In World 101, garments are designed and produced in clear view of consumers.
This Exploration was contributed by Adeline Biancha Gunawan, Jamie Lee Jie Yi, Teo Jia Xuan and Devon Kusuma (located in Singapore and Indonesia), developed from a World contributed by this group, using a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International licence which allows others to share and adapt the work in any medium and for any purpose, providing that they credit the authors and share their material using the same Creative Commons licence.
Response to World 101, Exploration A
I found this example very thought provoking and it made me think of a recent personal experience that has really troubled me.
I am a women’s wear designer with 30 yrs experience – I designed some knitwear that was made of blended fibres – and due to its nature the knitwear had some small pilling issues after several wears. Despite explaining to store staff that knitwear will pill sometimes and giving the marking team a “how to care for your knitwear brief”, the brand decided to remove all items off the shop floor.
The leadership team insisted they wanted money back and after some negotiation the supplier agreed to settle, however the cost of shipping the goods back to China was too heavy for them to bear and the uk business didn’t want the stock – so- what to do?
The brand didn’t want the expense of reselling or storing or shipping and the supplier reluctantly requested that the stock be destroyed.
As the designer I felt very responsible and tried many times to help resolve the issue, but at the end of the day in a commercial environment I had very little influence, which is very depressing.
The reason for my response to world 101 is a mention of shipping clothing to refugee camps and also mention of recycling . I too suggested giving the knitwear stock away to charity and this fell on deaf ears.
At the end of the day in a commercial setting in today’s market – everything is driven by profit. If there are 1,000 pcs of knitwear no one wanted to bear the cost of shipping the goods or paying for staff to remove labels and swing tags to send items to charity…..
We need to educate consumers to understand that a few bobbles on their knitwear can be removed – they need to care for their purchases to make them last. AND more importantly that their decisions have consequences – but returning their items and refusing to pay realistic prices for goods – the deadstock will be destroyed and end up in landfill. …… which is a million miles away from watching and waiting for an artisan to make their clothes, let alone paying for it.
– Fashion Fictions respondent
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