What if clothes could exist beyond the physical, just like thoughts? Not requiring a single piece of fabric and free even from the pull of gravity, the digital fashion world is full of creative potential. In our latest issue of Viewpoint Colour, Amber Jae Slooten, co-founder and creative director of The Fabricant shared her thoughts on the potential of dematerialised fashion and what this means for colour and materials.
Building on the ideas in our book Radical Matter, the Future Materials Library showcases a raft of disruptive designers who are taking an innovative approach to sustainable material sourcing, rethinking where our materials come from and where they end up. From living and growing materials to fabrics made from human biological waste, these designers demonstrate that sustainable design is not about constraints but possibilities.
Repeated colour is visually spectacular, unifying a disparate crowd. Extinction Rebellion harness colour as a powerful tool to create a shared experience that communicates life and hope in the face of an urgent, era-defining existential threat.
As arts education is squeezed from the syllabus at every level and young people from economically disadvantaged backgrounds are demonstrably less likely to take creative subjects even where they are offered, STORE, the organisation behind STORE STORE, is promoting access, openness and inclusivity in creative education.
Co-design is a powerful force for creativity and collaboration, particularly when it incorporates the freedom, expression and imagination of children.
The eponymous founder and co-director of Sebastian Cox Ltd stands in the midst of his bustling furniture workshop, filled with people making everything from one-off commissions to a complete interior for a high-street retailer, looking up the stern portrait of William Morris that watches over the scene.
We continue to look at the pioneering designers who are become increasingly interested in creating new organic materials, who are embracing the predictability of changing colour that comes with materials derived directly from our environment.
Designers and consumers alike have come to expect a lot of control over colour. We even plant flowers in our garden based on the colour we expect them to have. Still, we allow for much greater variation when it comes to plants than when it comes to, let’s say, a sofa; an item we want to be the same colour we saw at the store and to not fade or change over time.
Forward-thinking designers across all disciplines are seeking to harness the power of nature’s super-efficient circular systems, as we start to realise that working with nature rather than against it provides the best hope for the planet and its inhabitants.
Uniformity is starting to seem weird and boring – and finally, some smart brands are listening...
Three decades years ago, the v-word was associated with anger, politics and extremist views. Over the past few years, we’ve seen a shift from naked, blood- spattered vegan activists preaching in the streets and shaming those who eat meat – or even one of their own who might dare to admit they love the smell of bacon – to a calmer, more tolerant and relatable cohort of vegans who share their weak moments and support one another through the transition from meat-eater to plant-based eater.
As efforts intensify to move us from our linear models of making and consumption towards more circular, connected and progressive ones, our relationship with the materials we surround ourselves with will change. How we view and design products, not as static objects but as dynamic and evolving systems, is key to this more sustainable future.
Positioned between the duality of her Swiss and Guinean heritage, photographer Namsa Leuba’s work envisions ‘the representation of African identity through the Western imagination.’
Consumers are increasingly buying into the heritage of products as much as the pieces themselves, but we may not always be seeing the whole picture. Moroccan artisan weavers’ collective Anou offers a fresh alternative to traditional cultural clichés – and a challenge to vested market interests.
Nipa Doshi is showing me one of the pages from her most recent sketchbook, where a painstakingly gouache-rendered reproduction of a Picasso painting from this summer’s Tate Modern show is surrounded by pages of handwritten notes. Doshi, co-founder of design studio Doshi Levien, explains that, rather than simply taking a photo, she uses this process as a more active way of learning about colour mixing and composition. This analogue way of working and analysing feels like a largely forgotten skill in today’s fast-paced, digitally dominated world.