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The Fashion Ecologies Project explores the relationships and interactions between garments, people and place.
MORE AND CONTACT More about the Fashion Ecologies project, its methods and findings is accessible through various books, papers, maps and guides. In 2018 Professor Kate Fletcher will be speaking about the Fashion Ecologies work in New Delhi, India; Manchester, UK and Bergen, Norway. To…
FINDINGS Localism frames fashion as an integrated whole: garments, clothing practices, production, people, place – including unpopular parts; not reducible to single components. It orchestrates a whole system of fashion activity, broader than that seen through the lens of materials and production alone. This makes…
A POCKET GUIDE TO FASHION ECOLOGY Fashion ecology deals with the interactions and relationships between garments, people and their surroundings. In the Pocket Guide to Fashion Ecology, Kate Fletcher defines terms that help chart a topological map for fashion and place. Originally produced as a…
FASHION ECOLOGIES WALK Location: Walk starts at Macclesfield Town Hall, SK10 1EA, UK. Maps will be available free at the Macclesfield Tourist Information Centre (adjacent to the Town Hall) and is available to download here. The distinctiveness of Macclesfield’s fashion activity is charted in a…
MACCLESFIELD FASHION SOCIAL Location: Artspace, 2nd Floor, Sutton Mill, Heapy Street, Macclesfield SK11 7JB, UK Event 5-7pm 13th March 2018 Macclesfield was once at the centre of the UK’s silk throwing and weaving industry. Today there are still many people who work in fashion and…
PARTICIPATION Participation from the immediate surroundings is a requisite for decentralised fashion activity. Levels of engagement often build in non-linear ways and typically rely on established initiatives and organisations that provide stability and quality of service and new activity drawn to a place because of…
EDGES The fuzzy boundary zone between a location’s commercial centre, industrial centre and residential areas are often sites of small-scale, place-adapted activity. At the edges, where rents are lower and buildings more adaptable, experimentation occurs along with opportunities for decentralised fashion activity that reflect local…
FLOW AND CIRCULATION Industrial capitalism promotes the idea that fashion is synonymous with shopping for new clothes. For this idea to be dominant it must also influence the circulation and interchange of garments at a local level. Tangible, physical garments, and how they are held…
SOCIAL ASSETS Social assets, such as exchange and goodwill are specific to place and community, the product of personal contact and relationships. They are difficult to commodify and resist movement off-shore. In Macclesfield, social assets associated with creation, maintenance and use of clothing are in…
SKILLS Knowledge, like materials, is readily commodified, commercialised and traded globally. Yet the practical application of knowledge – the skills of manufacturing, laundering, repairing – is a local concern. Where fashion skills overlap with the physical world, and manipulate matter and energy, they cannot be…