"Digital vs Slow: The Future of Sustainable Fashion"

Article by Daphne Chouliaraki Milner, facilitating a conversation between Fashion designer and pedal loom artist Nicklas Skovgaard and Anna Liedtke, digital design director at The Fabricant.

A digital fashion future and a slow fashion future are often talked about as separate schools of thought, an either or solution. This is even exemplified on major forecasting websites such as WGSN & LS:N Global, with macro trends of both topics being tracked separately. This is an interesting conversation between two people rooted deeply in each of those worlds.

It again raises the idea that sustainability in fashion is nuanced and needs a multifaceted approach. Could these two major fashion futures be combined together to help achieve sustainability. Nicklas Skovgaard talks about the drawbacks of his slow fashion production with regard to the paradox of scaling up a slow fashion brand whilst remaining sustainable.

With slow fashion production and textile processes leading design, these one off unique and often hard to scale garments & fabrics could be translated into the digital fashion world making these unique garments more accessible to a wider audience. At the same time this could be beneficial to the slow fashion designer by sharing their work and creating another revenue from that one piece. Major brands collaborate all of the time and this could just be an extension of that.

With reference to the future of the industry both designers talk about the importance of looking to the future generations. Nicklas Skovgaard states that "What the industry can learn from young slow fashion designers is that the job can be done in new ways" (Skovgaard, 2023). This implies that looking to new designers might suggest ways to re-conceptualise the fashion industry. As a student myself, sustainability has been a consideration at every point throughout my time at university, so much so that it is one of my core values as a designer.

"Building an industry where community and sustainability is central to the creative idea, not an afterthought at the production stage" (Liedtke, 2023)

Perhaps there is a lot of potential for emerging designers within the industry to act as change makers with an awareness of sustainability issues from the start of their practice and not as an afterthought. Creating new ways of doing things

Photograph; The Fabricant

Liedtke goes on to say that "Now, it seems that we’re going back to the root of fashion where you create something from your heart, something that’s beautiful that doesn’t necessarily require lots of money. There’s more value in this type of art where customers become a community" (Liedtke, 2023).This stands out to me as she is implying that fashion could to return to something that is perhaps more creative, unique and art based instead of the current system of fast fashion. Or at least that there is space in the future for more of this, making a distinction between fashion and clothing. Digital seems to be an obvious way to visualise this as it already feels more separate from physical garments and clothing.

The idea of a community rather than a customer or consumer is also interesting as the alternative term removes the economic side of fashion which arguably is one of the things that perpetuates the most unsustainable practices.

"Not everything in your business needs to be scalable and saleable. I think we need to shift our focus towards organic growth instead of measuring success through profits, margins, or ever-changing goals". (Skovgaard, 2023)

Photographs by Daphne Chouliaraki Milner for Nicklas Skovgaard

Questions:

Can fashion exist without capitalism? what does that look like?

Are we looking at future brands which have many different elements, such as a main collection, a digital option and even an art/conceptual piece?

I always liked the idea of having my own label which produced collections rooted in research and concept which produced an art/installation/avant garde piece with a more commercial collection inspired by it. Maybe the fashion industry is ready for brands which operate in this way.

Read the article:

https://atmos.earth/slow-digital-sustainable-fashion-nicklas-skovgaard-the-fabricant/

References:

Milner. D, (2023) Digital vs Slow: The Future of Sustainable Fashion. London: Atmos Magazine [online] Avaliable at: https://atmos.earth/slow-digital-sustainable-fashion-nicklas-skovgaard-the-fabricant/. [Accessed 15th January 2023]

Cover photo by Daphne Chouliaraki Milner for Nicklas Skovgaard