Kate Fletcher on Country, City and Activism
UK based author, sustainable fashion consultant, artist and teacher Kate Fletcher takes a moment to be interviewed on country, city and how activism can make you feel different inside.
For many in the sustainable fashion community, UK based author, consultant, artist and teacher Kate Fletcher represents a breath of fresh air, a sounding board for a broken but evolving fashion system and a beacon of light for the fashion innovators who work within it. Kate’s pioneering work in the field, which ranges from developing “slow fashion” ideas and practice to worldwide sustainability projects, including Local Wisdom and the publication of two well-received books on sustainable fashion (Fashion and Sustainability: Design for Change, and Sustainable Fashion and Textiles: Design Journeys).
EcoSalon has said that Kate’s books take a look “at the entire fashion system and how to incorporate the consumer,” and perhaps that is what has pulled fashion and academia together. One should note that she was also a pioneer for consumer education taking a front seat. This is of course popular fodder for many conversations in 2014 and is just as relevant as when Fletcher introduced it well before her first book debuted in 2008.
Now, the founder of the design for sustainability consultancy Slow Fashion where she works with companies, educational establishments and non-governmental organizations to foster change towards sustainability, she is also a recognized and inspirational speaker. She also lives in the country outside of London where one might question (as I have of her), whether being out of a city and surrounded by less clutter and people can actually help the brain to focus more, encourage individual thought and foster creativity.
I caught up with Kate via email- here’s what she had to say.
AD: You have written two books now which ask designers to go beyond the role of creator, “to include working as communicator, activist or facilitator” to bring about change. If you could pull the most important nugget(s) of wisdom for designers out of both books, what would they be?
KF: I would encourage all to practice the skills of seeing and listening and to build an appropriate response from what you uncover (maybe acting as a traditional designer, maybe not). Perhaps it sounds a little abstract, but it often involves the whole body to sense it all and makes a massive difference to understanding and one’s sense of purpose. I recently came across this Wendell Berry line which, for me at any rate, gets to the heart of this idea of a tailored, appropriate action, and why so much energy gets expended for little result, “We came with visions but not with sight. We did not understand where we were or what was there.”
Maybe that should be our maxim, to substitute our visions for sight.
AD: You live outside of London. Is it good to have the space of the country to focus on your work?
KF: It’s not that living “in the sticks” provides space to help me focus on my work, an escape from reality and distractions; but rather I feel I am liberated into reality when I come to the hills and moorland. The unfurling forest, burgeoning hedgerows, sky full of never-still swallows, tilting moon, cold rain showers blowing through are my real world. And this is the context for what we do.
AD: Do you think it’s easy to get caught up in other people’s ideas living in a city and going to events all the time?
KF: I go to events when I can - and almost always enjoy them - but I am sanguine about not getting to many. Just geography I suppose. And a sense that the impossibility of getting to all the events is an indicator of a field that is healthy, diverse, resilient and growing. Perhaps also it makes my ideas, voice and vision more different when I do get a chance to contribute, as my path has been made by being in different places.
AD: Do you think members of the sustainable fashion community should challenge themselves more in terms of activism?
KF: Not everyone is an activist. But it is enlivening and creative and stretching and capabilities-inducing and funny and odd. I recommend it.
Check out this fantastic video lecture from Kate:
