I recently had the opportunity to interview Lili, who is in Year 10 at St Catherine’s School in Twickenham, about her project on fashion sustainability. Lili is concerned about the large amount of waste caused by the fashion industry, and the damaging effects of the manufacturing process.
Lili decided to focus on what can be done with all the leftover jeans in the world. At the moment, denim jeans have a huge impact on the environment. The denim industry is a heavy user of oil and fossil fuels. In addition, for the creation of one average pair of jeans, 7,000 litres of water is used.
The purpose of Lili’s project was to take several different pairs of jeans and show how they can be reused to create new outfits and clothing items. The design that Lili settled on was inspired by designs currently in fashion and publicised all over social media apps such as Depop and Pinterest. She took a selection of photos from these apps and used them as inspiration to design her dress. Whilst carrying out her research Lili made sure that her design was not just stylish, but was also ethical. She researched the history of jeans from when they were first invented in 1873 by Levi Strauss, and how their use in fashion has evolved, to give her design context.
To create the dress Lili’s mum refused to allow her to use any of her old, expensive jeans so she had to resort to using her father’s, which then led to her using seven or eight different pairs of jeans to create the panels for the dress. Lili also created a bag with the leftover denim jeans, proving how jeans can be recycled effectively, without any waste.
Lili explained to me how she is very keen in the future to go into the fashion industry. “I want to make sure that if I were to work in the industry I would be able to minimise the impact to the environment.”
Lili and I discussed that if companies such as Gap, Urban Outfitters and Zara, who all value the use of denim, all invested into using leftover denim to create and design new products, the industry might be able to become more sustainable and ethical. The savings made by using leftover denim to create new products could even be used to improve working conditions and salaries for workers in the manufacturing industry.
I found it very interesting talking to Lili about her project and looking at the dress she had made. I completely agree with Lili that it is so important for the fashion industry to minimise its impact on the environment, as Lili says ‘the world would become a better place if people recycled their denim clothing’.
