EFWA Upcycling Challenge ready set to go

Reusing and repurposing textiles that already exist is a practical and regenerative way to reduce our material footprint on the world and Eco Fashion Week Australia is showcasing upcycling designers in the 2024 EFWA Upcycling Challenge to share creative possibilities.

EFWA Upcycling Challenge coordinator Jane Milburn OAM said 12 designers will feature in the EFWA Upcycling Challenge Runway Collection at Perth Western Australia on November 17.  

Designers chose a ‘hero’ textile that is made from dormant natural fibres and built on that textile to create a new unique garment with meaning and story fit for A Closet of the Anthropocene.

The ‘hero’ textile might be a damaged treasure discovered in a thrift shop, a family heirloom, a favourite outdated garment or something painted in art school. This textile can be repurposed along with other natural materials of choice into a storyful creation with the hero at heart.

“We are aiming to tell the story of how designers can transform the energy embodied in a treasured but languishing piece of material into a contemporary form that speaks to our need for sustainable, meaningful and comfortable everyday wear in the post-COVID era,’’ Jane said.

“By reusing existing natural resources and creating garments that have attachment value, the Upcycled Collection will be fit-for-purpose in A Closet of the Anthropocene (the current geological age shaped by human impacts) as fashion undergoes a biorennaisance.”

Eco Fashion Week Australia will run for the month of November 2024 in and around Perth Western Australia and will feature more than 40 artists and designers exploring subjects and themes related to climate change. Learn more about Eco Fashion Week Australia here.

If you have questions about the Upcycling Challenge, please email Jane Milburn on jane@textilebeat.com Jane has been upcycling her clothing since 2013 as a way to spark action in response to fashion excess and textile waste. She is the founder of Textile Beat, author of Slow Clothing: finding meaning in what we wear and in 2022 was awarded an Order of Australia Medal for service to fashion sustainability.  

Stitching skills and agency are antidotes to fast fashion

Developing stitching skills and regenerating our own agency in the wardrobe are antidotes to fast fashion, according to Churchill Fellow Jane Milburn who spent two months in 2022 researching upcycling actions that help reduce textile waste and enhance wellbeing.

Slow fashion practitioners Jane met include Bea Lorimer in NZ, Amy du Fault and Cal Patch in the USA.

Jane’s multidisciplinary project is at the intersection of culture, creativity, science, health and wellbeing in the way we dress. It aims to inspire social change and contribute to climate action and sustainable living across communities by shifting the culture of fast fashion consumption towards slow clothing philosophy and practice.

It highlights citizens, educators, designers, influencers and practitioners who are independent from fast fashion because they have developed their own style, regenerated their own agency and empowered themselves through fit-for-purpose wardrobe solutions that offer diverse entry points.

Jane’s fellowship is about disrupting the fashion system through the power of consumer behaviour and choices because there is no better time for the citizenry to be activated and engaged through everyday practices. It is about taking charge of our clothes, divesting ourselves from dependency on destructive systems by becoming actively engaged in and caring for what we wear rather than passively choosing from the latest offerings. It is grounded in the practices, choices and actions that reduce our material footprint: think, natural, quality, local, few, care, make, revive, adapt and salvage as outlined in The Slow Clothing Manifesto.

It is about regenerating our own agency and being empowered through skills, knowledge and desire to assemble a wardrobe of garments that we want to wear and keep in service for as long as possible. Agency is attained through simple skills to undertake acts of styling, mending, co-designing, and upcycling to appreciate and value the natural resources that go into clothes and manipulating them to fit our needs. Being more engaged with our clothes is a driver for systemic change as well as bringing with it financial, environmental, empowerment and wellbeing benefits. At its simplest, it is being resourceful and using commonsense; neither expensive nor particularly difficult.

There has been a global awakening about the environmental and social issues around what we wear. You can watch documentaries, read books, magazine and media stories carrying the message of deleterious impacts of excessive production and consumption.

“Even during my Fellowship, New Scientist magazine’s cover story asked the question Can Fashion Ever Be Green? (June 4, 2022) and its editorial said ‘Make do and mend: The fashion world must change its environmentally destructive ways’. It concluded with this comment: Here’s to a make-do-and-mend mindset becoming mainstream – and even fashionable.’’

“These actions are the essence of my Churchill Fellowship which investigates wearers being hands-on and taking charge of their wardrobe to reduce waste and enhance wellbeing. Across the world, I found many individuals, academics, social enterprise and small business change agents envisaging and implementing small and slow solutions that can help people solve problems in their wardrobes,” Jane said.

In the United Kingdom, Jane met with Professor Kate Fletcher, co-author of Earth Logic: fashion action research plan which calls for a profound rethink of fashion in the face of the climate crisis. Her fellowship fits with the Earth Logic model under the section of learning new knowledge, skills and mindsets for fashion, and pertains to how we ‘acquire, care for and mend clothing, how to share clothing, how to want the clothes we already have’.

In the United Kingdom, the United States of America, and New Zealand, Jane found many people learning and sharing skills for empowerment to create change and enhance health and wellbeing:

  • EMPOWERMENT: Designer Cal Patch teaches people how to use their own body shape and aesthetic to make clothes to suit themselves. Learning from Cal enabled Sonya Philip to sew her way out of a clothing drought and author a how-to book The Act of Sewing.
  • SKILLS: Teacher Ros Studd responded to the lack of mending skills traditionally learned through schools or families with a free learning platform, while groups such as Sewing Café Lancaster gather and engage their community by sharing sewing skills.
  • HEALTH and WELLBEING: Entrepreneur Geraldine Tew observed the lack of making causing un-wellness and created an upcycling workshop program engaging designers such as Bea Lorimer to share skills and experiences that can inspire more upcycling at home.

These actions, and this report, form part of what Earth Logic describes as an activist knowledge ecology, a platform for the parallel generation of knowledge, action, empowerment and change.

A summary of ways this Churchill Fellowship found people are undertaking actions that help in REDUCING TEXTILE WASTE include:

  1. restyling and wearing what is already in the wardrobe
  2. thrifting, mending and dyeing existing clothes
  3. redesigning, co-designing using existing clothing and materials
  4. making their own clothes, some hand-stitching to further slow the process
  5. liberating and sharing dormant and waste textile resources within local supply chains
  6. skill and knowledge sharing within communities
  7. supporting local, regenerative natural fibre and design systems

A summary of ways people are ENHANCING WELLBEING from hands-on actions include:

  1. a sense of empowerment and agency over what they wear
  2. a sense of playfulness, joy and self-expression in having interesting clothes
  3. feelings of calm, relaxation, self-soothing, distraction, resilience and meditation
  4. comfort from slowing down, thinking through making, and being resourceful
  5. a felt sense of meaning and mindful connection to self, clothes and community
  6. a sense of contributing to broader solutions for fashion waste
  7. feelings of interconnection to nature and the natural world

“My report is available on the Churchill Trust website and includes ways that all citizens with a can-do, will-do, mindset can regenerate their agency when they allocate leisure time to resourceful creativity rather than shopping for quick fixes,” Jane said.

While the ‘making do’ in earlier times was born from lack of resources and most people did it,  nowadays ‘making do’ is more likely to be a response to excess and, ironically, it may be the privileged who are currently most engaged. Modern ‘making do’ is more about choices and actions to be resourceful and sustainable, more likely about saving the planet than specifically needing to save money.

“The people I met have become more self-reliant in various ways by developing skills and insights to make themselves independent of the fashion supply chain. They are reclaiming control of their wardrobe by being more hands-on in creatively making, mending, redesigning or restyling clothes already around them to reduce waste and enhance wellbeing. They are empowered through what they wear and uninterested in slavishly following trends that provide fleeting satisfaction at best.

“Through this Fellowship, I tapped into the citizenry swimming against the all-consuming tide. They are engaging in hands-on processes that enable a consumption pause, taking time for self-reflection and working with what is at hand before making considered decisions in any new purchases.

“These citizens are showing that culture change is possible when we inform ourselves and learn skills of independence and resourcefulness, and invest time in the process. “

RECOMMENDATIONS from Jane’s Fellowship are:

  1. More education around hand-sewing skills for mending, tinkering and mindfulness
  2. More opportunities to engage and share clothing resources, skills and creativity
  3. Wellbeing services based around regenerating agency in the wardrobe
  4. Redesign services that enable engagement and co-design
  5. More engagement through opportunities to practice permaculture and citizen science
  6. More awareness-raising of unsustainable consumer culture and greenwashing
  7. Localisation to promote and enable place-based fibre systems and culture

This Fellowship is a step towards changing the consumer culture of dependence on global fast fashion supply chains to one of independent flourishing of local creativity, engagement and connection through what we choose to wear.

It brings focus to the concept of dressing for health and wellbeing rather than status and looks, and outlines how engaged citizens can gain wellbeing benefits by regenerating their own agency using what is around them and, in so doing, contribute to reducing the textile waste burden.

“We can’t change the world, but what we can do is change the way we live through our everyday practices. Those small decisions and choices for living simply are within our means, they are the steps to leading a modest yet fulfilling life in harmony with the natural world.”

Story first published in QCWA’s Ruth Magazine

slow clothing stories in Ruth Magazine Summer 2022 23

On the Textile Beat enews December 2022

Being able to travel and complete my Churchill Fellowship study tour about regenerating our agency in the wardrobe was a highlight for 2022 and I’ve selected a few people I met to showcase in this enews. It was difficult to choose from the many wonderful people I had the opportunity to meet across two months spent in New Zealand, the United States and the United Kingdom investigating ways that hands-on upcycling can help reduce textile waste and enhance wellbeing. I found that always having interesting clothes to wear, enjoying self-care while working with your hands, and being part of the solution to fast fashion are just some of the reasons people are choosing to become more hands-on with their clothes. Other wonderful projects I was involved with during 2022 include the Painted River Project in Moree, New South Wales, and WornOUT at the Old Museum of Brisbane, and I’ve shared some links in this enews, which you can subscribe to via the right-hand side of the textilebeat.com home page. Wishing you all the best for the festive season and positivity for 2023.

https://mailchi.mp/3bc3b61ba0a6/slow-clothing-regenerating-agency-and-natural-fibres?e=e9c6db392c

Churchill Fellow finds stitching skills and agency are antidotes to fast fashion

Developing stitching skills and regenerating our own agency in the wardrobe are antidotes to fast fashion, according to Churchill Fellow Jane Milburn who spent two months researching upcycling actions that help reduce textile waste and enhance wellbeing.

Jane’s multidisciplinary project is at the intersection of culture, creativity, science, health and wellbeing in the way we dress. It aims to inspire social change and contribute to climate action and sustainable living across communities by shifting the culture of fast fashion consumption towards slow clothing philosophy and practice.

It highlights citizens, educators, designers, influencers and practitioners who are independent from fast fashion because they have developed their own style, regenerated their own agency and empowered themselves through fit-for-purpose wardrobe solutions that offer diverse entry points.

One of 55 people Jane met on her Churchill Fellowship was Professor Kate Fletcher, co-author of Earth Logic.

This fellowship is about disrupting the fashion system through the power of consumer behaviour and choices because there is no better time for the citizenry to be activated and engaged through everyday practices. It is about taking charge of our clothes, divesting ourselves from dependency on destructive systems by becoming actively engaged in and caring for what we wear rather than passively choosing from the latest offerings. It is grounded in the practices, choices and actions that reduce our material footprint: think, natural, quality, local, few, care, make, revive, adapt and salvage as outlined in The Slow Clothing Manifesto.

It is about regenerating our own agency and being empowered through skills, knowledge and desire to assemble a wardrobe of garments that we want to wear and keep in service for as long as possible. Agency is attained through simple skills to undertake acts of styling, mending, co-designing, and upcycling to appreciate and value the natural resources that go into clothes and manipulating them to fit our needs. Being more engaged with our clothes is a driver for systemic change as well as bringing with it financial, environmental, empowerment and wellbeing benefits. At its simplest, it is being resourceful and using commonsense; neither expensive nor particularly difficult.

“Across the world, I found many individuals, academics, social enterprise and small business change agents envisaging and implementing small and slow solutions that can help people solve problems in their wardrobes,” Jane said.

A summary of ways people are undertaking actions that help in REDUCING TEXTILE WASTE include:

  1. restyling and wearing what is already in the wardrobe
  2. thrifting, mending and dyeing existing clothes
  3. redesigning, co-designing using existing clothing and materials
  4. making their own clothes, some hand-stitching to further slow the process
  5. liberating and sharing dormant and waste textile resources within local supply chains
  6. skill and knowledge sharing within communities
  7. supporting local, regenerative natural fibre and design systems

A summary of ways people are ENHANCING WELLBEING from hands-on actions include:

  1. a sense of empowerment and agency over what they wear
  2. a sense of playfulness, joy and self-expression in having interesting clothes
  3. feelings of calm, relaxation, self-soothing, distraction, resilience and meditation
  4. comfort from slowing down, thinking through making, and being resourceful
  5. a felt sense of meaning and mindful connection to self, clothes and community
  6. a sense of contributing to broader solutions for fashion waste
  7. feelings of interconnection to nature and the natural world

This report includes ways that all citizens with a can-do, will-do, mindset can regenerate their agency when they allocate leisure time to resourceful creativity rather than shopping for quick fixes.

While the ‘making do’ in earlier times was born from lack of resources and most people did it,  nowadays ‘making do’ is more likely to be a response to excess and, ironically, it may be the privileged who are currently most engaged. Modern ‘making do’ is more about choices and actions to be resourceful and sustainable, more likely about saving the planet than specifically needing to save money.

“The people I met have become more self-reliant in various ways by developing skills and insights to make themselves independent of the fashion supply chain. They are reclaiming control of their wardrobe by being more hands-on in creatively making, mending, redesigning or restyling clothes already around them to reduce waste and enhance wellbeing. They are empowered through what they wear and uninterested in slavishly following trends that provide fleeting satisfaction at best.

“Through this Fellowship, I tapped into the citizenry swimming against the all-consuming tide. They are engaging in hands-on processes that enable a consumption pause, taking time for self-reflection and working with what is at hand before making considered decisions in any new purchases.

“These citizens are showing that culture change is possible when we inform ourselves and learn skills of independence and resourcefulness, and invest time in the process. “

RECOMMENDATIONS from Jane’s Fellowship are:

  1. More education around hand-sewing skills for mending, tinkering and mindfulness
  2. More opportunities to engage and share clothing resources, skills and creativity
  3. Wellbeing services based around regenerating agency in the wardrobe
  4. Redesign services that enable engagement and co-design
  5. More engagement through opportunities to practice permaculture and citizen science
  6. More awareness-raising of unsustainable consumer culture and greenwashing
  7. Localisation to promote and enable place-based fibre systems and culture

This Fellowship is a step towards changing the consumer culture of dependence on global fast fashion supply chains to one of independent flourishing of local creativity, engagement and connection through what we choose to wear.

It brings focus to the concept of dressing for health and wellbeing rather than status and looks, and outlines how engaged citizens can gain wellbeing benefits by regenerating their own agency using what is around them and, in so doing, contribute to reducing the textile waste burden.

“We can’t change the world, but what we can do is change the way we live through our everyday practices. Those small decisions and choices for living simply are within our means, they are the steps to leading a modest yet fulfilling life in harmony with the natural world.”

Read the summary Jane Milburn Churchill Fellowship Project Summary September 2022 online

Read the full report Jane Milburn Churchill Fellowship Report 28 September 2022 online

Download Jane Milburn’s full report from the Churchill Trust website here.

Permaculture in your Wardrobe

For a decade I’ve been advocating for Slow Clothing philosophy as a response to fast fashion excess. Doing a Permaculture Design Course in 2020 and a Permaculture Teaching Course in 2021 led me to appeciate how Slow Clothing aligns with the permaculture ethics of people care, earth care and fair share and the 12 permaculture design principles can be applied to our wardrobe. Below is how my latest thinking on integrating Permaculture in your Wardrobe. I acknowledge input and inspo from David Holmgren permaculture principles and Grow Do It on the principles, and Professor Suzi Vaughan for helping with the thought process.

A permaculture framework for dressing with health and wellbeing, a Jane Milburn work in progress

Jane Milburn applies the 12 permaculture design principles to a regenerative wardrobe:

Observe and interact – stop look and listen

Start here. Take stock of what you need for your body and stage of life. Notice quality and what feels right. Think about colours and styles that suit you. Consider who grows the fibres and who makes the clothes.

Catch and store energy – save some for later

Clothes have embedded energy; wear until they wear out. Pass clothes through generations, as holders of meaning and memories. Pack some away and refresh your wardrobe depending on mood and season.

Obtain a yield – earn a harvest

Cultivate your wardrobe like a garden, build it over years. You are responsible: curate it, care for it, trim it back and bring in new material when needed. Natural fibres improve with age, don’t weed out prematurely.

Apply self-regulation and accept feedback – check yourself

Press pause on consumption and reduce what you own. Have fewer clothes of better quality. Use gardening instead of shopping as a self-soothing tool. Make considered purchases, don’t buy on impulse or specials.

Use and value renewable resources and services – go self-powered

Choose natural fibres from carbon-fixing plants and animals, rather than synthetics derived from fossil fuels. Dry and refresh clothes in the sunshine. Learn how different fibres feel and hand-wash when needed.

Produce no waste – no such thing as waste

Natural-fibre clothes have an after-life: repurpose them into rugs and rags, before composting to release organic matter, carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen. Use zero-waste patterns, reuse buttons and zips.

Design from patterns to details – be a designer

Develop your own style, don’t follow fashion. Tinker your clothes, to make them work for you.  Don’t fight nature, work with your current size and shape. Experiment with what you have to create fresh combinations.

Integrate rather than segregate – work together

Have a circular wardrobe, pass clothes on as needs change. Plan clothing swap parties and styling sessions. Look back through history and learn from others. Find a community to share new skills and create together.

Use small and slow solutions – keep it simple

Make clothes to suit yourself, engage a dressmaker, or have clothes made to order. Learn to spin and weave, mend and upcycle. Have fewer clothes and wear them for longer. Store carefully and preserve from pests.

Use and value diversity – mix it up

Consider other ways of sourcing clothes, like renting and swapping. Mix and match, and pattern clash. Be individual and independent, aka indie style. Understand different fibre attributes and fabric weights.

Use edges and value the marginal – think outside the box

See opportunity in dormant clothing and textiles; there are no rules. When op shopping, visit all sections to find the treasure.  Think of your wardrobe as a south-facing garden, be resourceful to make it work all year.

Creatively use and respond to change – get creative

Carry your clothes through life: adapt them when your body, mood, and needs change. Think of your clothes as ingredients for reuse: chop and change, lengthen or shorten, stitch and patch, or over-dye for fresh life.

Lifelong benefits of creative childhood

Erin Gafill grew up at remote Big Sur California and had a creative childhood that connected to imagination and materials which has carried her through life. It is worth noting upfront that her uncle is colourful knit legend Kaffe Fassett.  I chatted with Erin online from Monterey California as part of my Churchill  Fellowship investigating ways that being hands-on with clothes can help reduce textile waste and enhance wellbeing.    

“As a child, everything we played with was made from cast offs, that is what our community did. There was the economic aspect and the connection to imagination and materials – that is why we did it.

Erin caption: Me with my sweater with my uncle Kaffe Fassett, textile designer. The sweater is inspired by one of his patterns and made from scrap yarn from my mother’s stash

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Making for wellbeing interviews in New Zealand

Making is important for wellbeing and mending brings joy and meditative calming. These are the messages from people I’ve met while travelling to Auckland, New Zealand, as part of my eight-week Churchill Fellowship research. I’ve been posting regularly on Instagram @textilebeat on the topic of how being hands-on with our clothes can help reduce textile waste and enhance wellbeing. I’ve recorded conversations which are posted on youtube and shared below.

Educator and designer Karishma Kelsey

Amongst her many talents, Karishma Kelsey @karishmadesign teaches the politics of style including her lifelong belief that anything is everything, everything is anything. As part of my Churchill Fellowship meetings, we talked about her @miraculous_me_movt style activism and philosophy: your body is your canvass; creativity is your birthright; the superpowers of colour energies and following your intuition. Karishma believes in the joy and meditative qualities of mending and creating.

Botanical dyer Melissa Pentecost-Spargo Continue Reading →

Churchill fellow investigates ways to reduce our material footprint

Hot on the heels of Earth Day (April 22) and Fashion Revolution Week (April 18-24), Churchill fellow Jane Milburn departed on April 28 to undertake fellowship study investigating ways that being more aware and hands-on with clothes can help reduce our material footprint.

Clothing accounts for up to 10 percent of our environmental footprint and everyday practices that extend the lifespan of clothes – caring, repairing, rewearing, restyling, upcycling – can reduce its ecological impact and create independence from fast-fashion cycles.

Since 2012, Jane has advocated for living simply through sustainable practices with a particular focus on how we choose, care for and dispose of clothing. Jane won a Churchill Fellowship in 2019 to “investigate ways that hands-on upcycling can help reduce textile waste and enhance wellbeing” but her 2020 trip was postponed due to the pandemic. This week Jane begins eight weeks’ travel in New Zealand, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Japan to meet with slow fashion practitioners, academics and sustainability leaders.

Jane Milburn interviewed by ABC Mornings Presenter Rebecca Levingston before leaving on her fellowship.

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Good Earth Cotton ticks all the boxes

Carbon positive, water efficient and growing within an ethical and traceable supply chain are the signatures of Good Earth Cotton pioneered by innovative growers David and Danielle Statham who run Sundown Pastoral Company in New South Wales and Queensland.

Their Keytah farm at Moree, NSW, hosted the Painted River Project and Bank Art Museum Moree in March 2022 to facilitate conversations and creativity around the use of water and natural resources in the sustainable production of food and fibre as the essence of life.

There are 1600 cotton farms operating across Australia in what is a successful, high-pressure industry on farms that are amongst the biggest in the world. Collectively these farmers apply technology including high-yielding seed that has been genetically modified using a naturally-occurring protein to maximize production while using integrated pest management to reduce chemical usage by 97 percent (ie once they sprayed up to 16 times to control insects, now only 1 or 2). Technology also has driven water-use efficiency measures that grow more cotton with less water. David Statham said these changes have occurred alongside increasing community awareness of the need to conserve natural resources and protect ecosystems. Seventy percent of water flows are allocated to environmental flows to protect natural habitats, river systems and wetlands which feed the Murray Darling River System.

Keytah farm manager talking cotton with Painted River Project artists – Moree 2022  Photo by Sally Tsoutas

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Dress with a good story to tell

This Art of Planetary Health dress has a good story to tell about how it came to be.

It was created in the field during the 2022 Painted River Project at Moree, run by the Bank Art Museum Moree and led by Dr Leo Robba from Western Sydney University, during a gathering of people at the intersection of ecology, farming, art and health.

Jane Milburn imprints Good Earth Cotton with good earth. Photo by Lauren Marer

It is handmade from carbon-positive, sustainable, traceable, high-quality Good Earth Cotton grown at Keytah farm from seed modified to resist insect attack and under irrigation to enable resource-use efficiencies.

Although the cotton used in this dress had travelled offshore to be spun and turned into fabric, I imprinted it with the good earth on which it was grown before adding marks and fabric paint.

Adding colour and linear design elements to the fabric

Cutting out the dress on the banks of the Mehi River in Moree as part of the making process

The fabric was then cut and stitched it into a dress on the banks of the Mehi River in between conversations about cotton and slow fashion. There is nothing like putting our own energy into making clothes to truly appreciate the time, skills and resources that go into those we buy.

This project was the subject of a feature story in The Guardian by Lauren Marer

Pinning the seams on the river bed for final stitching of side seams. Photo by Sally Tsoutas