The aim of the Lifetimes project was to diversify strategies for sustainability in fashion – to match the diversity of why and how people use fashion. The project responded to the limitations of the dominant ‘blanket’ approaches, for example to propose durability of garments even if in reality they may be worn for a very short time, and may not be affordable to many wearers. Such materially focused strategies miss that fashion isn’t primarily worn for material reasons (to protect from the cold, sun, wind) but to express identity and belonging specific to a time and place.
Our research therefore cross-referenced users’ actual experience with acquiring, wearing, caring for and disposing of fashion items with available lifecycle data. Our insights included that it is not the people who are the most interested in fashion who have the most impact on the environment; they are creative and confident and can reconfigure old garments and materials to make new fashion. Instead it is the people who feel they have to follow fashion and lack confidence who effect the environment the most, because their fashion expression is dependent on a fast stream of new items. An outcome of the project was scenarios on a spectrum from slow to fast fashion, designed to generate discussion and inform strategies in the fashion sector. At the slowest end is the coat that passes from one generation to the next, enabled by equally durable materials inside and out, accessible mending services and upskilling. At the fastest end is the one night wonder top made from low quality waste materials and compostable. With this project, we introduced the notion of product-service-systems to fashion, and it was a precursor to attempts to introduce different models of providing fashion, such as leasing and lending.
Mended jeans are at the slower end of a continuum from slow to fast fashion.
Photo Mathilda Tham, 2020.
With this project, we took a wider look at fashion and sustainability and directed our attention to the level of systems. Many of the proposals we developed are still visionary and valuable within an overall scaled down fashion sector. In hindsight, we know that attempts at both product and discrete systems levels have been unsuccessful in delivering both environmental and social improvement because of the exponential growth of the sector: more than doubling since our work in 2004. Therefore, in 2019, we developed the Earth Logic project.
The Lifetimes project (2003–2004) was a collaboration between Kate Fletcher and Mathilda Tham, hosted by Goldsmiths, University of London, and funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.