As part of the SIFO presence at the recent Friluftsliv conference, Kate Fletcher, ran a “Photo Booth” to record the thoughts (in a thought bubble!) of conference delegates about clothing and nature. Delegates responses ranged from desirable practical qualities of clothes for use outdoors, to the feelings that clothes imbue; and from aspiration about the potential length of life and compostability of clothes, to questions about whether clothes are needed at all when living en plein air!
A huge thank you to all those who took part and to the conference organisers for hosting us.
Abstract: Durability is widely recognized as a key feature of materially resource-ful, lower-carbon clothing lives. Yet most of what is known about long-lasting garments is rooted in Euro-American ways of thinking, andreproduces its structures, priorities, values and resulting actions. Thispaper brings a decolonial concern to understandings of clothing durabil-ity to enlarge the conceptual boundaries around it, including those thatbreak apart dominant ideas and approaches to clothing durability inorder to show difference. It presents both the “workings” and the“findings” of a small research project, ‘Decentering Durability’, examin-ing both how research is conducted as well as what is uncovered at the intersection of decolonizing and resource-efficient, decarbonizing agen-das for fashion.
Just published in Fashion Theory, an article exploring durability through a decolonial lens. The research it builds on was conducted as part of the LASTING project, led by our very own Kirsi Laitala and funded by the Research Council of Norway.
The article, written by Kate Fletcher and Anna Fitzpatrick, is open access. Please share widely. Grateful thanks to all those who participated in the research. Link to article here
From the abstract: Durability is widely recognized as a key feature of materially resourceful, lower-carbon clothing lives. Yet most of what is known about long-lasting garments is rooted in Euro-American ways of thinking, and reproduces its structures, priorities, values and resulting actions. This paper brings a decolonial concern to understandings of clothing durability to enlarge the conceptual boundaries around it, including those that break apart dominant ideas and approaches to clothing durability in order to show difference. It presents both the “workings” and the “findings” of a small research project, ‘Decentering Durability’, examining both how research is conducted as well as what is uncovered at the intersection of decolonizing and resource-efficient, decarbonizing agendas for fashion.
Network for heritage and innovation for the future of WOOL
The hiWOOL project – Network for heritage and innovation for the future of WOOL– is an initiative of the “Save the Portuguese Wool” Association, created in 2015 with the aims of promoting the sustainability of the wool cycle and safeguarding of the culture and heritage traditions in Portugal.
Funded by the Bilateral Relations Fund, hiWOOL aims to share knowledge between Portugal and Norway concerning the sustainability of the wool cycle and the exploitation of wool products for small producers of autochthonous sheep breeds, based on the study of similarities and differences between the two countries.
On 12th may, 2021, the project started with the first meeting gathering all partners. In addition to a brief presentation of the activities to be developed, made by the proposing team, a discussion on the parameters that should be selected for the characterization of wool fibers was conducted.
The start of the project was also celebrated with the Shearing Day, at Quinta da Fonte Santa, in Caneças-Portugal, on which 150 sheep of the Bordaleira Serra da Estrela breed, belonging to shepherd Virgílio Ricardo were shorn.
During this initiative, field work will be carried out in both countries, including workshops on the development of wool products and investigation on the wool tradition in museums and archives. The main achievements and results will be presented on the partners’ web pages and social networks, during the project timeline, and a final seminar, in November 2022, will be prepared for the dissemination of results.
The hiWOOL project has the collaboration of the Selbu Spinneri AS (Norway) and Multilãs, Unipessoal, Lda (Portugal) companies, the research centers SIFO, OsloMet from the Oslo Metropolitan University and the D_TEX Lab – Textile Development Laboratory of the Architecture school from the Lisbon University and the local support of the Wool Museum in Covilhã and the Folk Museum in Oslo.
Both teams are now analyzing and characterizing the national wools, and results from that work will be shared on the partners web pages and social networks.
