Suchergebnisse

Fast and effectively disposable fashion has seen clothing reduced to transient items, worn for a short period of time then discarded. This has pushed down prices, moving textile and clothing production to low-cost labour countries and decimating the traditional Scottish textile economy. Fast fashion drives consumer demand for newness and uses finite resources that are damaging to the environment. In 2019, the pressure to move towards a more sustainable fashion and textile industry is intense. Traditional textile manufacture using natural, renewable sources that are inherently long-lasting offers a slow fashion alternative, epitomized by the Harris Tweed handweaver community in Scotland. Fashion has embraced digital, with growing online sales and increasing focus on digital content. This presents an opportunity to redress the balance by using technology to shape a sustainable future for traditional textiles. Utilizing an interpretive paradigm and inductive approach, an Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) funded networking grant is presented as a qualitative case study, investigating how immersive technologies can be used to safeguard the future of traditional textile products, to educate contemporary, global audiences on the provenance and human hand behind manufacturing processes and to encourage consumption of products with longevity. This explanatory case study finds that fashion brands are using immersive technologies for virtual changing rooms or creative customer experiences but are not exploiting the possibilities of immersive technologies in engendering a sense of place or people behind the product. Findings also reveal that the Harris Tweed Authority and Harris Tweed Hebrides brand successfully use landscape to convey a sense of place, but are under-utilizing the handwoven value and sustainable, slow fashion credentials of Harris Tweed. China is identified as a potential place for Harris Tweed to gain valuable market share, with increasingly wealthy Chinese Generation Z consumers seeking individual exclusivity and sustainability in their clothing purchases, criteria that embody Harris Tweed.

A report prepared for the Scottish Government on behalf of the Scottish Academy of Fashion, which examines the potential of new textiles solutions for health applications. Following a Sandpit event hosted by the Scottish Academy of Fashion on 13th and 14th January 2011, a number of projects emerged one of which was Molecular Imprinted Textiles (MIT). The interest of this group was to apply nano-technology to extend the value of textiles by making it possible to add or extract information over the lifetime of garments. A workshop was held on 19th October 2011 by the MIT Group at Edinburgh College of Art to explore concepts based on related technologies. An emerging conversation was focused on the potential of technologies that could be incorporated into textiles specifically for medical applications. The Future Textiles Project (FTV) developed as a result of the earlier dialogue, with the aim of exploring the potential for developing new textiles products designed to address specific medical conditions. The report details some of the most prominent areas of medical need and some of the technologies that may be applied. It does not suggest specific concepts, but rather examines the methodologies that could be profitably adopted for developing new concepts in this field based on a cross-disciplinary user-focused approach. The premise for this project is based on the identification of human needs that provide the focus for subsequent technology development. The report focuses on the potential of Scottish businesses, making use of current research across a number of fields in order to develop new products, which have life-changing implications. Smart (or technologically enhanced) textiles have the potential to control temperature, incorporate antimicrobial properties, provide insulation, breathability, compression, re-shaping, moisture absorption, articulation enabling mobility, constrain movement and improve circulation. They can be used as a diagnostic tool to deliver drugs and respond to changing body states. This ...