Join us for a Slow Fashion Season

Are you up for a Slow Fashion Season? To make conscious wardrobe choices for three months from June 21 to September 21 this year? It might mean buying nothing for three months; or swapping, upcycling or sewing your stash; buying second-hand and vintage; or supporting sustainable, local, small fashion labels if you find you really need something new.

Slow Fashion Season, a global challenge out of The Netherlands, which aims to have 25,000 people participate and together save the equivalent of up to 750 million litres of water and 2.5 million kgs of CO2 emissions through positive choices. We’d love you to sign up and be part of this collective action.

I personally committed to making conscious choices in my wardrobe forever after noticing fashion excess and setting up Textile Beat in 2013 to have conversations about textile waste. My personal actions for the next three months will be upcycling what I already own.

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Sustainable fashion actions

Small individual actions can, and do, create big changes. About 10 percent of our carbon footprint is embedded in the clothes we wear therefore our choices matter. Since 2013, Jane Milburn has been raising awareness about ways to reduce our material footprint through slow clothing actions: think, choose natural, quality, local, have few, care for what you have, make your own, revive, upcycle and salvage. In this news report, ABC journalist Lucy MacDonald outlined three ways for dress sustainably: buy sustainable fibres, choose pre-loved, and shop your wardrobe. She chatted with Jane about upcycling and reskilling so we can get more life out of what we aready own.

Bring on 2020

On the Textile Beat enews December 2019 is in your inbox now if you’re subscribed, or you can read here or register on the right hand side of this website.

There’s been so much change in the past decade, it is exciting to think about what the next decade might bring. This time 10 years ago, I was on a journey of self-awareness with the Australian Rural Leadership Program. A pivotal decision to stop drinking alcohol (after having early stage breast cancer) enabled me to focus energy in a creative and purposeful way. Through Textile Beat, my background, interests, skills, experience and knowledge have come together to influence change and create awareness of more sustainable ways of dressing (Here’s one of my early Stitch in Time columns). Since 2013, I’ve had nearly 600 engagements around Australia spreading ideas for reducing our material footprint and have seen so much change in that time. I’ve been awarded a Churchill Fellowship based on that work which enables me to travel to Japan, the United States, the United Kingdom and Europe next year to investigate ways that upcycling/mending can help reduce our textile waste and enhance wellbeing. Wishing you and me well for our next decade of life.

Sewing a fresh seam 

By Jane Milburn *

Sowing or sewing? If you are a gardener or a sewist, you reap what you sow or sew. While there are many gardeners among us growing some food, there are fewer sewists making their own clothes.

In the same way many are sowing seeds to yield nutritious home-grown, local, natural food, it is time to invest energy in sewing local natural clothes.

With global supply chains pumping out 80 billion garments each year, most people have lost sight of where and how things are made, and what from. Slavery combined with increasing use of synthetic/plastic fibres, has led many to buy two to four times what we used to, resulting in waste and pollution, and a loss of skills and knowledge about clothes.

Over the past two decades, globalisation and production efficiencies have meant it is cheaper to buy clothes than make them. We’ve got used to affordable, ever-changing styles. Shopping is addictive and we’re encouraged to buy quantity over quality for the good of the economy. It is only when we stop and think about why clothes are so cheap that we come to understand they are not properly costed, that exploitation of people and resources exists in the system.

Each of us influences the future of the fashion industry through our buying choices. Surely the beginning of a new decade is a great time to turn over a new leaf. Let’s think about fewer clothes of better quality that we wear for longer.

Author Jane Milburn with Julian Roberts from Royal College of Art London at the Fabric subtraction-cutting workshop held at the University of the Sunshine Coast.

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Reuse to reduce textile waste

WornOut is an annual showcase of creativity and resourcefulness organised by Reverse Garbage Queensland to showcase designers working to reduce textile waste, with the 2019 theme being The Future of Waste.

As ambassador, Jane Milburn said that future really must be for us to waste nothing – and invest creative effort to keep materials endlessly circulating. Jane and ABC Brisbane’s Rebecca Levingston co-hosted this year’s event.

Rebecca Levingston and Jane Milburn co-hosts of WornOut 2019

‘There has never been a more important time to change our thinking and actions around reuse – to fully value and appreciate our planet’s precious resources,’ Jane said.

WornOut  is now in its third year and taps into the global awakening about social and ecological impacts of the fashion industry, which contributes up to 10 percent of humanity’s carbon emissions. It is curated by Elizabeth Kingston, supported Brisbane City Council and the Queensland Department of Environment and Science, and was held on November 23 at Princess Theatre with showcases of refashion, wearable art and cos play.

Jane said the purpose of the WornOut showcase is to:

  • invest human energy, skills and creativity to transform ‘waste’
  • change attitudes about when – if ever – textile resources are ‘wornout’
  • show thrift and resourcefulness thriving in the local circular economy
  • have fun with what we wear in inclusive and diverse ways

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Investigating slow clothing culture

By Robin McConchie

We live in a throwaway society, with an increasing amount of textiles used in the fashion industry made from synthetic fibres and garments produced using underpaid labour. Jane Milburn has a passion for natural fibres and believes behaviour change is needed towards dressing more responsibly, wearing clothes for longer and limiting the amount of textile waste thrown into landfill each year.

Using her campaigning and making skills, Jane created Textile Beat in 2013 and developed a 10-point Slow Clothing Manifesto of ways to reduce our material footprint. During the past six years, Jane has advocated for change across Australia through more than 560 engagements.

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Individual stewardship matters

The question to ask ourselves is where is it going after it leaves me? Being conscious consumers means leaving the planet a better place.

We consume 1.7 planets of natural resources every year and can’t sustain that, Queensland’s chief entrepreneur Leanne Kemp told a recent Game Changers event at State Library of Queensland.

Ray Weekes with Queensland’s chief entrepreneur Leanne Kemp at SLQ Game Changers event

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Creating, not consuming

Waste is now visible in our lives. Throwing away our unwanted stuff is an act of power. We move it to the edge of the kitchen, then to the edge of the curb where it is taken to landfill on the edge of the city or to the ocean on the edge of the land. Recycling and upcycling are only shuffling the problem.

The waste solution lies in relearning skills we have forgotten like reusing, cooking, sewing, composting and creating for ourselves. Making everyday choices for health and wellbeing.

These insights are from a recent Circular Economy Futures meetup where speakers Jacq Driscoll from Biome and Dr Manuela Taboada from QUT’s Institute for Future Environments discussed waste solutions in our crazy convenient throwaway society.

Jacq Driscoll and Dr Manuela Taboada with Yasmin Grigaliunas at Circular Economy Futures Brisbane

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Creating a climate for change

Climate change is everybody’s business.  We have lived experience of it, with extreme weather events now taking a physical, monetary and emotional toll on society. We have a profound obligation to act. If we don’t, future generations would be justified to look back and say ‘what were those people thinking – consuming and amusing themselves without thought for the future’.

We are in a climate emergency. It is not hyperbole. World scientists are ratcheting up their pleas for politicians to act and Mother Nature is speaking loudly with record heat waves (most recently in Europe), bushfires, storms and floods, and coral bleaching.

The frequency of extreme weather events has increased and global economic losses from these events in the past two years is estimated at $653 billion, according to insurance giant Aon. The UN estimates the world could see 1 billion climate migrants as their food and water supplies are impacted. This is not someone else’s problem, it will affect us all.

We know that climate change is real, because we have seen it and felt it. Of the hottest locations on Earth on January 24 this year, 91 were in Australia. Rain dumps in north Queensland led to massive flooding in Townsville and the loss of 600,000 cattle. There were catastrophic fires in central Queensland rainforest.

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Bold steps needed at this time

There are incredible changes happening in this period of time that will be important for the history of the human race, Queensland Government Minister Leeanne Enoch told The Circular Economy: it’s our future forum in Brisbane yesterday.

As Minister for Environment and the Great Barrier Reef, Minister for Science and Minister for the Arts, Ms Enoch said there are certain actions we have to take right now in the way we utilise materials, how we tackle climate change, and use energy and resources in everyday life.

“When I visited Wujal Wujal community in far north Queensland after recent weather events, the elders said there are no stories passed down the generations who have lived there to deal with rapid change in climate,” Ms Enoch said.

“We are a speck in time. There have been 3000 generations of people in this place, which is home to great natural gifts like the Great Barrier Reef and Daintree rainforests. But what is happening to our climate is new.

Minister Leeanne Enoch (top left), Uli Becker (bottom left), at The Circular Economy forum and (bottom right) Textile Beat’s Jane Milburn with Blocktexx co-founder Graham Ross.

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