REDESIGNING TOGETHER: RELEARNING ROLES AND THE VALUE OF MATERIALS IN THE OVERPRODUCTION OF FASHION

Digital version: http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:hb:diva-13687 ISBN 978-91-88269-88-1 (printed)

ISBN 978-91-88269-89-8 (pdf)

ISSN 0280-381X, Skrifter från Högskolan i Borås, nr. 86 www.thelifeofadress.com

DOCTORAL THESIS Textile and Fashion

DOCTORAL THESISAmanda CurtisREDESIGNING TOGETHER: RELEARNING ROLES AND THE VALUE OF MATERIALS IN THE OVERPRODUCTION OF FASHION

Amanda Curtis

REDESIGNING TOGETHER:

RELEARNING ROLES AND THE VALUE OF MATERIALS IN THE OVERPRODUCTION OF FASHION

Within the field of Textile Management, Amanda Curtis’s PhD, explores contri- butions to sustainable fashion ideals by revaluating roles and materials through the redesign of second-hand garments in a contextualised group environment.

Installations containing both an exhibition and crafting workshop were facilitated in Mozambique, Mexico, Sweden and Singapore. They were based on three premises: (1) everyone can be a designer at times, (2) reutilisation is a viable sustainable approach to deal with waste from overproduction, and (3) an installation matters. The resulting activities can be said to have developed into four different temporary communities of practice in which learning and artefacts were socially produced.

This project lays out an alternative platform for fashion where material is reval-

uated and roles relearned, it shows that people were inclined to participate, as

they voluntarily chose to find their roles in the process of reusing and redesigning

materials. This concept of reutilisation and redesign has also been shown to gather

people from different socio economic backgrounds with different motivations,

ages, cultures and pre-skills into a collaborative learning experience and means

of production.