hello everyone i'm josie warden the rsa's head of regenerative design and it's my great pleasure to
welcome you to today's thursday lunchtime event and so today we've gathered together a brilliant
panel of fashion makers and thinkers from across the uk and i'm from across the pond and really
special thank you to lillian for joining us so bright and early from new york this morning um
so our clothing system has enormous impacts and in the wake of prop 26 this conversation feels
even more urgent and i can't wait to hear from our expert panel today on how we can push fashion to
be even more ambitious ambitious and achieve more holistic goals so when we think about transforming
fashion we often think about the sustainability strategies of big brands and global supply chains
but for today's conversation we're going to start in a slightly different place and look at some
very practical and locally based work which is taking a regenerative approach to growing change
in our landscape and in our communities before we kind of zoom out and look at the wider change this
might signal for the industry and so we're going to hear a short kind of scene setting statements
from each of our panelists um and in turn and then we'll have a conversation together and so
if you're interested in finding out more about the rsa's work on regenerative design and fashion in
particular then please check out the links in the youtube chat and you can also get involved in the
conversation on twitter using the hashtag join the regeneration and we're really looking forward to
hearing um any contributions you have to make and we've got to get a lot to get through today
so let's get started and and first up it's my real pleasure to introduce justine olderz williams so
justine is a creative activist our textile artisan and educator specializing in botanical dyeing
and she's director of the wild diary where she devises rewilding rituals that reconnect people
with natural fibres and colours they extend the life of their clothing and she's also the founder
of northwest fiber shed which is a collective of professionals developing a decentralized
regenerative textile system so justine thanks so much for joining us today it's really great
to have you and and i'm going to hand over to you to introduce yourself a bit more about your work
okay yeah well you mentioned i'm a natural textile dyer and founder of fibre shed we are
developing a regenerative textile system in northwest england but
i want to kind of go a little bit more deeply into that term regenerative and
what my understanding of that is um and to kind of contextualize so to me it means
restoring our life support system so that it can restore us and right now this means giving back
more than we take from the planet but ultimately it means living in right relationship
or symbiosis with our environment to make it more understandable to myself one of my mentors claire
dubois is the founder of the reforestation charity tree sisters she says that humanity
needs to evolve from being a consumer species to a restorer species and how people interpret the term
regenerative depends on where they currently stand on this consumer restore a continuum
for example the default extractor consumer mindset will tend to reduce commodify and capitalize
on the concept of regenerative fashion a term which to my mind is a bit of an oxymoron anyway
in order to keep business as usual and perpetuate an economic system which has caused
supply and prices by being degenerative at the other end of this continuum we have the restorers
who preserved their wildlife and soil health i'm really struck by the statistic
from national geographic that states that it's indigenous cultures who make up just five percent
of the global population who are preserving 80 percent of the world's biodiversity
now organizations like fibre sheds that i'm involved in honor this indigenous these
indigenous origins of regenerative practice and are implementing solutions that actively
restore rather than merely sustaining or worse destroying our planet and that ethos
focuses on using local fibres local dyes and local labor because massive amounts of environmental and
social exploitation can be reduced or eliminated by regionalizing or downsizing manufacturing
so for example in relation to clothing manufacturers working regeneratively might involve
divesting from fossil fuel derived synthetic materials that currently make up about 70 of
all clothing produced to instead use renewable natural fibers and dyes grown in ways that draw
carbon out of our overheated atmosphere back into our depleted soils and to do this we need textile
props integrated into our food farming systems um crucially using carbon farming techniques
then when we have these textile crops we need the processing equipment to bring it to market
and make it viable now in my work with northwest england fibre shed i'm collaborating with patrick
grant from social enterprise community clothing who you might know better as a judge on the bbc's
great british selling bee and also super slow way who are an arts commissioning organization that
run the british textile biennial and we've been working this year on a project called homegrown
homespun to start developing a regenerative soil to soil textile system here in the heartland of
british textiles in northwest england um we've started but from the ground up by planting two
of the uk's forgotten vibrant dye crops flax and woad on urban land in blackburn and the main
challenge has been um to bring these textile crops back to uk is a loss of skills and there are no
linen processing facilities in the entire country anymore you can't process it and you can't spin it
in this country so in our prototype year we did everything by hand the way our
pre-industrial ancestors did it um and really this this kind of begs the question to me of
why have generations for thousands of years been empowered with the skills of
self-sufficiency and survivalism to make their own clothing one are so clever civilization
in this culture can't do that it's incredibly difficult to work sustainably and ethically
in on the british isles right now because we just don't have those facilities to to do so or the
um the crops um which are no longer grown here so we added to our challenge by trying to grow
regeneratively and we've had advice from soil scientists who are monitoring the effects
on the soil health and biodiversity and we managed to get from seed to cloth in less than six months
and the cloth is now being exhibited in blackburn museum until december the 18th
and we happily have got funding to upscale and reach our kind of second phase which
is to bring the line of jeans to market through patrick's um social enterprise community clothing
in time for the next biennial in 2023 so we're we're inspired by um sort of mid-scale
production models like the harris tweed model we envisage a linen industry in in the northwest and
yeah that's where we're up to i mean i can i can delve way more deeply into the huge amount
of challenges um i think what's interesting to me is this holds a massive potential the
clothing industry has a massive potential to heal the climate crisis if we listen very carefully to
those who are most impacted by the climate crisis and it's not just about the loss of
manufacturing infrastructure there are actual deeper ramifications to working regeneratively
there is an emotional element to our mass consumption that we need to tackle we can set up
all these lovely systems but if people are still driven to buy and waste because it's fulfilling
some kind of emotional need that is set up by our economic system that is going to perpetuate
um in the long term the same sort of wastage albeit um with better renewable materials so
yeah it's it's a really intersectional interesting discussion and i feel like i'm overrunning on
time so i'm gonna round up and perhaps delve more deeply during the questions thank you thank you so
much and it was so there was so much in there that we can pull out in the conversation and so we're
looking forward to doing that and linking it up with um others work too so next up um i'm going
to introduce dr francesco mozarella francesco is a senior lecturer in fashion and design for social
change at the london college of fashion where he works for the center for sustainable fashion
exploring the ways in which design activism can be used to create counter narratives towards
sustainability in fashion and previously francesco was ahrc design leadership fellow research
associate at lancaster university with the aim to support design research for change so it's really
great to have you here today francesco and i'll hand over you to talk a bit more about your work
and perspectives on this topic yes uh thanks rosie and hi everyone um as rosie said i and
my work is in fashion and design for social change and i use a design activism approach to design for
sustainability at center for sustainable fashion since the inception of the center we our ambition
was to build a transformed fashion system towards psychological social cultural and environmental
um and economic sustainability but my approach to uh design for sustainability it's to start
from culture as an entry point to develop a more personal authentic and perhaps even
spiritual approach to design for sustainability sustainability is a journey and mind starts from
revitalizing cultural heritage but also tackling social equalities and fostering social engagement
but also to make local economies flourish and enhance environmental stewardship i often work
with marginalized and isolated communities and in order to enable people to move from the feeling of
hopelessness and feeling overwhelmed in response to the climate emergency
to instead gain voice and agency and become agents of their own alternatives i also believe
that there is a need to decolonize a fashion and disenter sustainability which is very much
grounded currently on anglo-saxon approaches to sustainability but instead we need to also draw
on indigenous knowledge and embed other sets of values in the shaping of the regenerative
fashion system to exemplify this i will try and talk about a few projects i'm currently working
on our centers for sustainable fashion i'm working on the fashion values program in partnership with
caring work business and ibm we are launching a series of online free courses aimed at nurturing
a regenerative mindset and also change making capabilities within an international community of
learners this year we launched a challenge asking people how fashion can value nature and we have
received a multi-simplicity of responses in terms of fashion products services and systems that can
contribute to the shifting to shifting from an age of extraction to an age of regeneration
and more central to my own work is the making for change world and forest project on which i've been
working on for the past years this project uses fashion activism and reciprocal ways of making
to create positive social change in an east london borough and build long lasting legacies within the
local community my approach in this is what i call middle up down in fact to enable sustainability
in communities sometimes governments or ngos are adopting top-down strategies
and delivering services but they often lack the sensibility to address the specific needs and
aspirations of communities and instead on the other hand also bottom-up initiatives
activating by communities often lack the resources our infrastructure to become sustainable over time
so my middle up down approach to this is to play the role of a bridge between bottom up initiatives
co-created with communities and services and strategies delivered by top-down organizations
such as local government in my project and in this context i tend to activate change from within
the system adopting a quiet or indirect form of activism as a situated and embedded approach to
co-design meaningful social change and from this perspective i in response to what we need actually
for social change to happen i need that i believe that we need funding to support such initiatives
but also moving beyond the well-recognized role of the designer as a facilitator
to also play the role of an activist that means challenging the status quo and make things happen
but we also need to work collaboratively across different departments and not working in silos
because we need holistic and systemic approaches to tackle sustainability challenges and also
create an infrastructure to sustain change and support resilient communities thank you so much
it's really exciting to hear about your work and already seeing so many links um
and with things that we're thinking about at the rsa and things that justine has shared already
and i'm sure that's going to continue and we join um we're joined by alice robinson so um
alice is a regenerative fashion designer whose work has been shown at the london design festival
the victorian albert museum and her collection 11458 was acquired by the v a in 2020 and she's
a co-founder of gradient robinson where they're developing an innovative and traceable new supply
of vegetable-tanned leather made from the heights of animals farmed on regenerative farms in the uk
um and we were delighted to work with um alice and also sarah her partner who took part in
the rethink fashion program earlier this year which was our learning journey that was held in
partnership with the macarthur foundation so it's really nice to see you again alice and over to you
to share some more about your work thank you so much for having me josie and thank you for the
introduction so as jesus said um i'm co-founder of a new venture called radio robinson to produce
a new supply of leather um from the heights of animals rage on a regenerative farms in the uk
and really our goal is to forge a connection between land stewardship and material culture
um i have a design background an accessory background and i felt uh the disconnection myself
when i wanted to be able to sort of understand the materials on this and the sources of them
um when it came to creating my own work um currently the leather industry is
disconnected from farming in a way that there is no opportunity for farmers to know or choose the
destiny of the heights that the animals they've raised go and there's no option for designers
to know really anything about the life of the animal that resulted in the leather they use
um therefore my work explored ways in which the leather industry intersects with
farms and trading trying to investigate ways of working more closely can strengthen these systems
and even build new ones um we want to be able to align design and therefore consumption with what a
landscape is suited to produce and therefore what raw materials it yields and therefore
what the materials are that it offers and to the extent in which um we have them at our hands
um i really like the saying of kate fletcher says that fiber follows food and i've really found that
working as closely as possible with a farming and agricultural community um as a designer and trying
to sort of follow behind them to know what um sort of where those connections can be made i believe
that designers we can learn a great deal from farmers about balance and working with nature and
about limitations and using them using limitations this is a source of inspiration creativity which i
think sometimes in the industry we lack because there's uh so much capacity to create whatever
you want to whatever extent in so many ways and and having um having new creative restrictions
on that to work in balance in balance and in a regenerative way is is um a source of uniqueness
and inspiration um equally i feel like there's a cross-industry collaboration is really key for
building new systems that can support a shared goal in working restoratively so our project is
motivated by building recognition that farms raising animals with regenerative practices
invest a great deal of resource and care to produce healthy foods steward land and
it is our belief that those animals should be fully and meaningfully utilized and we have a
desire for those farms to receive maximum value and recognition for their exemplary practices
our goal is to create a bioregional supply chain that results in leather in a leather
material that is expressive of place and there is an abundant opportunity to collaborate with the
farming community here in the uk that is uniquely um suited to growing grass and having animals on
the land in a way that builds biodiversity and works um with a regenerative approach to
to food and community culture barriers to progress really lie in our lack of infrastructure as
um so i'm sure we'll touch on later but that's something that's really disappeared for us
in terms of the leather production of the uk and that really hinders our um
systems in creating and supporting localized uh material production um it's important for us as
a business to understand the interdependency of shared stakeholders both between the farming and
fashion industry when it comes to material production and how that can be approached
for example uh many of the farms we work with rely on have a small scale approach to producing food
and sewage land and they sell directly to their customers who are really interested in and desire
traceable and local food um and a sector that is a linchpin of that is um small scale absorbs which
we have had a um had a really really wrapping decline in closures of in recent years and
um the sales or disposal of heightened skins are a point of where i believe um sort of an engaged
design community you can see how we can um sort of reach forward and create um new systems to support
um the flourishing of local and regional um food and land practices so we want the material we
produce to inspire and aware of land stewardship and natural systems so we will be offering our
leather to brands and designers seeking ethical and ecological materials and telling the story
of regenerative practices in the uk and it's our aim to inspire a commitment um to practices that
prioritize animal welfare and biodiversity and healthy ecosystems great thanks so much alice um
and finally i'm really thrilled to introduce butera's senior sustainability strategist
lillian lou um and we're gonna zoom out a little bit now we've been looking at some quite kind of
place specific i guess interventions in fashion um but lily into work is helping high-profile
fashion tech and consumer um goods and beauty companies to set quite bold sustainability
visions um and lenny also has worked at the un to mobilize companies to take action on the sdgs
and help launch a sustainable fashion movement in china um and has been named one of the green biz
30 under 30 leaders so it's brilliant to have you here today lillian and thanks again for getting
up so early and it'd be really great to hear your perspective on what you know how are these kind of
changes in the idea of regeneration um impacting the fashion industry as a whole and what kind of
changes are you seeing coming coming down the line yes thank you josie it's great to be here
you know i work with a lot of different companies and fashion is obviously a very
important sector uh for us as futera and have a big passion for it um and what i think is
really exciting right now is that um there's a lot more understanding around how social
and environmental issues are interlinked so we've talked a lot about that interdependence today and
um i think there was a real awakening last year in the wake of the black lives matter protest
specifically in terms of just what environmental justice is and how climate change and water
pollution impacts communities and so i think that's a really really important understanding
that is happening and you know shortly after we saw from the human rights crisis in xinjiang in
the cotton farming industry again um i think for many that was an awakening in terms of
how our material choices impact social lives and and social sustainability and so i think
that is something that is changing in terms of what we mean by sustainability and i
think that the concept of regenerative is really great because it doesn't silo
different issues right you're really thinking holistically about the approach and the impact
and i think what i'm seeing too is that now we have these influential companies that are really
uh setting up these more ambitious strategies and initiatives and i know francesco mentioned caring
is one of them they've obviously done a lot around biodiversity and having enough positive impact on
nature um you know mostly the approach taking it is um coming in with investment which i think is
you know which i think smaller players are looking for these big companies to do
you've got ralph lauren all birds other companies too that are
going in setting up funds and partnerships to really build capabilities on the ground
so that's also really exciting and something we didn't really see a couple years ago and
it's been moving quite fast um at the more global high level um as part of my work with futera we
work with the un climate change fashion charter so we're one of the co-chairs there and um
the new the renewed charter actually just came out and in that you know you also see a mention
to regenerative practices in terms of sourcing and so again to me that's like an indication
of the industry taking this seriously and it's really exciting to see uh because it's the first
and so i think it's really great news um of course we're not there yet um
i think the main the majority of the action that we see is still more focused on doing less bad
is not so much doing good or doing more good and so you know i want to be real with that um
and i think there's still a lot of work that needs to be done in terms of shifting from
the resource minimization to resource regeneration and generational growth
um you know many of my fellow panelists have real experience working on the ground
and so much has already been said around more tangible things around regenerative concepts
and the final thing that i want to add is that you know working with a lot of these companies it's
clear that the concept of regeneration is quite complex and it's hard to grasp and you know i
think it's really important to start helping companies understand how you can integrate this
concretely you know what are the metrics what are the kpis what are the processes in a tangible way
um that defines regenerative design that defines regenerative company and regenerative community
like at those levels and thinking about it at scale and i know you know there's a lot of great
work going on uh and you guys are doing the heavy lifting um i think it's important to bring that
together and um and create that guidance because right now a lot of companies are figuring it out
on their own uh and so it's a lot harder to have consistent results as well i think we are starting
to shape that vision but we need to get very tangible about what that means as a business
um yeah i think it's an exciting movement that i really am i am so excited to learn about all these
initiatives and i'm sure this is going to continue to grow so thank you thanks very much lillian
um i think it's been really interesting when we were thinking about putting this panel together
as well of how you kind of represent all the different parts of this system because as
we're saying we are trying to look at it in a very holistic way um it's about kind of moving together
the many different kind of facets um and i think that does make the conversation quite tricky to
um to explain in succinctly so i've got this kind of these demonstrations are really nice
ways of explaining that exploring that and i think we've just been making some notes as
you've all been talking around it feels like there's a big a couple of big things that are
coming through around kind of um this shift being really about mindsets and understanding
seeing ourselves differently in relation to the systems that we're part of whether that's
being part of nature whether that's seeing the kind of connections between social environmental
distribution kind of um making things that change that's appropriate to place in context and how
can lots of people be involved in that and then particularly kind of co-creation so citizens being
involved in shaping that change and i'm wondering if you think about all of those things together
and i'm sure there are other bits you'd add in if there is a is there is there a tension between
um the way we think what we think fashion is at the moment and what it could potentially be and
is there a tension there between kind of fashion as a system and clothing as a as something that's
essential to to people is is there anyone got any thoughts around those kinds of
is there a tension between what we're currently seeing of fashion and what we think fashion is
and where we think it might need to move to and whether that's is there a intention of that being
on to where we want to go i feel that tension yeah i mean it made it quite hard to prepare
today because um i'm quite triggered by the word fashion actually um i i see it as part of a kind
of capitalist colonialist system i think it's quite hard to separate those two things out quite
often um i really would like to see an empowered clothing system emerging that a place-based
empowered clothing system emerging um yeah i i definitely think that there's um difficulties
in how we define that and how we think outside of what we've been ingrained into you know we're
part of this system that is killing its life support system this culture that i would think
of it more like a cult actually than a culture you know this kind of perpetual growth mindset which
which um the fashion system predominantly fast fashion is a part of how that that requires
many systemic changes including our economic system you know and how do we kind of navigate
that so i have questions you know i don't have solutions but i'm very very glad to kind of have
this forum to to share thoughts with all you guys and try and develop some solutions are
you going to come in there francesco's are you unmuted yeah yes actually yeah there is
attention also in the world fashion itself but if we consider as you suggest clothing instead
actually i think there is no um the notion of uh buying less but also regeneration could be more um
actually there is less of attention but i think as well we again going back to the point of also
the centering sustainability if we also look at other approaches to sustainability for instance
communities in the global south they are using already very much approaches to buying less or
buy better or repairing clothes or making our own clothes and also maybe also making things together
because then uh in that way through the my joy of making things together we can activate resilient
communities in place that are flourishing and thriving and for instance um just to show some
other examples um uh kate fletcher she did the project craftable use some years ago that was
looking really much at this of the exactly the usership instead of ownership but also um more
recently she's also worked on the fashionable ecologies project in a small town in northwest
of england that really points out to alternative approaches to a fashion in a post-growth scenario
but also as well there are other organizations like lonehood in london that actually are creating
a rental revolution of uh clothing or in my work with communities in east london we upcycle
pre-consumer waste fabric with marginalized women in a deprived area and then create uh
clothes for donation so as well overall this is shaping a new regenerative system of fashion
and hopefully we will try to solve some of these tensions thank you i think it's a really
interesting shift from the uh or potentially shift from kind of a top-down change into like
what can grow up and i wonder um lillian if you have any thoughts on that and how how how can
fashion as a kind of industry um is there a bit of identity crisis with with what's happening
and how can it kind of think about those different shifts particularly when it comes to things like
decentralization which are quite different to the not the business models that exist at the moment
yes um there i mean fashion is always evolving right so it's of course not static um and i think
this conversation is a proof of that um i think that there is definitely a lot of new business
models coming out and ownership was mentioned you know thinking about usability over ownership and
i think you know the question i wanted to ask as well is do we need to own everything um
and we definitely see that with the companies we're working on too you know trying new circular
models um thinking about or exploring um fabrics that are different alternative regenerative
um so a lot of that is going on it is still small scale it is hard to scale and you know you it's
very hard to do that in isolation as one company so you do need to come together with others
and you need designers you need local groups um you know you need that bottom-up approach as well
and we haven't really talked much about policy today we haven't talked too much about the public
um but that's definitely one for the to support as well um
you know things like consumer extended producer responsibility helps a lot um but there's also
um you know more work that can be done like just uh now during cop we saw that there was
actually a call for preferential trade agreements for importing you know organic
low fiber materials from over 50 companies like calling for governments to help them
with this and so we're seeing that interesting conversation happening at the global level too
um and uh yes i think some governments have stepped up the challenge and we have the eu
circular economy action plan there are these things that are happening but you know again
it's it's um focused on one part of the world and the world is very big and fashion is global um
there's also something really interesting about um a lot of recent reports that have come out
pointing out misinformation and data gaps in fashion and again i think companies are operating
on on limited information uh which also makes it more challenging um and so as civil society as
practitioners as academia we can help to uh create independent research around that um you know even
just that number uh how big is the carbon impact of the fashion industry uh the most recent report
says two percent i've seen eight percent i've seen ten percent you know it's just um really
difficult because the com uh the system is complex um and more investment into that research piece in
the data piece will also be really key just so that we can make some informed decisions
thank you and i think a lot of what you were saying there really um takes on something that
i thought i really loved and what you said francesca about the kind of infrastructure
piece and this idea of like middle up down of like what is it that is will enable
all of these different changes that are happening at different levels to really connect and to
create that overall systemic change and i know um alice in the conversations we've been having that
um there's a lot of kind of infrastructure support that is needed no one has anything
you could share from what you've been doing around the challenges that you see but also
potential opportunities um if we can create work with us work with policy work with um
civil society institutions to kind of think about what the infrastructure might look like
yeah absolutely i think um it's something that we've been um really um sort of surprised well
learning about as a business is that um there are parts of the infrastructure
that sort of belong to the food systems but cross over into our fashion systems very much
and um just for example uh leather is graded based on its sort of its um as a in its raw
state sort of on its scratches and its size on its weight different breeds um are are
vastly different and they are um segregated based for sort of a in a leather industry criteria
not on agricultural practices which might result in them looking a bit differently less uniform and
potentially and quite often a lot more character which is something that in the fashion industry
we like to have um well historically you know uniformity and sort of a uh um
vast scales of the same product and sort of treat it as off the roll and i think when it
comes to working with natural fibers which are sort of an integral piece of working with um
food systems that we would like to support there has to be a recalibration and what we
then expect as the design community to be working with and also be communicating with
to um the customers and that really is something that we're coming up against because um
there is more character there is more uniformity and there needs to be a different expectation
in in how we um consume goods that doesn't sit within the narrative of um you know trend based
and sort of extensive consumption and so i think it's it's having that more of a holistic vision
of of what it is you're working with what it is um you're sort of buying into and what
um what that really means both for a designer to be working with and making and also for
um for who you're selling it to and what they know um how to care for it and and
see those pieces in a different light um i think the our struggle is um sort of
intersecting an industry that sees it as a commodity to be globally exported
but actually it is really integral piece to strengthening um a local food community also
thank you and and i wonder it feels like that that is a real shift in kind of mindsets and
the way designers are engaging um i wonder if it's similar for you justine um like how
you kind of create that mindset shift and what you're kind of seeing um that's needed
in that infrastructure to support that and to support people to engage with it differently
yeah do you mean in how we're going to go about developing this
in particular yeah you're thinking about the kind of yeah what is what's missing what would
you like to see that could support that infrastructure to be developed
yeah it's difficult because obviously it requires investment and it's it's
you know as you were mentioning who owns this equipment these facilities um that are required
um what i'm seeing you know i i'm i've come at this from a very much the behavioral
aspect that behavioral change is the skills that need developing um it plays into
this issue of why people over consume what i found is when we've been sharing skills with people
though those people are so invested and engaged in the project because they've developed a new skill
they've been their kind of self-esteem their confidence has been enhanced by the process of
working with these natural materials which are difficult you know what we what we're kind of
being channeled in our educational system into is to become consumers with who pay
other people for their skills in the global south and we've been kind of disempowered
in that way i think that plays into our loss of self-esteem which means we have to consume
so there's it's a two-fold aspect we we need the skills we need the kind of financial investment
for the manufacturing infrastructure or we develop a kind of cooperative system of people with skills
who want to share and pool resources and you know ideally would be setting me some form of mini mill
um we we obviously need um a sweet spot in terms of mechanization which makes
growing these crops viable right you know this year we did everything by hand we had
70 hours worth of hand spinning to produce one leg of a pair of jeans so yeah you know it begs the
question why why is there such social disparity that you know our ancestors could do that and
people in other countries can do that we can't um but yeah realistically during this transition
during this paradigm shift we need to somehow develop a mechanization at a mid scale at a
humane scale at a scale that doesn't um exploit people or planet um and yeah i know we're looking
into that is all i can say we're looking into um developing with a you know number of different
people um but it's not easy right now um yeah to get that in in between stage that we require
and that sounds like similar to what you were saying francesca around the need for that sort of
support and both financially but also in a kind of um i guess mindset
and in interest investment as well um is there anything you'd like to ride on the kind of yeah
that needs that infrastructure and maybe why why we're finding it hard to do that yes uh so
uh actually i really like what you said it's a mindset shift and it's from doing as well
in sustainability often the narrative is about doing less bad but actually instead we need to do
more good uh for nature um and there are so many different things that can enable
that infrastructure for instance adopting and many of them i've already been mentioned today
so adopting regenerative farming practices but also sustainable sourcing strategies and
diversifying the fiber basket because it's true our clothes are made of very few fibers generally
but also we need to reduce the negative negative impacts of fashion manufacturing on
the environment and on people as well and create new tools to assist companies in assessing their
impacts on living nature but also maybe we haven't mentioned today as well ensuring transability and
and transparency throughout the supply chain is also fundamental in this shift and also new
business models and strategies and frameworks for companies to really embed sustainability
and and also new and compelling narratives as well because some consumers still have the perception
that sustainable fashion products are not as beautiful or maybe they don't meet the standards
of traditional fashion or also maybe buyers or customers also feel that maybe alternative fibers
are limited or not affordable and and finally as well and that was mentioned also by others
is that we really need collaboration because to really preserve and regenerate biodiversity it
can be done by one company in isolation but we need collaboration across brands but also with
the media governments ngos and also so to campaign and lobby and actually accelerate policy reforms
so lots to do yes so much to you and i feel like i feel like we could talk about this for so long
there is so much in this i think it all layers around how we engage as individuals as collectives
um how the kind of wider system shifts as well um but i think we're gonna have to start wrapping up
in a second but i'm gonna ask actually each of you if you'd be happy to share um one
one question or reflection um that you think people who are watching this could take away
because a lot of people who are watching will be um not involved kind of actively
in the system so what's kind of one question people could ask themselves about about um
what the hell they're consuming um or what their how they're engaging
in fashion um and if it's okay i will start with you francesca because you were nothing
okay well actually my last um i realized that my last answer sounded maybe a bit overwhelming there
is so much to be done but actually just because there is too much to be done uh we can't just wait
uh for police reforms or for things to happen but we need to act here and now and uh at all levels
and for this uh just maybe wrapping up on some of the um things i mentioned before we need also to
re combine the de-colonizing and the de-carbonizing agendas and um also really build
on a plurality of voices and actions that also they're based on really values of care longevity
and community values and also that these solutions are very much rooted in places but also that we
learn from tradition in order to inform innovation and that we can build more uh new and compelling
compelling narratives around fashion the fashion system brilliant thank you and alice can i ask
you to go next absolutely i would just yeah just um i think that it's a really exciting
point that there is so much interdependency on the success of building new systems and having
a new and restorative approach to fashion and that from as a designer if if you're a designer
um like that's a really exciting space to be in that that there is room and space and a time to
um have a different approach from the norm because they don't think that many of these i think many
of these solutions don't fit into the model that we've already got and so it's a really um sort of
like thrilling place to be that it's sort of like landscape unknown and so much to learn from other
people different industries like you might not think applied to yours because you're used to
you know having materials arrive at your studio not knowing what came before and so i think it's
it's a really um sort of exciting place to um be overwhelmed with questions
good questions thanks alice um lillian do you want to go next
yeah i would like to have us think hard about how different fashion communities will be impacted by
the move towards sustainable and regenerative and by that i mean communities across the value chain
um you know fashion employs over 75 million people worldwide and um if we all i think
we all do need to switch to recycled fabrics or regenerative fabrics but what then happens with um
you know the farmers that were growing cotton or um the people that are manufacturing clothing
if we're all switching to more locally based or obviously consuming less which we do need to do
so um yeah i think thinking about that just transition um and and having some real options and
real solutions for these communities um is going to be really key because that's also going to help
us get government support in terms of new policies and new systems um you know making sure that there
are better options for those communities and that we're kind of not just leaving and letting them
figure it out on their own um so yeah i think that just transition is gonna be key to think about
thank you um and finally justine please um i think i began by saying that we need to evolve from
being a consumer species to a restorer a species and for me this involves changing our mindset from
asking what can i take to what can i give um so i would suggest people support um ground up
cooperatives like fibre shed who are implementing tangible systems of um verifying um production
from now on you they have a climate beneficial verification which which holds produces to very
high standards of accounts so you know it's maybe contributing to to ground up cooperatives that are
already implementing some um tangible systems for regenerating textiles and fashion great thank you
so much and i think yeah in all those remarks that the real importance of really really holding the
hole in in mind when we're working so that means um working locally but also really thinking about
that the ramifications that has globally and ensuring that we're working together to think
about those changes um so thank you so much to all of you um and if you'd like to find more out
more about regenerative design or any of the work that's been undertaken by our great panel today
then check out the links in the youtube chat and across the rsa social media and but finally and
of course most importantly just a huge thanks to our great panel so thank you to justine francesco
alice and lillian and thank you all for watching and i will see you again soon thank you bye