In the late 1990s I experienced a crisis when I realised that my passion for fashion was not compatible with my growing awareness of the effects on people and the planet that fashion has. This led me to do first a master in Design Futures and then a PhD at Goldsmiths, University of London. Lucky People Forecast is the proposal to reposition fashion designers, as well as other fashion stakeholders, as agentic and powerful futures makers who can through their unique skills, interests and networks make a fashion system that contributes to social justice and a healthy planet. I worked in co-creation with many fashion stakeholders – from big and small companies, media, trade organisations, fashion education as well as citizens in Sweden and the UK to develop the Lucky People Forecast approach. It is a methodology for working with systemic change through a combination of design, futures studies and systems thinking.
In the project I articulated a kind of manifesto which has guided my work since:
– Forecasting – telling stories about the future – is a super powerful tool. Stories about our world – whether encapsulated in a garment, a campaign or a service, are much likelier to shape the future and become the future, than stories that have not been told or that no-one hears.
– Designers are ‘lucky’ in the sense that we can shape the future through the things, systems, stories that we design. Because of the power of the forecast, and because the stories that design tells can reach wide and far, designers also have a big responsibility to make stories that are good for the planet, all species and people, now and in the future.
– By inviting different people and diverse perspectives – also those of other species and other time frames – into co-creation, we can create stories that don’t just reproduce a privileged past and present.
– Bringing together many ways of knowing and expression, and combining art and science, makes co-creation and forecasting accessible, agentic (feeling that you can do something) and fun for many people.
Fashion stakeholders defining fashion, Stockholm and London.
Photo Mathilda Tham, 2006.
Lucky People Forecast – a systemic futures perspective on fashion and sustainability, my PhD project from Goldsmiths, University of London, was completed in 2008. You can download the whole thing here.