Crafting stories of cloth: a proposition for how we might think twice before throwing clothes away
Cloth and how we use it, dispose of it wear it, design with it, lies at the heart of current discourses around how we dispose of clothes we know longer want, desire or seem to need. The wider context of waste, fast fashion, repair, and disposal is in the news almost everyday. The data surrounding the disposal of clothing items tells estimates that globally we dispose of 92million tonnes of textile waste[1]
Each year it is estimated that we each throw away on average approximately 1kg of textiles products every year, which is the fourth highest in Europe.[2]
Is there a way to perhaps understand how stories of cloth[3] might help us to revise how we look at clothes or cloth as such disposable items, and more as perhaps cherished memorised goods that are looked after and cared for. There is a need to transform our thinking about the clothes we put on, discard, or just do not wear anymore, we forget how and where cloth comes from, how it is made and what it takes to get cloth made into a garment.[4]
Crafting stories of cloth, explores what stories or data[5] do textiles hold, it uses a range of exploratory methods examining how we can narrate, locate and reposition narratives[6] of textiles products such as clothes and the processes used to make them.
In doing so we can unpick a variety of social data about the ubiquitous nature of cloth, and how it informs our everyday decisions, on what to buy or wear or how it can allow us the opportunity to use the data gathered to rethink, redesign or rewrite new narratives of this thing we call cloth, and the objects we call clothes and perhaps our thinking before we dispose of this thing we just call cloth.
This Crestem lecture is delivered by Rose Sinclair MBE, Reader in Design, In the Depart of Design, at Goldsmiths, University of London.
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[1] https://www.wastemanaged.co.uk/our-news/retail/fashion-waste-facts-and-statistics/#:~:text=fraction%20is%20recycled.,Global%20Fashion%20Waste%20Statistics,10%25%20of%20global%20carbon%20emissions.
[2] https://www.businesswaste.co.uk/your-waste/textile-recycling/fashion-waste-facts-and-statistics/#:~:text=It's%20estimated%20£140%20million,is%20recycled%20in%20the%20UK
[3] http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/panorama/4306219.stm
[4] https://www.wrap.ngo/what-we-do/transform-textiles
About the speaker
![Rose Sinclair_High Res_02[100][97][72][45]](/newimages/sspp/ecs/events/rose-sinclair-high-res-02100977245.x4f13ddef.jpg?w=780&h=520&crop=780,440,0,40&f=webp)
Rose Sinclair MBE is Reader in Design, Goldsmiths, University of London
Her PhD doctoral research is distinctive with its focus on Black British women and their crafting practices, discussed through textiles networks such as Dorcas Clubs.
Rose’s works utilises public engagement and participatory immersive workshops, and talks in spaces such as the V&A London, The Garden Museum and the British Library, House for an Art Lover, and Timespan in Helmsdale, Scotland, The Horniman in London. Her work on Dorcas Clubs has featured on national TV in ‘Craftivism: Making a Difference’ BBC4 Feb 2021. Her expertise in design has features in ‘Your Kitchen: 60 years of Fads and Gadgets’ Channel 5 2024 and Channel 5, 1970’s Christmas, alongside interviews on BBC Woman’s Hour, and BBC Witness History.
She co-curated the first retrospective of Caribbean textile designer Althea McNish, in 2022 at the William Morris Gallery 'Althea McNish: Colour is Mine' which toured to The Whitworth in Manchester.(Oct 22-Apr 23)
Rose ‘s latest research, is a focused on the first monograph about Althea McNish. Her latest co-curated work with Craftspace, ‘Dorcas Stories from the Front Room, Textiles Narratives, Now and Then’ (23rd Sept – 29th Oct 2024) discussed the legacy of the Windrush generation through textile craft.
Rose has authored several textile books and chapters, her most recent works being ‘Tracing back to trace forwards, What it means/takes to be a Black Designer' in (2021), Igoe (Ed) Textile Design Theory in the Making; and Hemmings (Ed) The Textile Reader (2023), Does Design do Race (Dec 2022) in Hardy (Ed) Debates in Design & Technology Education'. She is Joint Editor-in-Chief of Textile: Journal of Cloth and Culture and is Co-Editor of the Journal of Textile Research and Practice. Previously Chair of the Equity Advisory Council at the Crafts Council, Rose is now a Trustee at the Crafts Council, a Trustee of the Textile Society UK and a Heritage Crafts Ambassador Heritage Crafts UK, and an Associate member of the APPG Group for Craft, and a founding member of the UBAE (United Black Art Educators) which is part of the NSEAD. Rose was awarded an MBE in 2024 for Services to the Arts.
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