Back in February, we posted about the launch of the Government’s sustainable clothing action plan during London Fashion Week and how Posh-swaps.com is supporting the action plan by promoting and enabling the reuse and recycling of clothes through swapping, buying and selling second hand clothes.
Shared Talent India, one of London College of Fashion’s Centre for Sustainable Fashion’s (CSF) key projects of 2009 funded by Defra and supported by the Indian Government, was showcased on the Monsoon stand at Estethica at London Fashion Week. The project is one of a series of actions being implemented by the clothing and fashion sector under the Defra-led Sustainable Clothing Action Plan and Roadmap process to improve the environmental and ethical performance of clothing.
Born out of a collaboration between UK and Indian designers and London College of Fashion (LCF), Pearl Academy India and AMFI Amsterdam Fashion Institute students, the project has explored and promoted the design applications of a range of sustainable Indian textiles. Earlier this summer the group took part in a ten day workshop in Delhi to produce concepts to showcase Indian sustainable textiles and share their skills and designers and makers. After being showcased at London Fashion Week the collection will go to Indian Fashion Week in October 2009.
The award winning Shared Talent project model, developed to find transformative solutions through collaboration, has already been successfully applied to communities in Ghana and South Africa. Shared Talent India kicked off early in 2009 with a call out by the CSF for applications from UK-based designers and liaised with Pearl Academy to recruit India-based designers* to take part in the project. The designers along with selected AMFI and LCF students travelled to India to engage in a programme of activity including workshops and active design collaboration to produce concepts to showcase the sustainable textiles.
Accompanying the group were members of the Monsoon team; Head of Design, Kim Elliott commented, “This is an exciting collaboration between fashion students and designers in the UK and India which reflects our heritage and we are proud to be involved with it. The students brief for this project will showcase some quite directional design work demonstrating the fashion potential of sustainable textiles, the outcome of which will be displayed on the Monsoon stand at London Fashion Week in September.”
further information can be found on http://www.defra.gov.uk/news/2009/090918b.htm
