each theme, and you are advised to address one question in particular, although it is anticipated that you may end up incorporating more than one question / idea as your entry develops.

VF Brands - We advise that you research the VF brands, and select a particular line to work with.

Collaborations - between more than one designer, especially where the partnerships bring together skills and expertise from across different disciplines, are encouraged and supported, but are not a requirement of the entry.

Mentoring Awards – You may enter the competition by applying for a mentoring award, or by submitting an unmentored application directly in July. You can enter if you are a UAL student, or a graduate who left college in the last two years.

The guest speakers at the launch will help contextualise the five themes and the questions.

Slow/Fast becomes a trend

2011-02-15T07:12:00.000-08:00

Last autumn, TED Members Melanie Bowles and Emma Neuberg ran their Slow/Fast workshops at the V & A, where participants were encouraged to explore both hand and digital approaches to textile making. The course was awarded the 'Best Creative Course' in 2010 by the participants and was quite ground breaking in it's approach.

Mel, Emma and their project has now been written up in Stylus.com, by Chelsea alumni Alsion Gough who works for this trends forecasting website, exploring what the Slow movement means for the textile and fashion industry.

The co-design element of the new Slow approaches is key, as Alison explains, "Further removing brand controls, open sourcing and shared knowledge is crucial for the slow movement and, as the slow textiles group strives towards an empowerment of the consumer, the role of digital and downloadable is gaining momentum...".

Co-Everything......

2011-02-09T07:20:00.001-08:00

A few things we have been watching, reading and talking about lately around co-design and collaboration......

There's a new book called What's Mine is Yours: the Rise of Collaborative Consumption, by social innovator Rachel Botsman. She was speaking at the RSA last week, and we couldn't get in as it was all sold out. But you can hear the talk here and a talk she gave on TED.com (that's not us by the way! we are getting confused with the American TED more and more!)

We have been very interested in this new trend in consumer behaviour for a while now, and what it means for designers.

One of our favourite fashion projects that involves online networks and a type of collaborative consumption is the Uniform Project. Founder Sheena Matheiken, was also on TED, and you can watch her talk here and listen to her interview on Radio 4 recently here.

While she wore the same dress for one year, she accessorised it with pieces that were all second hand and all donated or given or swapped. She looked fabulous every single day and by offering a daily update, readers became part of her story and were also encouraged to donate funds to support a charity in India.

In this world of hyper-consumerism, where we have and know everything, consumers are wanting to make more meaningful purchases. This relates to a talk we attended here at Chelsea last week by Glen Adamson, writer and thinker around craft and design. While there were many interesting points made (and hopefully there will be a review of the talk by one of the TED members shortly), the title and thrust of the talk was 'Affective objects' - the idea that hand-crafted objects arouse an emotional response in us, and that something that has been made with attention to detail, care and skill, reminds us of the beautiful and profound in life, and is an antedote to our modern living.

TFRC to launch UAL-wide student competition with VF Corp, USA, Monday 21st February 2011

2011-02-02T08:03:00.000-08:00

TFRC have joined up with VF Corporation in the USA, the parent company to brands including Wrangler, Lee and Seven For All Mankind, to launch the Future Fashion Textiles Competition for all fashion and textile students and recent graduates of the UAL. The launch of the competition will be on Monday 21st February, (2 - 6pm, 272 High Holborn). The five themes will be contextualised and explored by a speaker for each theme. The themes are 'Simplicity Regained', 'Health & Wellness', 'Networked Lives', 'Responsible Lives' and 'Trust Rebalanced'. Speakers will be announced next week.

The overall winner will be announced in mid July given a cash prize of £1,500 and their work will be shown at the VF US Summit Exhibition in September. They will also be flown out to the event, to see the show and to network.The competition will run as an open call to all textile and fashion students at the University, and will also be open to recent graduates (last two years), with a deadline for entries in early July. However, working from this launch event, students and graduates will also have the opportunity to submit a short proposal in March. Ten of these proposals will then be chosen and those students will recieve a £250 budget and two mentoring sessions from TFRC members.

http://www.http//uk.7forallmankind.com/en_en/

http://www.nautica.com/home/index.jsp

These themes all have aspects of sustainability running through them and they also strongly relate to TFRC's own research themes of digital, science and sustainable textiles. With an impressive line-up of world-leading textile designers and researchers planned to speak, the event should be really insightful and worth attending, even if you are not going to enter the competition.

For more information on the launch event and to keep up to date as more speakers are announced, keep an eye on the TFRC blog.....

TED goes to Copenhagen this April

2011-02-02T06:25:00.000-08:00

Becky Earley and Prof. Kay Politowicz have been accepted to speak at the Towards Sustainability in the Textile and Fashion Industry conference in Copenhagen in April.

Becky's paper is titled Upcycling Textiles: Adding Value Through Design and will propose new textile design theory for the practice of upcycling. The paper will reflect upon the Ever & Again project (2005 – 2010) that asked twelve designers to create recycled textile products that would have value added to them in the course of recirculation. The paper will consider: the research questions; the research methodologies utilised and developed; and the concepts that were developed by the designers in order to arrive at a definition of the upcycling of textiles, and a set of guiding principles for best practice. The paper concludes with visions for future practice, including the Twice Upcycled work which explores forward recycling concepts for the polyester economy.

Kay's paper is titled "We Cannot Afford Cheap Things": Teaching, Research and Enterprise and explores the relationship of teaching, practice-based research and enterprise in the education of textile designers. While UK Higher Education teaching budgets have been subject to cuts in funding, there has been a recent establishment in practice-based research activity amongst teachers on art and design courses that is just beginning to flourish.

This paper will outline several models for research into teaching, and teaching into research, that have been piloted through TED at Chelsea College of Art and Design.

Calling all future design innovators!

2011-01-26T09:26:00.000-08:00

Are you a textile or fashion design student or recent graduate who is interested in the exciting ideas being explored around sustainability and innovation within textiles and fashion?

TED PhD student Jen Ballie is organising the first in a series of workshops exploring co-design for textile and fashion design and she needs some participants.

If you were born between 1977 and 1997 (Generation Y!), are familiar with the latest digital tools such as Twitter, blogging and Facebook and you are available from February 7th - 18th in central London, then Jen would like to hear from you.

The selected participants will be invited to a design meeting where the project will be pitched and they will play an active role in defining the overall brief. You will leave with a goodie bag of design tools, tips and tricks to get started on your design research and development. The following week we will meet again and get to work collectively designing a collection of fashion fabrics and accessories.

This is an exciting opportunity for you to participate in a live research project and play an active role in defining new design approaches, and an excellent CV opportunity!

Visit http://thetextilesampler.blogspot.com/ for updates and further information.

2011-01-12T03:17:00.000-08:00

The work that comes out of the Textile Futures MA course over at Central St Martins is always surprising and original and it consistently pushes the boundaries of the role that textile design plays in society. The Interim Show was last night and the work on show was no exception.

Projects explored ideas as diverse as the value of air as a material and tool, the role of superstition in our use of technology and the role of textiles in expressing our unconscious minds.

Laura Martinez 's project was titled 'How can traditional textile craft inform the aesthetics of tomorrow's rapid-manufactured textiles?'. Small pieces of 3D printing had been hand crafted into beautifully, jewellery-like pieces.

Hyun Jin Jeong explored natural dyeing, with a twist. She could not get access to many plants over the winter season so instead she turned to soil, or 'earth dyeing'. She compared the soil and resulting dye colours of the soils from both her native South Korea and from parts of the UK, testing the colours by dyeing fabric and also hand printing with the dyes.

CCW Design Lecture Series

2011-01-10T08:04:00.000-08:00

Chelsea is now part of CCW (Chelsea/Camberwell/Wimbledon) and there is a new Design Lecture Series launched this month, with some well-known names from the design and craft world.

The first lecture is Glenn Adamson, titled 'Effective Objects: Design and the Re-Invention of Craft', on Monday 31st January at Chelsea Lecture Theatre. Adamson is Deputy Head of Research and Head of Graduate Studies at the V & A Museum, where he leads a graduate prgramme in the History of Design. Adamson is also the author of Thinking Through Craft (2007).

The next lecture on Monday 7th February, will be by Yuko Kikuchi, CCW Reader, who's work focuses on modern design and crafts in East Asia.

Finally, on 21st March Tomoko Azumi will talk about her work as a designer and founder of t.n.a Design Studio. Azumi is also involved with design project TEN, which involves ten designers who work each year on a sustainable design challenge, using limited or found resources.

All the lectures are free and open to the general public. They all start at 6pm, in the Chelsea Lecture Theatre, entrance via Atterbury Street. For more information contact: y.kikuchi@chelsea.arts.ac.uk

2011-01-10T02:44:00.001-08:00

Becky Earley will be talking about her use of digital technology within her textile practice, at Metropolitan Works next Wednesday 12th January.

Metropolitan Works offer a whole host of digtal technologies including digital printing, 3D printing, laser and water jet cutting. The event will also include a tour of these facilities.

The event is free and you need to book here.

TED's Year in Review

2010-12-23T07:14:00.000-08:00

While our new TED website is being developed, this blog has been the place for all our news and research work. Before we finish for the year, we have drawn up a Review of our year and would like to share the highlights with you here:

TED’s TEN:
The highlight of the year for TED has been the launch and dissemination of a set of sustainable design strategies for textile designers that TED has been working on for several years. TED’s TEN were refined and tested during Becky Earley’s Worn Again / Upcycling Textiles AHRC project that finished in late 2009, and this year has seen the strategies disseminated and promoted to a wide range of audiences including design students, educators and designers in industry.

TED’s TEN has been presented and integrated into several consultancy projects that Becky Earley has worked on this year including to designers within the Gucci Group in March; to small independent textile companies as part of Future Factory in Nottingham in April; to staff of the PPR Group (who own fashion brands including Gucci, Alexander McQueen and Puma) in May and to designers from leading Swedish brands at the Sustainable Fashion Academy in Stockholm. The set of strategies are also the core element in TED’s contribution to two different Swedish consortiums that are bidding for MISTRA funding for sustainable textile projects, and will play a central role in a new consultancy package being developed with the UAL’s Textile Futures Research Centre’s enterprise arm.

International Impact:
TED’s work was again taken to an international level this year with the TED team delivering five days of our Interconnected Design Thinking Workshops to design students at Weisenssee College in Berlin in April; Becky Earley and Emma Neuberg delivering two separate series of lectures and workshops to Shenkar College of Engineering and Design, Tel Aviv; Becky Earley talking on the panel of the Paris Ethical Fashion Show in September; Clara Vuletich visiting UTS in Sydney and RMIT in Melbourne, Australia with a series of workshops and lectures in October, and Kay Politowicz talking about TED at the Museo del Tessuto in Prato, Italy in November.

Research projects:
Projects initiated by TED this year included Prof. Kay Politowicz’s Summer Debate in July, where a panel of four speakers were asked to argue for and against the motion that ‘Sustainable Design in the Real World is just an Educator’s Fantasy...’, with the audio recordings and transcriptions subsequently being made available on the TED website.

TED also initiated a new CCW scheme for one-day practice-based research workshops. The first was called D(urability) Day, where TED members explored garment durability concepts using print techniques on old, unworn garments. This day saw the development of a short and effective model for ‘quick and dirty’ practice-based research that TED will continue to develop and explore.

TED was also invited to be part of a research project led by CCW Fine Art research group Critical Practice called Parade in the Chelsea Parade Ground. TED staged a ‘Wardrobe Disclosure’ stall to engage members of the public in conversation about the challenge to designers to slow down / divert the stream of fashion garments to landfill, by exploring emotional attachments to clothes.

Exhibitions:
New work from TED members was created for a ground-breaking exhibition of no-waste fashion at the Science Museum in London, Trash Fashion: Designing out Waste, that also showcased the innovative work of our fellow Textile Futures Research Centre (TFRC) members including Suzanne Lee from CSM and Sandy Black from LCF. TED members work was also shown in reTHINK! Eco textiles at the Audax Textile Museum in Tilburg, Holland.

Pieces from Becky Earley’s Top 100 ten year ‘slow fashion’ project have also been collected by the Museum at FIT, and shown in their Eco Fashion: Going Green exhibition in New York, and on tour throughout the UK in the Taking Time: Craft and the Slow Revolution show.

Clara Vuletich created new work as part of the AA2A Artists In Residence scheme at Chelsea exploring how digital textile printing can re-invent quilting and patchwork techniques, that was shown at Camberwell Space in July.

Papers & Publications:
A paper by TED members Becky Earley. Kate Goldsworthy and Clara Vuletich was published in Future Textile Environments, (Brink, R. and Ullrich, M., HAW College Hamburg) and work from TED members has been published in two key design texts this year: Eco Fashion (Laurence King), by Sass Brown and Textile Futures: Fashion, Design and Technology (Berg) by Bradley Quinn.

Presentations:
Emma Neuberg, Clara Vuletich and Becky Earley were all invited to speak at the Slow Textiles Conference at the Stroud International Textile Festival in May, the first conference of its kind to explore what ‘Slow’ means for textile designers, with the audio recording and transcriptions being made available via TED’s website. Other speaking engagements included Becky Earley at the Crafts Council’s Craft Rally in London and Sheffield, and Kay Politowicz at the University of Bolton in July

TFRC & TED:
Along with textile researchers from London College of Fashion and Central St Martin, TED members are part of the Textile Futures Research Centre (TFRC) that has recently become one of the six research centres within the University. Becky Earley is currently the Acting Director of TFRC and has been busy planning some exciting new events and projects for 2011.

TFRC’s four research strands have been announced and these include: Design/Science Textiles; Digital Textiles; Sustainable Textiles and Identity & Reflection. While up to this point, most members have been involved in their own individual research, this new structure is encouraging new collaborative research that will exist at the intersection of some or all of these themes. TED’s research work will obviously fall under the Sustainable Textiles theme, and our TED’s TEN is currently being developed into several consultancy packages for textile companies.

Sustainability in the Curriculum:
Closer to home, TED has been integrating our sustainable design thinking into the student curriculum with several student projects led by Prof. Kay Politowicz. Inside/Outside was a third year BA and MA project sponsored by Burberry, where students were asked to uncover and revive vintage materials and historic processes that were current at the time of Millbank Prison (the site of Chelsea College by the Thames), and to connect them to new, (often digital) sustainable textile processes and innovations of tomorrow.

Another student project was Glocalisation, for second year BA students which was supported by on-line furniture retailer made.com and in collaboration with Monkey Biz, a South African AIDS charity.

TED’s work continues to also feed into the student curriculum through the IMPACT lifecycle lecture series for first year BA and MA students and the Green Textiles elective for second year students.

TED’s PhD Students:
We now have a group of four students based at TED: Kate Goldsworthy is in the final writing up stage and is now course co-ordinator for CSM’s MA Textile Futures course; Jan Ballie, our TFRC scholarship student, has just completed her second year and her literature review (RF3); and our two new students this year are Matty Aspinall and Susan Noble.

The new TED website will be launching in early 2011, with a range of digital resources from many of TED’s research projects and events, including audio recordings and transcriptions of talks and project summary reports that will begin to map and define the unique practice-based approach of our research team.

We have several exciting events and projects planned for 2011, and the first will be a one-day summit on Slow, co-curated by Becky Earley and Helen Carnac, in partnership with Craftspace and ArtQuest. Watch this space for more information in the New Year and have a wonderful festive season from all of us here at TED.

TFRC launches as University Research Centre

2010-12-21T02:04:00.000-08:00

Textile Futures Research Centre (TFRC) has recently become one of the University's six Research Centres and it includes textile researchers from Chelsea/Camberwell/Wimbledon, London College of Fashion and Central St Martins.

Becky Earley is currently the Acting Director of TFRC and Becky has been busy planning some exciting new events and projects. The launch of the Centre's new status was last week where members met to start workshopping the Centre's new research themes. These themes are: Design/Science Textiles; Digital Textiles; Sustainable Textiles and the fourth theme Identity & Reflection. The new diagram shown above, is a visualisation of the themes and how they may overlap. While up to this point, most members have been involved in their own individual research, this new structure is encouraging new collaborative research that will exist at the intersection of some or all of these themes.

There is also a new blog called TFRC Connections, which explores and celebrates the connections between TFRC members work. Watch this space for more news about some of the new TFRC project's happening in the New Year.

2010-12-17T06:04:00.000-08:00

Clara Vuletich was at the Ethical Fashion Forum's Excellence in Ethical Fashion Training Day last week as an 'expert' in sourcing sustainable materials. Clara saw several different independent fashion companies and designers who were looking for advice and guidance.

It turned out that the most helpful advice Clara could give was a copy of TED's TEN Design Strategies. There is often an assumption in the ethical fashion world that fashion and textile designer's already have the design skills needed, and all they need guidance with is issues such as marketing, sourcing and finding the right production supply chain. However, here at TED we would argue that the complexity of sustainability requires designers to work with a range of interconnected design strategies that can leverage real innovation and change and that are not just limited to the 'hard' aspects such as materials and processes.

This may include awareness and understanding of how service design approaches could be helpful, or how to design in the potential for upcycling at the end of the garment's life. This is where our TED's TEN comes in.

While TED has been developing this set of design strategies for several years now, there have been other recent attempts to offer strategies or 'toolkits' for designers to navigate sustainability. There is a set of values for slow fashion developed by Slow Fashion Forward in Sweden, and the Slowlab with Alistair Fuad-Luke have developed a set of strategies to design 'slowly'. Finally, there is a Toolkit for Designers who want to learn how to be Social Innovators from Ezio Manzini's organisation DESIS.

Most of these , are quite broad and conceptual and not specifically related to a textile and fashion context. We believe TED's TEN fills this gap.

2010-12-14T06:09:00.000-08:00

While the Burberry sustainable textile student project has been going on with our third year textile students, Prof. Kay Politowicz has also been busy co-ordinating another live student project with an ethical agenda.

Second year textile students have been hard at work on a project called Glocalisation, in conjunction with online furniture retailer made.com and African Aids charity Monkey Biz, who create wonderful hand beaded objects. The term 'glocalisation' is a combination of the words 'local' and 'global', and the students were asked to look at their local area or place and record and explore the colours that capture this place.

A selection of the students colour palettes and design mood boards were then chosen by speciality beaders Monkeybiz in South Africa, who created a series of beaded panels based on the designs. These panels will then be digitally scanned and printed as artworks, which will be sold on made.com's website, with a percentage of sales going back to the Monkeybiz charity.

There were quite a few people involved in the whole process of this project and it was wonderful to see how this collaborative nature was revealed through the final beaded designs. The beaders had interpreted the student's designs and colour palettes so originally and vibrantly and we look forward to seeing the final digital prints.

See a mention of the project in Design Week here and in My Daily.com here.

Artist/designer in the digital textile department

2010-12-07T07:32:00.000-08:00

The Artists in Residence Scheme (AA2A) here in the textiles department at Chelsea is continuing this year, and the lucky artist/designer is Tope Tijani, a 2009 graduate.

Tope specialised in digital textiles and she will be working with the digital textile printer developing a new body of work. Tope currently produces an accessories range of digitally printed laminated bags and purses which are sold in boutiques in London and Paris.

Another artist on the scheme, in the fine art department, is Jonathon Baldock, who interestingly uses mixed media materials including fabrics to create sculptures.

2010-12-06T09:30:00.000-08:00

Back in November 2009, TED member Clara Vuletich gave a presentation on environmental impacts of the lifecycle of textiles for a student project at London College of Fashion called Fashioning the Future , where fashion students were given the brief to re-design the uniforms for the student nurses at Kings College.The project is now complete with the winning design being made up into prototypes.

The designers had to consider several factors when they were re-designing the uniform, including comfort and ease of movement and how the nurses would be washing and caring for the garment. Nurses have to wash their uniforms at 60c after each wear for health and safety reasons, and as there is strong evidence that suggests most environmental impacts of a garment lifecycle is in the use phase, this was a key factor for the designer's to consider.

The winning design by Pandora Howard-Griffin, included the introduction of stretch jersey panels to the sides and back of tunics and dresses and removal of collars and introduction of soft bias bindings to eliminate chafing.

Pandora's extensive textile research led her to propose the introduction of bamboo fibre as it draws away moisture, breathes up to four times more effectively than cotton, has naturally occuring antibacterial properties and can be produced in a manner which has lower energy use impact. (Although, the environmental credentials of the production of bamboo is starting to be questioned and there are several students at the University of Cambridge, researching this, some of which can be found here).

However, this fabric has not yet been tested and approved for use in in the UK healthcare system, although it has been adopted by states in the USA and by Singapore. Consequently, approved light-weight polycotton fabrics were substituted for bamboo fabrics in the prototype uniforms produced.

The garments are undergoing limited trials in partner hospitals where nursing students are on placements.

2010-11-30T08:37:00.000-08:00

Kay Politowicz has been in Italy at the Museo del Tessuto, a textile museum in Prato speaking at a conference on the creative use of textile archives. The conference was the final event in the Eurotex ID project, which aimed to enhance the European textile identity.

The first stage of the project has seen the digitising of textile archives from Prato and several museums in Spain, providing details of the local, specific production processes and techniques of each piece. The next stage involved fashion design students who were allowed access to the textile archives and through a series of creative workshops, were encouraged to re-interpret the samples for new designs.The student's designs were also on show at the event.

Kay's presentation to the symposium audience showcased TED's Design Stories, which visualises TED's TEN Design Strategies for sustainability.

This project is a great example of a way to encourage designer's to find inspiration and new ways of thinking and making through historical archive pieces, and ties in with one of TED's Design Strategy, 'Look Back to Look Forward'.

TED members at the V & A

2010-11-29T04:04:00.000-08:00

TED members Melanie Bowles and Emma Neuberg have been busy over at the V & A, running an exciting workshop programme called Fast/Slow. Inspired by the current exhibition, Diaghilev and the Golden Age of the Ballet Russes, the course encourages participants to explore hands-on making techniques combined with using the latest digital technologies, including digital textile printing.

Mel recently gave a presentation to the participants titled 'Digital Textiles Now', focusing on the growth of the pro-amateur and home grown designer who are creating their own textiles by utilising local digital textile print bureaus, in turn revitalizing local textile industries.

For some of the results from the course, see Emma's Slow Textiles blog.

2010-11-22T02:17:00.001-08:00

We are always keen to stay in touch with our alumni, and fascinated to see the way our teachings about sustainable design thinking have an impact once our graduates go out into the world.

One recent graduate, Bridget Harvey, not only comes back regularly to TED to intern with us, but she is also organising the programme of talks at the Wapping Project's bookshop.

Bridget wrote her dissertation on Slow Design in 2009, (the abstract will soon be available to read on our new website coming soon!), and she developed her own 'manifesto' for what this means for textile production. It is currently being read and referenced by this years final year students.

Bridget has organised for a fellow Chelsea alumni, Tamasyn Gambell to speak about her work at The Wapping Project Bookshop on 2nd December. Tamasyn is a printed textile designer who works with ethically sourced materials, using environmentally sound processes to create bold accessories and stationary, that defy the stereotypical “eco aesthetic”. Using her experience working for large fashion companies and living and travelling the world, she draws on a myriad of influences to upcycle fabrics through print.

Amongst her other products are up-cycled luxury scarves and home textiles, and her company also supports a welfare project in Kerala.

Tickets are £5 and can be booked by emailing shop@thewappingproject.com

Burberry project

2010-11-17T07:10:00.000-08:00

Here at TED we have been busy continuing to embed all our sustainable design thinking into the student's studio practice. Our latest project that tries out new ways to do this is called Inside/Outside, and is being sponsored and supported by Burberry.

The link between Chelsea College and Burberry is our location - we share the same neighbourhood by the Thames river at Millbank, and Burberry have been staging their twice-yearly fashion shows in our Parade Ground since 2009. In the 18th and 19th century, the site of the college used to be the infamous Millbank Prison, designed using Bentham's 'Panoptican' building design.

The project encourages students to uncover and revive vintage materials and historic processes that were current at the time of Millbank Prison, and to connect them to new, (often digital) textile processes and innovations of tomorrow.

Christopher Bailey, the Creative Director of Burberry has been to see the students and was keen to make the link between Burberry's heritage and his current design approach.

The programme includes a whole series of guest lecturers and workshops from people including Helen Carnac, curator of Taking Time: Craft and the Slow Revolution, new TED PhD student Maddy Aspinall who will teach the traditional technique of smocking and Zane Berzina, visiting lecturer from Weissensee College in Berlin, who specialises in textiles and soft technologies.

Watch the project as it unfolds on the student blog.with regular reflections and thoughts from the TED researchers.

New TED PhD students

2010-11-16T04:31:00.000-08:00

We have two new PhD students starting with us at TED this year. The first student is Matilda Aspinall, who will be looking at historical garments and the way they were mended and repaired, to rediscover a series of techniques which could inspire and inform contemporary clothing producers to create garments with a longer life span.

This idea of 'textile precedents', that we have been mulling over at TED for a while, has now been integrated into TED's Design Strategies. Titled 'Look Back to Look Forward', this strategy asks how practices of the past can inform textile design and production of the future.

Matty has just been to the exhibition called Threads of Feeling, at the Foundling Museum in London, and reports below on what she saw.

The Foundling Hospital in London opened in 1741. Not a hospital in the true sense but a place to provide ‘maintenance and education for deserted young children.It was set up by philanthropist, Thomas Coram, who after returning from many years at sea, was appalled by the sight of young children left to die on the streets of London. The Foundling Hospital offered hope to poverty stricken young women who previously had to abandon their babies on the roadside or in the doorways of churches.

From 1741 to 1756 women leaving their babies at the hospital were invited to leave a token as a means of identification should they ever be in the position to reclaim them. Textile swatches were cut either from the mother’s clothing or the baby’s at the time of registration and then placed with a printed billet.

For many years these swatches have remained in storage in billet books in the London Metropolitan Archives too fragile to display. This exhibition, curated by historian John Styles, author of The Dress of the People: Everyday Fashion in 18th Century England, presents these precious swatches with insights into why such tokens were used (literacy rates were very poor) and snippets to give a rare glimpse into 18th century plebian fashion.

These fabrics now comprise the largest collection of everyday 18th century textiles surviving in Britain. Not only is there a wide range of fabrics, there are decorative ribbons, embroidery and even a few items of clothing. Each scrap of fabric conjures a poignant story reflecting the life of the child and its absent parents.

How wonderful to be able to view such extraordinary pieces of fabric. Such fantastic weaves, prints and textures. My two personal favorites were two separate, tiny detachable sleeves; sleeves being the perfect token to leave, as of course, there are two of them. Was the mother given the other sleeve?

Children’s clothing was generally created from disused adult clothing so these wonderful block printed textiles can really fire up the imagination to envisage what women of that era were actually wearing. Additionally, it is a great insight in to the extraordinary variety of clothing that the children of that time actually wore. The registration billet that was meticulously filed by the hospital clerk gives a 23 item-clothing checklist. These garments include: cap, biggin, frock, upper-coat, mantle, petticoat, pilch. Sadly, the majority of items weren’t ticked.

This was a fascinating, beautiful, heart breaking, extraordinary and a compelling study of surviving textiles, not only in understanding their physical nature and function but importantly, their cultural significance .

By Matilda Aspinall, TED PhD student

Eco Textiles in Tilburg

2010-11-09T09:38:00.000-08:00

The work of several TED members is currently on show in reTHINK!: Eco Textiles at the Audax Textile Museum in Tilburg, Holland.

The show is an overview of the lifecycle of textile production from a sustainability point of view and includes the work of independent designers as well as commercial textile companies from the Netherlands.

Several of us showed pieces that were made during the Ever & Again project, or work that was developed after, in response to all the ideas and new thinking the project generated.

Becky Earley is showing one of her upcycled polyester Top 100 shirts, Mel Bowles is showing her Wallpaper Dress, Clara Vuletich is showing her Love & Thrift coat and Gary Page is showing two items from his wonderful 1-2-5 Collection of dresses.

Kate Goldsworthy, who is also showing a new garment made using laser technology to re-invigorate polyester, is also running a one day workshop on using laser technology for upcycling in January.

There is a good review of the show in Dutch site Design.nl.

TED's Sustainable Design Strategies At Work

2010-10-26T07:43:00.000-07:00

Becky Earley has recently been out and about promoting TED's Sustainable Design strategies to commercial clients. In March this year Becky introduced the strategies to designers from the Gucci Group at a TFRC event, and in May to a larger range of professionals at a PPR group event in Cambridge.

Last week's workshop at the Sustainable Fashion Academy in Stockholm, Sweden, was attended by twenty delegates from industry. They were designers, marketing and innovation managers from a broad range of Swedish companies, including H&M.

Yesterday’s one-to-one sessions were part of Becky’s return visit to the Future Factory project in Nottingham, based at Nottingham Trent University. Five local businesses had 40 minute sessions to further explore sustainable design concepts that they had been introduced to in the spring this year.

For all the delegates the work and information around materials and manufacturing are so important, but being introduced to the ‘soft’ eco design concepts prove to be just as useful. One Swedish participant wrote back last week:

“I thoroughly enjoyed yesterday… When I got home last night, I honestly couldn't stop thinking about the Seven Design Strategies that Becky presented during the day and the in particular the ideas on ‘Replace the Need to Consume’ and ‘Design Activism’. From my perspective those two areas seems to be as much about communication as production and with my background in communication, pr and marketing those ideas triggered my creativity. After listening to Becky I believe that there are plenty to do in those areas as well...”

If you would like more information about the consultancy workshops TED run, please contact Clara on ted@chelsea.arts.ac.uk

TED Postcard from Melbourne

2010-10-17T15:25:00.000-07:00

The talk I gave on our Upcyling Textiles project in Melbourne was a success, with about 35 people joining us at the new Harvest Textiles workspace. The talk was the first event at the space, that will house their screen printing workshops, a gallery space and a retail shop. They have some grand plans to run artists-in-residence programmes and all sorts of talks and events, so watch their space!

I introduced the audience to the work of all the TED members and the outcomes from the Ever & Again project. There were some interesting questions from the floor, including the question we get asked the most about the project - 'Are all these great ideas actually commercially viable?'.

The next talk will be to staff and students at RMIT University textile department on Tuesday.

TED postcard from Sydney

2010-10-14T20:15:00.000-07:00

For the workshop I ran yesterday at University of Technology Sydney (UTS), the students made their own small patchwork sample, using fabric scraps. Taking a few basic quilting shapes as templates, we explored the idea of zero-waste cutting and hand-stitching. Several students had never used a needle and thread, so we worked slowly and quietly. At the end all of the pieces were brought together to make one whole 'quilt' which we photographed, and will then digitise and play around with using CAD tools.

I also presented a talk on 'Digital Craft' exploring the work of 'hybrid designers' such as weaver Ismini Samandiou and my work of 'digital quilting' called Fragments.

The students are involved in a project called 'Waste in the City' run by Marie O'Mahony. They have been put in groups and have been assigned an area of the city, and each group has been mapping the waste of that area, to identify any potential design interventions, using the local waste stream. The groups consist of students from a range of design disciplines, including visual communication and textile/fashion design, so the range of solutions should be interesting, and from the few ideas I heard, will mainly focusing of designing services around waste re-use.

Ethical Fashion Forum’s SOURCE EXPO 2010

2010-10-13T08:13:00.000-07:00

Last week two of TED’s PhD students (Jen Ballie and Matilda Aspinall) attended the Ethical Fashion Forum’s SOURCE EXPO 2010.

The SOURCE EXPO aimed to promote sustainable fashion practices and facilitate sustainable sourcing amongst fashion professionals. The exhibition showcased a selection of work from suppliers and manufacturers from all over the world, working to promote fair trade and ethical standards, linking them with hundreds of designers, retailers and brands.

A series of seminars were also scheduled throughout the day, and we attended the ‘Innovation’ seminar to learn about the latest inspirational products and processes in the sourcing sector. This was chaired by Emily Pearce, EFF’s Ethical Fashion Project Manager, with speakers from Initiate Design, Bag it Don’t Bin It and Pants to Poverty. The work of Susanne Lee (Biocouture) and PUMA SAFE - Clever Little Bag was also introduced.

Each speaker introduced their innovativion by explaining their design concept, how their product was made and any additional services. We were impressed at the range of challenging design approaches adopted by each speaker. The subjects discussed explored local production and cottage industries, cradle to cradle design through closed loop methodologies and crowdfunding.

The session explored how design could be coupled with innovation to create desirable products that were both useable and engaging. The end user played a central focus through each strategy and they tried to engage users by encouraging participation, supporting well-being and promoting social values.

This event has scaled up since last year and attracted a massive audience. It was exciting to see designer’s working in new ways to scale up sustainable design.

Roundtable Discussion, EFS Paris

2010-10-05T06:11:00.000-07:00

Last week's roundtable discussion proved to be an interesting experience for TED member Becky Earley. Eleven designers / experts were on the platform at the Ethical Fashion Show in Paris, for two hours, discussing new textile technologies and their potential for creating more sustainable products.

The discussion began with a presentation by designer Florence Bost who gave a succinct overview of the fields of study and activity - a kind of history of smart textiles – which briefly covered the 1940s to the present day. The other speakers, each talking about their work in turn for five minutes, addressed:

Interaction design and smart clothing (Francesca Rosella, Cute Circuit)

Upcycling textiles and technologies (Becky Earley, TED)

LED / wind sensitive textiles (Stijn Ossevort)

Detailing menswear to prolong life (Doris Hartwich)

How luxury brands are building a new materials resource to help them with product design innovation (Alexandre Cappelli, speaking about Louis Vuitton)

PUMA’s better shoebox concept – a fabric bag – and the lifecycle analysis project (Karsten Bleymehl, Material ConneXion)

The current state of fibre development and impacts through manufacture and usage (Michael Kininmonth, Lenzing Fibers)

Carbon detecting textiles and the The Climate (CO2) Dress (Hanne Louise Johannesen, Diffus)

Fashion aromachology and our future well being (Dr Jenny Tillotson)

Artistic material explorations (Tzuri Gueta)

Questions from the floor ranged from concerns over the impacts from battery powered smart textiles at the end of life stage, to whether smart textiles were being used for ‘green washing’ by big brands.

It was a short but sweet session, and a real pleasure to hear from designers and experts who are passionate about the future of textiles. To end the roundtable Dr Isa Hofmann (chair) asked the experts to offer one word to the audience, a guiding principle if you like, to inspire progress and innovation. The words were:

Education… Reduce Waste… Dematerialise… Avoidance… Detailing… Accidental… Appreciation… Lifestyle… Well Being… Desireability...

Image: TED’s summary slide from the Worn Again / Ever & Again project, 2010

2010-09-27T05:17:00.000-07:00

TED Member Clara Vuletich is off to Australia next week and will be giving some lectures and a few workshops at various places in Sydney and Melbourne.

Clara will be running a workshop on 'Digital Craft' techniques to the textile/fashion students at University of Technology Sydney (UTS) on Tuesday 12th October, and then a lecture on the sustainable fashion communities in London, on Wednesday 13th October. This is part of their programme 'Waste in the City', run by Prof. Marie O'Mahony.

Then to Melbourne, and Clara will be giving a lecture on the Upcycling Textiles project at Harvest Textiles and a one day workshop on screen-printed printed wallpaper.

Finally, Clara will head to RMIT and present the TED work to the textiles department staff on Tuesday 19th October.

Clara will be sending regular blog updates of her Australian adventures.

TED Designers Featured in new Eco Fashion Book

2010-09-23T07:36:00.000-07:00

Becky Earley and Kate Goldsworthy are featured in Sass Brown's new book about sustainable fashion, titled 'Eco Fashion' and published by Lawrence King this month.

Becky and Kate collaborated on two shirts in 2008, as part of the Top 100 and Ever & Again projects. The over-printed and laser treated polyester garments represent an approach they termed 'twice upcycled'. You can learn more about the project at www.upcyclingtextiles.net, and of course in Sass Brown's new book...

"Brown’s remarkable overview of ecological and socially responsible work deals with the subject of sustainability in fashion in a way that for once does justice to the true diversity of the pioneering and entrepreneurial work done within a field too much engaged in sustaining models and practices from which there may be nothing or little to sustain. It is bold attempt to encourage real change in fashion."

Dr. Clemens Thornquist, Chair of Fashion Design at Boras, Sweden

2010-09-22T10:53:00.000-07:00

The audio from the TED Summer Debate that took place back in July is now finished and available here.

Four speakers were asked to argue for and against the motion that 'Sustainable Design in the Real World is just an Educator's fantasy....'.

The four speakers were Kieren Jones (RCA recent graduate), Claire Brass (Seed Foundation), Sandy McLennan (CLASS) and Dr Otto von Busch (fashion hacktivist).

Round Table Discussion at the Ethical Fashion Show, Paris

2010-09-22T08:23:00.000-07:00

Becky Earley will be contributing to a round table discussion next Monday, 27th September 2010, at the Ethical Fashion Show in Paris. She will be talking about upcycling textiles and the creative and innovative approaches that the TED designers explored through the Ever & Again project.

"Sustainable management is no longer a marginal phenomenon; it has become the starting point for companies that wish to reposition themselves by fully accepting the responsibilities they carry for the environment and for society...

"Textile innovation is unequivocally compatible with the principles of sustainable management. The round table on innovation aims to prove that the new technologies and the innovative new materials in the field of intelligent textiles that have appeared during the last decade are compatible with the criteria of sustainable management (social and environmental responsibility).”

Dr Isa Hofmann, quoted above, is an expert in the field of new, innovative textile technologies. She will lead the session, and will be joined by:

Florence Bost , textile designer based in Paris

Michael Kininmonth, Lenzing Fibers

Hanne Louise Johannesen, Danish design company Diffus

Francesca Rosella, founder of CuteCircuit

Stijn Ossevort, wearable computing

Karsten Bleymehl, Director Library & Materials Research Material ConneXion Cologne

Alexandre Cappelli, Head of Environment Affairs Department, LVMH

Doris Hartwich, German designer of menswear

and Tzuri Gueta, textiles designer

For those of you who will be in Paris next Monday, the discussion will take place between 2pm and 4pm at -

Cité de la Mode et du Design

34, Quai D’Austerlitz

75013 Paris

TED's D(urability)-Day

2010-09-22T06:06:00.000-07:00

D-DAY! Friday 17th September 2010: After being inspired by the Martin Marjiela exhibition in the summer, TED staff decided to put their money where their mouths, or rather hands are, and get eco-creative in the print room at Chelsea. With reference to the beautiful white washed work on show at Somerset House, Kay Politowicz designed a day for TED's practice-based researchers to explore garment durability concepts using print techniques.

Garments: We were asked to dig around the bottom of our wardrobes over the summer, and come into college with clothes and accessories that we no longer wore. Some had stains on them, some were ripped and torn beyond repair, and some were 'freebies' deemed too ugly to wear. Others things that we brought in were too small, too big, too moth eaten, or simply too dull to be loved!

Techniques: We decided to keep it simple - white pigment and opaque binder, silver / gold / white / black foils, flocking paper - and use direct application techniques like hand painting, rollers, and open screens and stencils. The idea was to experiment to find simple, quick, but visually arresting ways to reinvent the clothes.

Outcomes: In the space of a few hours we came up with some really beautiful pieces. The things that caught my eye included the items pictured here...

Frances's unworn grey shirt printed with a stencil with opaque white
Kay's stained orange jumper rollered with glue and then foiled
Clara's plain white summer dress printed with an open screen and then foiled

Watch this space for the next installment - where we explore the ideas further by all remaking a set of identical items from a high street source - the next D-Day will take place in December 2010.

2010-09-14T05:02:00.000-07:00

TED member Mel Bowles has some of her lovely digital shibori scarves in the new Lab Craft exhibition, organised by the Crafts Council showing at Tent London next week, 23rd - 26th September.

Lab Craft features 26 makers who combine craft techniques with cutting-edge digital technologies such as rapid prototyping, laser cutting, laser scanning and digital printing. Other designers being shown included Tord Boontje, digital weaver Ismini Samandiou, and one of Mel's recent students
Chae Yong Kim, who works with digital software to develop beautiful, ethereal patterns for wallpapers and fabrics.

For her digital shibori, Mel reinterprates the traditional Shibori techniques using digital media by manipulating complex mathematical graphic geometrics to create light effects, folds and blends.

2010-08-23T08:54:00.000-07:00

I was at the Crafts Council's annual conference a few weeks ago, Assemble, where there was an interesting line up of speakers, including Martin Raymond from trend forecasters Future Laboratory, Emily Campbell from the RSA and a wonderful talk from Matthew B Crawford who has written the recent NYT best seller The Case for Working with Your Hands; Why Office Work is Bad for You and Fixing Things Feels Good .

Raymond was there to offer insight into the consumer market for craft, which apparently is doing quite well considering the economic recession. However, he made a rallying cry to makers everywhere that they need to become much more visible with their skills and expertise. He noted that he had recently been to see fashion brand Louis Vuitton, who are planning on having craftspeople working in their shop on Bond Street, making bespoke products. Craft and authenticity have been the words used to describe a new 'luxury' for a while now, but it's not enough anymore for consumers to know something has been made by hand and with great skill - they want to actually see it being made in front of them.

He made a plea to makers to try to win this territory and to see this as a unique opportunity to work with brands and retailers. As Guardian journalist Libby Brooks describes it in her review of the conference, this is where brands are 'appropriating the operative language of craft'. Of course, this is not to everyone's taste, and I sensed a note of dismay from certain makers who would never dream of getting involved with luxury brands, let alone have the marketing skills that would get them noticed.

But, ironically it seems that consumers are actually becoming more inclined to buy craft and less inclined to buy luxury goods and that overall spending on craft appears to be holding up better than spending on luxury goods, art and design. This came from a report that the Craft Council have commissioned which showed that craft is seen as being more 'genuine' and 'personal' than luxury/art/design and that luxury in particular, is starting to have negative connotations such as being 'too expensive' and being too concerned with status.

Hopefully this will help the craft market in benefiting from this strong consumer trend for authenticity and connoisseurship.

2010-08-16T07:11:00.000-07:00

We have just uploaded some new podcasts that capture the work of three of our BA graduates from this year, as a 'taster' to the fabulous new content that will be available on our new website which is coming soon!

Becky Earley is in conversation with the graduates as they discuss their final year work and research topics. Katherine Redman (images above) talks about designing bespoke woven car interiors for car lovers, Lauren T Franks discusses her explorations of the ethics of materials and fibres, and Bridget Harvey reflects on what 'slow design' means to her and her studio practice.

These three students were chosen as they reflect the rich and diverse approaches to sustainability that we teach here at Chelsea, whether it be through fashion or interior textiles. The students become 'experts' in taking the sustainable design ideas we encourage them to explore and trying them out through their studio practices.

2010-08-09T08:41:00.000-07:00

More feedback from our Summer Debate last month:

"The talk was very insightful, particularly the discussions about designers and scientists needing to have a closer relationship and more collaborations. I was also interested in what Otto von Busch said about the increased need for emotion in design - not a revelation, but so relevant as (it seems) being ecologically sound in production will not be enough in the long term.

Kieran Jones's comments about designing for a geographically and physically changing world and not just making it a greener one, was also an I idea I'd like to explore further..." Alison Gough, Stylus Trends Consultancy

Image: Kieren Jones

2010-08-03T03:32:00.000-07:00

The work of several TED Members including Becky Earley, Melanie Bowles and Clara Vuletich is to be included in an exhibition called reTHINK! at the Audax Textile Museum in Tilberg, Holland.

The exhibition will be exploring the lifecycle of textiles from a sustainability perspective and will include examples from fashion, interior and product design. other designers being showcased include Christien Meindertsma, Atelier NL, Suzanne Lee and Kate Goldsworthy.

Becky Earley will be making a new piece of work based on her Top 100 series over the summer so watch this space!

2010-08-02T02:14:00.000-07:00

We have had some great feedback from participants at the Agenda's debate a few weeks ago, and while we wait to get the audio edited and transcripts available, the conversation continues:

"I thought the event was stimulating and thought provoking, as usual. On a practical level for undergraduates trying to engage with sustainability, I am most interested in the possibilities offered by synthetic fibres - for their potential for more efficient dye-sublimation printing processes, and in terms of end of lifecycle recycling possibilities. The potential of 'upcycling' and re-working vintage pieces / creating 'vintage' for the future is also of interest." Claire Lerpiniere, De Montfort University

It is great to hear how different tutors are taking different and unique approaches to these issues.

Image: TED Interconnected Design Workshop, Berlin

Can designer's help make a better world?

2010-07-26T04:44:00.001-07:00

We recently attended the Designing a Better World Symposium at Northumbria University in Newcastle. There were all the usual discussions about how designer's can contribute to social change and to solving the environmental challenges we currently face.

There was also lots of talk of the value of collaboration and how designers will need to work outside their specialist area to tackle these multiple challenges. Jason Bruges and Julia Lohmann, both designers who work across disciplines, talked of the value of collaboration but also made the point that design education does not currently prepare students to work in this way.

Jason describe this kind of designer as a 'hybrid', able to remain a specialist while also remaining open and gathering expertise and knowledge from other areas. He also made the point that, even if we do start to train students in this way, and to consider new ways to approach their role as designers, the jobs dont exist for them. We are training people for the unknown!

This relates to Becky Earley's presentation at our Agendas debate last Friday, about our approach to embedding sustainable design thinking into courses. Here at Chelsea, we teach students new ways to be a textile designer, adding activism and lifecycle thinking under their belts, but then they get out into the real world and are met with a 'ceiling' - there are not enough jobs that exist which can take advantage of this new sort of design activity.

An another note, the highlight from the Northumbria Symposium was Josephine Green's Keynote speech . Green works in what she calls 'social foresight' and has worked at Philips Design for fifteen years. Can designers help make a better world ? She believes, yes if there is a deep purpose behind what design does, and that it is 'sense making'. But no, if we continue with the current industrial production model, and don't move beyond just designing products.

Image: Julia Lohmann

Summer debate continues on-line

2010-07-20T03:23:00.000-07:00

Thank you to everyone who came along to the Agendas Debate last Friday. We had a great turn out and some really lively discussions.

The audio from the four speakers will be available shortly, so stay tuned!

We are keen to continue the discussions that came up at the Debate and would like to announce our plan of action! - in the next few weeks over the summer, we will be encouraging you to contribute your thoughts and ideas on the discussion. Then in September, we will offer our own TED summary of the event and the follow-on conversation.

If you attended the event - what did your notebooks say? What were the main points you got out of the discussion?

Or, if you didn't attend the event, but would like to have - what burning question have you got? Do you beleive that sustainable design is just an educator's fantasy?

Some of the key points for me were:

Is the role of the textile designer to stay in the studio creating lovely fabrics, or is their a wider role for us that involves activism as well ? If so, how do we teach this?

If sustainability is such a complex area, that requires cross-discplinary collaboration (as is so often quoted!) why are we not equipping our design students to learn in this way?

All your thoughts and questions are welcome!

More images of the event here .

Final two speakers announced for Summer Debate

2010-07-12T06:17:00.001-07:00

We have now confirmed our final two speakers for the debate on Friday:

Sandy MacLennan has worked in textile design innovation for more than 25 years as a consultant to fibre producers, spinners, manufacturers, brands and retailers through his consultancy East Central Studios in London. He also works with education as a visiting lecturer at the RCA and Chelsea and as an external examiner on BA and MA courses. In 2007, Sandy co-founded CLASS a consultancy and network that promotes sustainable textiles and fashion to industry.

Clare Brass is the founder of the SEED Foundation, a social enterprise that explores and promotes new design approaches to meet the challenges of sustainability. Leader of Sustainability at Design Council until 2007, Clare is currently part-time senior tutor at Design London, with students from the Royal College of Art and Imperial College Business and Engineering, addressing issues of sustainability and social enterprise.

It promises to be a really lively and informative event. Remember, no need to RSVP, just turn up for 2pm at Chelsea!

Speakers Announced for Summer Debate

2010-07-09T06:03:00.000-07:00

We are happy to confirm two exciting speakers so far, for the TED Summer Debate next Friday 16th July.

Otto von Busch is a TED Associate and fashion researcher who is exploring fashion hacktivism and how fashion can be used for empowerment, self-development and personal growth instead of being a phenomenon of top-down decrees and collective anxiety. Otto has a PhD from University of Gothenburg where he teaches and is also a Visting Research Fellow at London College of Fashion.

Kieren Jones has just graduated from the RCA in Product Design with a wonderful project called The Chicken Project, exploring ways to locally produce objects in a world where resources are depleted and self-sufficient, off-grid living will become increasingly desirable and neccesary. He also calls himself a 'professional amateur', rather than a designer!

The final two speakers will be confirmed early next week.

Image: Otto von Busch, Abstract Machine of Hacktivism

TED's Summer Debate - Friday 16th July 2010

2010-07-05T06:02:00.001-07:00

“Sustainable design in the real world is just an educator’s fantasy…”

This is the (e) motion that Professor Kay Politowicz is proposing for TED's AGENDAS 2010 event, here at Chelsea on Friday 16th July 2010. Join us between 2pm and 4pm, to hear four eminent speakers argue both FOR and AGAINST this motion. They will spend five minutes arguing each case, and they aren’t allowed to use slides!

This event is timed to coincide with the UK Texprint ‘First View’ Exhibition, held at Chelsea at the same time. Delegates will be able to view this closed exhibition in the Triangle Gallery between 9am and 5pm on the day. The event will be an informal ‘platform’ debate, intended to bring the issues of sustainability and design to the attention of the assembled Texprint audience, exhibitors and sponsors who are all involved in the design and production of textiles for fashion.

Our intention is to make it a combination of IQ Magazine’s ‘Intelligence Squared’, which says that it is “creating knowledge through contest” and TV’s ‘Argumental’ which claims to be “a celebration of the art of argument”. This event is a chance to do both with speakers having a chance to put a point of view in a series of headline statements and then argue with themselves with contradictory and counter argument.

This fun event is intended to raise the serious issue that is essentially: HOW, not WHETHER to address sustainability in the education of designers. It gives us the opportunity to air concerns about what any of us can or should be doing about it in our different professional circumstances.

Lines should not remain uncrossed. Sensitivities should not be spared, and there will be ample opportunity for the audience to make comments, and for speakers to respond if they wish, followed finally by a vote by all on the motion.

This promises to be a really lively and informative afternoon. Join us if you can – it is free and there is no need to book. Just come along to the lecture theatre at Chelsea (entrance on Atterbury Street). Watch this space over the next few days as the confirmed line up of speakers is announced…

(Image credit: 'Venn Diagram', Matthew Sawyer 2010)

Designer-In-Residence Exhibition Luanch

2010-07-02T06:08:00.000-07:00

How can digital textile print be used to enhance and celebrate old heirloom fabric pieces?

Can a 'digital craft' process, using sustainable base cloths, help to reinvent the traditions of quilting and patchwork?

These are some of the questions Clara Vuletich has been exploring as part of a 'designer-in-residence' scheme in the digital print department here at Chelsea. AA2A is a national 'artists in residence scheme', and it has been run for many years at Camberwell College, but this is the first time it has been run within the textile department at Chelsea, with designers!

At TED, we were the first group of designers to digitally print onto sustainable base cloths for the Ever & Again work in 2007, and Clara has continued to use these fabrics to experiment with.

All her processes and samples will be on show as a giant 'sampler', at Camberwell Space, Camberwell College of Art, from next Wednesday July 7th. Read more about the process on her blog Love & Thrift.

2010-06-29T03:54:00.000-07:00

New work from TED members has gone on show at the Science Museum's new exhibition Trash Fashion: Designing out Waste which is open till March 2011. We attended the launch last week and the exhibition is fantastic!

Aside from the pieces from TED members, there is a new piece from Suzanne Lee's BioCouture project who makes garments from fabric that she 'grows' and a new knitted piece from Sandy Black's Considerate Design project.

There are also some really insightful videos of interviews with some of the designers and their working process.

More images here.

2010-06-17T10:23:00.000-07:00

The highlight of the year for our second year BA students is their fashion show, which has been held at prestigious venues in the past such as the Tate Britain and the Wallace Collection. This year the show was held here at Millbank in the historic Banqueting Hall.

The project brief was 'Sway', created by TED's Professor Kay Politowicz, who also included several sustainable design strategies in the brief.

The show was blogged about by Made, a new online furniture website from the people behind My Deco. The students will be doing a project with Made next year, incorporating an ethical production facility in Africa. Made were invited to the fashion show and to a sneak preview of some of the final year graduate work being finished off in the studios, which is on show from this Saturday 19th June here at Millbank.

2010-06-17T09:05:00.000-07:00

Becky Earley went to Ireland a couple of weeks ago, to be the external examiner to the BA Textile Design course at NCAD, in Dublin. The 25 final year students produced work in print, embroidery and weave disciplines. Several of the students have begun to consider the environmental impacts of their work, and the highlights included a ‘slow textiles’ furnishings collection by Jennifer Slattery and a recycled / deconstructed Aran knit menswear collection by Paddy Rooney (paddyrooney@live.co.uk).

New upcycled work for Science Museum

2010-06-08T09:22:00.000-07:00

The TED team is busy preparing some exciting new work which will be on show at an exhibition called Trash Fashion...Designing Out Waste in the Wellcome Wing at the Science Museum in London, from June till March 2011.

In true collaborative style, several members are working together to create two 'looks' - Melanie Bowles and Kathy Round are working on a beautiful digitally printed dress while Becky Earley has created one of her signature overprinted polyester shirts which will be shown with silver electroplated lace by Frances Geesin.

Kate Goldsworthy will also be exhibiting some new work using laser technology to resurface polyester fabrics as a seperate exhibit.

This has been a great opportunity for all the designers to push further the techniques and ideas explored during the Worn Again / Ever & Again project.

2010-06-07T10:24:00.000-07:00

Inspiration for a textile print design can come from anywhere and Melanie Bowles' latest idea for her bespoke print design service came from the humblest of materials - cardboard. Working with the owners of new interiors boutique Circus, in Brixton Market, Mel was inspired to make a new print from the cardboard that has been used to construct the whole interior of the new boutique.

The fabric was then made up into a simple apron-style skirt and is being worn by the owners of the boutique.

2010-06-02T08:22:00.000-07:00

The IMPACT lecture series is one of the highlights of the TED teaching calender here at Chelsea. It covers the environmental impacts throughout the lifecycle of a textile product - from raw materials, yarn/fibre and fabric production through to the use phase and to the end of life issues.

The lectures always include a 'designer case study' - a designer or practitioner who presents their work to demonstrate how they are grappling with these issues.

For the beginning of the lifecycle, we invited Karen Spurgin and Emma D'arcy to present their work. Karen and Emma have formed a collective called AO Textiles and they are working to create sustainable textiles for the couture fashion market. Karen worked with Deborah Millner on the Aveda project back in 2006, in which they created a collection of beautiful dresses which each explored an aspect of sustainability. Karen has 20 years of experience as an embroidery designer for high-end fashion clients and she was moved to begin working in a more considerate way as there was no couture fabrics available for them to work with.

AO are currently collaborating with Gainsborough, a traditional silk weave company, on a fabric made from natural dyes and waste yarn and hope to develop more design collaborations and research projects in the future.

Wardrobe Disclosure

2010-05-25T07:50:00.000-07:00

Members of the public were invited to confess their secrets about the clothes they are wearing at an event in the Parade Ground here at Chelsea last weekend.

TED members Kay Politowicz and Jen Ballie set up a 'market stall' called Forms of Ad(Dress), as part of an event organised by fine art research cluster Critical Practice, which was exploring public modes of assembly and forms of address.

Throughout the day, over forty participants were asked questions about a piece of clothing they were wearing - including where they got it from, what part it plays in their wardrobe and what they will do when they want to get rid of it.

We gathered some very personal and informative insights into the relationship that people have with their garments and we are hoping to continue recording these stories to build a digital archive of 'wardrobe disclosures' on our new website, coming soon. More images here.

Natural dyeing workshops

2010-05-24T02:47:00.000-07:00

Sabiha, our visting textile designer from Pakistan has been busy preparing for her natural dye workshops here at Chelsea. Sabiha brought with her some natural dye stuffs including tumeric and pomegrante and she has been showing students how to dye yarn and fabric using this age-old technique.

The students were shown how to prepare the dye stuffs, using a mordent and how to dye the sample pieces with a consistent coverage.

Several of our MA textile students have been investigating natural dye techniques for the last 6 months and they attended this workshop to extend their knowledge. It will be interesting to see how they integrate this into their work which will be shown at their preview show this Thursday 27th May at Millbank, and continues Friday 10am - 8pm and Saturday 10am - 4pm.

2010-05-10T06:07:00.000-07:00

Several TED members were at the Slow Textiles Conference at Stroud last weekend. Emma Neuberg, Clara Vuletich and Becky Earley all gave presentations on their interpretation of Slow Textiles.

Emma Neuberg's presentation was first and was titled 'Why Slow, Why Now?'. She talked of her personal motivations for setting up the Slow Textiles Group (STG) which included her frustration at trying to find teaching/research work in universities and colleges that are prepared to consider a broader notion of design that includes the psychological, cultural, and environmental aspects. She then went on to explain the cultural and material reasons for setting up the group including the fact that by 2015, new legislation has meant that no textiles will be allowed to go into landfill in the UK. By teaching what she calls 'Extended Life Textile Techniques', people will gain new skills to use in their everyday lives and possibly contribute to a reduction in landfill.

She also highlighted the fact that there is a large, growing demographic of people (mainly women) over 50 years of age, who already have traditional textile skills and who are keen to connect with others. Emma's suggestion was that groups like the STG could be spaces for people to connect and potentially contribute to the re-use/upcycling of all the wasted textiles being generated.

Clara Vuletich discussed her emerging design practice as a 'slow design practitioner' and how there are three elements to her practice - producing hand printed wallpapers/textiles, researching and writing about sustainable textile design and working collaboratively with textile collective bricolage. Crucial to all of this design activity is reflection, and Clara emphasised how important this is to any type of 'slow' design activity.

Becky Earley then presented her Top 100 project, a slow fashion project over 10 years. Although she has presented this project to many audiences before, this time it was intertwined with her own personal life journey and how events in her personal life have been reflected and integrated into her design practice.

This was a major theme of the day - for any designer wanting to integrate sustainability and 'slow' principles into their design practice, that old saying is true - 'the personal is political'. How you live your life both outside of work and within it, carries the same values and qualities of environmental respect, balance, responsibility, openness and reflection.

For more information on 'Slow Design,' see Slowlab, Alistair Fuad-Luke's website SlowDesign or Emma Neuberg's Slow textiles Group.

Image: www.slowtextiles.org

2010-05-05T03:06:00.000-07:00

The New Silk Road Project that we have been involved in with the British Council is now in its second phase. Yemi Awosile, a Chelsea graduate is back from spending a month in Lahore, Pakistan working at the NCA textile college. We are now hosting Sabiha Rajar, who teaches textiles at the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture in Karachi.

Sabiha will be spending a month in the textiles department here, running workshops on natural dyeing and traditional Pakistani embroidery. She has brought in her suitcase dyestuffs including turmeric and pomegranate and we are looking forward to seeing what she produces. We will post some images of the workshops once they are underway.

TED Postcard in Berlin II

2010-04-21T09:12:00.000-07:00

The final presentations of the students work in Berlin went really well and there were several outstanding ideas.

There were three runners up and they included a Materials Resource that a group of product students want to develop for the college. They currently find it very hard to get their hands on any materials such as wood or metal to make prototypes. This project would be a website and a physical resource that sources waste materials from the various workshops and manufacturers around Berlin. They had already approached several companies who are willing to donate their waste materials. We thought this was a great solution to two problems - the lack of materials that students often face and the excess of materials that currently go into land fill. Pure joined up thinking!

The winners were Vincent, Michael and Peter who created 'Kick Butts', a new product and marketing campaign to stop smoking. They would collect the millions of cigarette butts that currently pollute our streets (they are the second biggest waste stream in the sea after plastic) and create a new materials from this waste . This would be used to make a type of bin that can then be used to collect the butts - like those ashtray bins you see near where people smoke. They also designed a very funny poster campaign to encourage people to think about their smoking habits.

We are hoping to be able to make it back to Berlin to see the final work from the students in July.

TED Postcard from Berlin

2010-04-15T06:36:00.000-07:00

TED is in Berlin this week teaching at the Berlin Weisensee college. We are here to share our 'TED Stories' workshops with the textile, fashion and product design students. They have been introduced to sustainable design concepts such as systems and services design and multi-functionality and have been asked to come up with an idea for a new product or service that incorporates a combination of these concepts.

Today we ran tutorials with the students workshopping their ideas. Some of the ideas so far include:

- a service/retail space run by product designers that customises and adapts redundant children's toys, in collaboration with the child

- a duo of designers who will work with an existing ceramic workshop that employs people with mental/physical disabilities - the designers will run their own 'structured workshops' for the group on developing social and material skills

-a fashion student who wants to work with the fast/slow issue and design a range of garments that are made using a compostable paper fabric that can be thrown away after one wear, and the same range of garments made using long-life materials such as silk and wool

Tomorrow will be the final 'Dragons Den' presentation where they present their final idea. We will announce the final winners then.

The Wallpaper Dress project

2010-04-06T05:22:00.000-07:00

TED member Mel Bowles has been working on a very interesting collaborative design project exploring themes of customisation, emotional attachment and local design/production.

In The Wallpaper Dress, Mel has worked with collaborator Sarah Dennis, who had found a sample of old block-printed wallpaper at a car boot sale. Mel scanned the sample and put the design into repeat using Photoshop, which she then digitally printed onto cloth here at Chelsea on our Mimaki printer. The fabric was then made up into a simple vintage-inspired dress and some of the motifs were hand-embroidered to add a handmade element. The entire process took place in an area of 4.5 miles in South London and utilised local skills and services.

The process enabled Sarah to be part of the entire journey from the initial discovery of the print, to the reworking, printing, and making of the garment. This a wonderful example of a co-design fashion production process where the customer and designer work together on making a garment that the customer will truly value and cherish.

Slow Textiles conference at Stroud

2010-03-29T10:05:00.000-07:00

TED members Becky Earley, Clara Vuletich and Emma Neuberg will be presenting their thoughts and ideas at the Slow Textiles Conference part of the Stroud International Textile Festival on Saturday May 8th 2010.

The conference is chaired by Helen Carnac (who curated the Taking Time: Craft and the Slow Revolution exhibition currently on tour nationally) and themes being explored include the use of new technologies in sustainable textile design and the role of the designer in creating 'slower' products and services.

Clara Vuletich will also be running a workshop on quilting and patchwork with Katherine May (whose new quilts are currently in Libertys), from textile collective bricolage on Sunday 9th May.

Tickets are £50 for the Saturday conference and £35 for the Sunday workshop.

Call for Designer to work with ethical fabrics

2010-03-23T03:30:00.000-07:00

Mumo is an ethical fabric supplier who work with small Brazilian communities developing a
range of high-end fabrics for fashion and interiors. The range includes handwoven silks and cottons, ecological fish leathers and handmade latex from small farming communites living in the Amazon jungle.

They are looking for a designer to work on developing a small range of homeware products. This is a very exciting design opportunity as you will be able to see your designs made into products using beautiful ethical fabrics.

The application involves following a design brief developed in collaboration with TED and the successful applicant will work closely with Kirstin Samuel from Mumo over three months from May - July 2010.

If you are interested, please email Clara Vuletich ted@chelsea.arts.ac.uk for the design brief and details.

TED Postcard from Pakistan

2010-03-15T03:55:00.000-07:00

Yemi Awosile wrote: I'm working in the National College of Arts in Lahore with the Head of Textiles Iram and her two senior lecturers, Attya and Saima as part of the New Silk Road project, a cultural exchange organised through the British Council. I love their enthusiasm for their students and their own work. It's hard to believe that these women have full time jobs, work for other companies, work on their own projects and look after their families all at once. I guess they get their energy from the glorious Pakistani sun! Attya and Saima are two very talented women and I'm hoping to pick up some skills from them, specifically hand-embroidery and natural dying.

So far I've had four workshops with textile students that have gone well. I introduced them to my work and research into cork and to the work of TED. I also introduced them to several UK designer/ makers such as Linda Florence, Margot Selby and Katherine May and I even picked up an extra student from the architecture department!

Lahore is an exciting and lively city and the people here are unbelievably accommodating. They have such a beautiful nature; it’s so different to what I'm used to in the UK and worlds apart from what we hear about in the UK media. If anything, the biggest thing I've learnt is that you can't judge others by our 'western' ideas and we're probably not as open minded as we think we are.

On Thursday, I visited the several textile factories in a town called Faisalabad, two and half hours outside Lahore. I had a tour around two factories that specialise in textile dyeing, printing and embroidery.

There is so much to see and do here and one month is not long enough!...I will write next time I have the chance.

Read more about Yemi's visit on her blog.

2010-03-12T10:11:00.000-08:00

Chelsea MA student Mai Trebuil wrote: In January I attended a conference hosted by the United Nations on sustainability and biodiversity issues within the fashion and luxury industries, in Geneva. There were several panel discussions with a range of speakers including biodiversity experts, designers, representatives from large companies such as Nestle, Gucci Group and LVMH and sustainable fashion representatives from Made By and the Ethical Fashion Forum.

The panel speakers discussed topics such as responsible sourcing, legislation, certification and educating younger generations towards a shift in values.

The opening panel sought to redefine biodiversity and sustainability within our current consumerist society. Petko Draganov (UNCTAD) emphasized the necessity of the inclusion of all stakeholders, by building lasting partnerships between local producers and multinational companies. This was later seen in the Weleda Group presentation on their model sourcing of arnica. By offering basic training to insure quality as well as set up biodynamic farming to increase habitat biodiversity, Weleda insures a long lasting partnership and strives to create win-win situations.

The panel on how to implement a successful sustainability strategy included Allana McAspurn from Made-By (UK) who discussed her business as a sustainable fashion consultancy, and Made-By's aim to “make sustainable fashion common practice”. Made-By has developed a labelling concept, with a track and trace component, as well as a supply chain support service with scorecards to encourage benchmarking. Their report 'Environmental Benchmark for Fibres' is available to download, and controversially places bamboo as one of the least 'sustainable fibres' and recycled polyester as 'highly sustainable'.

The next panel discussion was about The Rise of the Ethical Consumer and Eco-fashion in the Mass Market. Claire Hamer, founder of ei8ht, related her experience as a buyer for Topshop and her upcoming partnership with ASOS to set up a “Green Room”. She stated matter-of-factly: “We’ve outsourced our supply chains”. Fast fashion has been focusing on the consumer and short-term profitability. There has to be an increased consciousness. Her work for high street giants like Topshop sourcing fairly traded garments & accessories has showed her that partnerships, collaborations and the creation of platforms are essential to harbour change in the industry. Her advice was also to target buyers rather than designers or managers, as they are really the one deciding which materials are chosen for production. Her quadruple approach – profit, people, planet, product – aims to produce a clear message of what the label is all about especially in age where brands are marketing lifestyle rather than pure product.

The final panel was titled The Influence of Affluence: Luxury Brands as Sustainable Role Models. Burak Cakmak from the Gucci Group emphasised business longevity in sustainable sourcing as well as fostering innovation around sustainability by funding research in leading universities. He cited the example of the recent funding by the Gucci Group of the TFRG PhD 'Sustainable Technology for Future Luxury'.

2010-03-09T04:18:00.000-08:00

The Forum for the Future have launched a great new initiative called Fashion Futures: 2025, a series of films that propose four scenarios for how the future of the fashion industry may look in 2025.

The films include visions on 'slow fashion' and 'community couture' and are really insightful tools for imagining how we may produce, buy, live with and dispose of fashion and clothing.

They are designed as tools for all parts of the fashion industry, from retailers to manufacturers to designers and consumers and are set in 2025 for a good reason. According to Matilda Tham, future forecasting often uses a 15- 20 years time span for scenario building. Tham calls this time 'uncontaminated space' - if it was any shorter it would not allow for enough scope for change and if it was any longer, it feels to far out of our reach.

Hopefully these films will help all of us to steer our fashion future in the direction we want it to go.

TED Postcard from Tel Aviv 3

2010-03-08T02:59:00.000-08:00

Becky Earley wrote: Today was spent in a group crit with 15 of the 60 final year students from Shenkar College. We looked at a wide range of work, but in summary the highlights for me were:

- a collection of cube partition / lighting objects made from recycling black drinking straws (pictured)

- a project using pressed and dried flowers that focussed on the ghostly remains, digitally printed onto fabric with the background devored away leaving a deconstructed floral print on the cloth

- a carpet concept based on childhood feelings of lying in wild flower meadows, and rendered into sculptural form through felting and using factory discarded threads

- and a collaboration between a weave student and a print student who have created exquisite modern / antique interior fabrics using stunning ink drawings and fabrics woven using linen and metal fibres.

Tomorrow I meet a group of the tutors to reflect upon the workshops and lectures, and discuss what sustainable textiles means to them.

Craft Rally at Chelsea

2010-03-05T04:40:00.000-08:00

TED and Chelsea College of Art & Design will be hosting the Craft's Council exciting new initiative called Craft Rally, a network event for makers at all stage of their careers.

The first Craft Rally will take place at Chelsea on 25th March and will include presentations, workshops and opportunities for networking. TED member Becky Earley will be discussing her work as a maker and academic exploring sustainability and Clara Vuletich and the textile collective she is part of, bricolage will be on hand to help participants record their thoughts and ideas onto a tablecloth with 'Cloth Non-Confidential'.

What does craft’s relationship to sustainability, resourcefulness, activism or community mean to your practice? How could collaboration with other craft-makers and disciplines generate new and exciting ways of looking at your own approach? All of these questions and more will be encouraged and explored.

Tickets are £40 and bookings are essential.

TED Postcard from Tel Aviv 2

2010-03-04T05:08:00.000-08:00

Becky Earley wrote: Today I gave my lecture to the whole college and talked about some of my projects from 1994 to today. I also introduced the TED strategies and the Design Stories. The talk went well, and I was pleased that it was not only the textile students who were inspired by it - the industrial design students, graphics, and fine art students also came along.

After lunch I gave a Top 100 workshop, with 12 of the textile students using lace to overprint polyester shirts from my collection. It is 7.10pm now, and they are still queuing up for the transfer presses to finish their creation before 8pm. Attached here is one by Ela - a work in progress. This shirt was given to her by her aunt and she brought it in to show me, but I made her work on it!

TED Postcard from Tel Aviv

2010-03-03T02:43:00.000-08:00

Becky Earley wrote: It's Day 1 of the 'Masterclass in Sustainable Textile Design', Shenkar College of Engineering and Design, Tel Aviv. I've had a lively session with students discussing the Textile Lifecycle lecture in the morning, followed by 6 hours of the interconnected design thinking workshop in the afternoon. Twenty students worked through ideas about fast and slow, ethical production, new technologies, multifunction, and systems and services design, to come up with concepts for new upcycled textile buisnesses.

The group worked in 3 teams and generated ideas about: upcycling and loaning umbrellas in Tel Aviv for the tourist industry (it has been raining here a lot lately!); a new website representing a collective of designers working with upcycling but also co-ordinating local waste streams for local industry; and a city centre project about re-designing business parking spaces to be multifunctional and to become urban garden spaces at the weekends where festivals for swishing could take place. I did have time for lunch - the head of textiles, Uri Tzaig, took me for lunch to Tel Aviv's new port, to see the Israel fashion design label comme il faut and their design centre which plays host to a number of stylish and enterprising businesses.

More to follow on Becky's time in Tel Aviv shortly.

Graduate Showcase

2010-02-23T04:59:00.000-08:00

Lisa Walker (BA, 2009) a recent graduate, was chosen by Blueprint magazine as one of the highlights in last year's graduate shows. Where most fabric is woven or knitted, Lisa has created a 'new' cloth from bonded waste fibres and yarns. She was inspired by her theory research in which she had interviewed Manel Torres, the designer who invented Fabrican, a spray on dress that comes directly out of a can, where the fibres encapsulate the body.

Furniture designer Terence Woodgate chose Lisa's work as one of his favourites, commenting on her delicate technique "..the construction of Walker's cloth was fascinating....it reminded me of glass-fibre matting but with colour and texture. I loved the way the fabric faded and thinned out at the edge. Some sections are like an abstract painting....".

Walker was keen to explore a new technique that may lend itself to using recycled fibres and threads and is hoping to develop the ideas further into a usable fabric.

2010-02-10T09:02:00.002-08:00

The latest edition to Becky Earley's ongoing slow fashion project - Top 100 is now online. For the Taking Time exhibition at Birmingham Gallery last October, Becky developed a 'digital book' which documented the Top 100 project over its ten year life span.

These images are from the Template shirt collection created specifically for the Taking Time show.

2010-01-28T06:33:00.000-08:00

It was great to see one of the most innovative fashion researcher at a recent panel discussion about 'design hacking' at the Royal Society for the Arts (RSA). Otto von Busch is a researcher who's work explores how fashion can be re-engineered by consumers for a more self-empowered, bottoms-up approach.

Design hacking seems to have taken off as a concept in the design community and the discussion was chaired by an RSA collaborator, Scott Burnham who has written a paper on design hacktivism. The term 'hacking', has came from computer hackers - people who are able to enter a system or learn and code and then adapt it or improve it.

Otto was adamant that it is not a negative term, as sometimes portrayed. Hacking is not about anarchy and over-throwing the system, it is about infiltrating the system, or learning the 'source code', to improve or adapt it.

Otto explained that in fashion terms, the 'codes' are written by the untouchable, genius designers such as Karl Lagerfield. The code is a mystery that only the designer knows and the fashion consumer is merely the passive receiver of this 'design wisdom'.

Fashion hacktivism however, is when the fashion consumer is able to hack the source code and adapt or change fashion. Otto frames this mainly at the garment level, and he has created projects which offer people knowledge about customising garments or making your own. He also runs workshops and opportunities for people to gain new skills to create their own type of fashion garments.

Otto came to see us at TED last week and we hope to work with him on some porojects in the near future. His PhD thesis has now been published in an easy to read format, called Fashion-able: Hacktivism and Engaged Fashion Design, avaialble to order via his website.

2010-01-28T04:55:00.000-08:00

At the end of last year we attended a conference at the V & A called 2012 Imperative Teach-In run by Eco-Labs. It was organised to encourage 'ecological literacy' amongst design educators, and tutors and students from design courses from all around the UK attended.

The title of the event refers to the urgency of the current environmentally challenges we face and is a 'call to arms' to all design educators to embed sustainable design into design curriculum's by 2012.

As the founder of Eco Labs, Jody Boenhert says, "Design education must embrace its unique ability to facilitate change by engaging with the concept of ecological literacy, communicating key concepts of environmental sustainability, and initiating a wide-reaching learning process".

The Teach-In ning site has been set up as a network to connect design teachers and to offer methods and teaching tools to facilitate this change.

There was some inspiring speakers at the event, including John Thackara, Andrew Simms of the New Economics Foundation and Richard Hawkins a climate scientist, which are available via the website.

2010-01-21T04:11:00.000-08:00

BA Chelsea graduate (2006) Yemi Awosile has been chosen to go to Pakistan as part of the British Council's The New Silk Road cultural exchange project. She will spend one month at a textile college in Lahore teaching about sustainable textile design and will also do research into the Pakistan embroidery traditions and the current textile industry. After Yemi's return, a textile designer/educator from Pakistan will come and do a residency at the textile department at Chelsea.

Yemi was recently an RCA Innovation Fellow exploring the commercial potential for her innovative cork-based knitted materials and is very interested in exploring potential for new materials in Pakistan.

Yemi follows on from designers Basso & Brooke who went to Uzbekistan last year, and textile weaver Ismini Samanidou who is currently out in Bangladesh as part of the project. You can read her blog about her experiences.

Digital hands project

2010-01-19T08:06:00.000-08:00

Several members from TED are currently involved in a new project trying to link craft and technology in textile production in India, called Digital Hands. Clara Vuletich wrote a TED postcard from their initial trip to India in November, where partners were found to work on the project.

One partner is Bodhi, a block print company from Gujurat, run by the inspirational Mala and Pradeep, a couple who are passionate about pushing the boundaries of traditional print processes for saris. Mala designs her own patterns for saris and other garments and the designs are hand carved into wood blocks and then hand printed on the long print tables in the factory. Sari fabrics are also dyed in the factory and then printed on.

All the water from the factory is sent through a closed-loop water filtration system developed by Pradeep. Once the water has been cleaned it would only need the addition of chlorine to make it drinkable. This filtered water is then re-used and because they also save gallons of rainwater in their large water tanks during the monsoon, they rarely need to turn on the tap.

This is amazing considering that they are using synthetic dyes and also considering the vast amounts of water that are used for block and silk-screen printing and for dyeing of fabric. It also interesting that they have chosen not to use natural dyes. They believe that natural dyes do not work reliably at this scale of production and that there is a lack of consistency in the colour. However, if the water is able to be filtered through a closed loop system like this, and the performance of the synthetic dyes meets their requirements, it makes the use of natural dyes seem redundant, which is controversial to say the least.

For more images of the Bodhi factory see the TED Flikr site and more updates on the project will follow on this blog.

2010-01-19T07:31:00.000-08:00

The UN have organised a seminar on the fashion and luxury industries and its impacts on the environment. A very good line up of speakers will be attending at the two day conference in Geneva this Wednesday 20th and Thursday 21st January.

Redefining Sustainability in the International Agenda: Inspiring Greater Engagement in Biodiversity Issues will include panel discussions with the founder of Noir fashion label, Tamsin le Jenue from Ethical Fashion Forum, representatives from high street brands Gap and Mango, luxury label Hermes and model Erin Oconnor, to name a few.

An MA student from Chelsea will be attending the event and will be feeding back to TED on the outcomes which will be made available on this blog.

2010-01-11T08:56:00.001-08:00

Recent graduate Mary Penny (BA 2008) has had her final year dissertation published by an independent publisher. The paper, The Woven Textile Industry in Lao PDR: the extent to which woven textiles are influencing the regeneration of Lao PDR and the role of women, is available on Amazon.

Mary Penny was interviewed by TED about her final thesis and studio project and the footage is available to view here. This interview is a sneak preview to some exciting new interviews and content that we will be making available via the new TED website, coming soon!

2010-01-05T07:02:00.000-08:00

Becky Earley and Kay Politowicz have been invited to deliver a series of workshops and lectures to design students at Weissensee Kunsthochschule, Berlin in April 2010.

TED's 'Design Stories' workshops will be open to a multi-disciplinary student audience including fashion, product and textile design students.

TED has been invited by Dr. Zane Berzina, Professor for Conceptual Development of Materials and Surface Textiles at the college.

Ever & Again project completion

2010-01-05T05:59:00.000-08:00

The Ever & Again:Rethinking Recycled Textiles project officially ended on 30th November 2009, after four years. The project has seen the development of ground-breaking research into ways that designers can upcycle textiles and has included an exhibition of design prototypes in 2007 and a major symposium in 2008.

The final outcomes from the project are being compiled into a publication, Upcycling Textiles which is due out later this year, edited by Rebecca Earley, with a foreword by John Thackara.

The publication will include 22 illustrated essays by leading international academics and designers including: Dr Otto von Busch, Professor Stephen Scrivener, Dr Dorothy Maxwell, Cyndi Rhoades , Tamsin LeJeune, Dr Emma Neuberg, Helen Carnac, Amy Twigger Holroyd, Dr Jessica Hemmings, Kate Goldsworthy, Clara Vuletich, Professor Marie O’Mahony, Dr Lucy Norris, Dr Jo Heeley and Professor Mike Press and Professor Kay Politowicz.

It will be available through the TED website and there will be more information shortly.

Co-design workshops

2010-01-03T04:00:00.000-08:00

TED has continued to run several workshops with the new MA group here at Chelsea and the latest one was by Jennifer Ballie, the TFRG PhD student who explored co-design with the MA group.

Jen developed a series of garment case studies and students were asked to develop scenarios for customisation which consider co-design methods, involving the consumer and a designer.

A summary of Jen's recent lecture here at Chelsea Co-Everything: Defining Co-design for Fashion and Textiles is available here.