Pip Jenkins

My view on sustainable clothing

The lecture touched on sustainability in the garment industry, a topic that was also the subject of my project during my postgraduate years. In my opinion, sustainability in the garment industry needs to be highlighted because we all know that the waste and pollution in the garment industry are huge every year. And for us as designers, we should also focus on reducing garment-related waste. But for my country, the garment production industry is very well developed and we make clothes that are exported to many countries. And because labor is relatively cheap, many countries choose to set up their garment processing factories in China, so the waste in China's garment industry is undoubtedly huge. But again, this is inevitable and we cannot be like the UK or France because our garment manufacturing industry dominates the country's economic situation. All we can do is improve the level of technology in production in order to reduce the waste in production.

​

Looking around the world, on the basis of the fact that people's living standards have all improved, clothing is increasingly in demand as an integral part of people's daily clothing, food, housing and transport. In the future, if we want to pursue the sustainable development of clothing, the most important thing is to change people's pursuit of new clothes and establish a positive attitude towards the environmental protection of clothing. For example, the use of old items, the reduction of demand, etc. This will lead to a real improvement in the wastefulness of the clothing industry.

And for me as a designer, what I can do is seek out more environmentally friendly materials and find more sustainable ways to design. Right now I'm working on a project about sustainability in clothing and I'm looking for ways to reuse and sell unwanted clothing. I hope that by the end of my postgraduate studies, I will have developed a personal theory of sustainable clothing.