By SOPHIE O’NEILL-LATULIPPE, 2/24/2016.
Hi everyone!
I want to start by introducing myself and give you a bit of background info about me. My name is Sophie and I am a Junior/Senior in Integrated Design at Parsons. I am a proud Canadian, originally from Toronto. I am really excited to be travelling to India this summer to conduct research through ICI. I will be researching ethical fashion initiatives, something I have been very passionate about for a long time. I have always had an interest in fashion, and actually started at Parsons as a fashion design major. During that time, I found myself getting frustrated at many aspects of the fashion industry and I felt as though all I was doing was perpetuating the unsustainable cycle of fashion. After my first semester of sophomore year, I decided to transfer to Integrated Design where I felt I would have the opportunity to study in a more trans-disciplinary way. And although I still love fashion design, I felt like I could learn to tackle these issues by studying sustainability, materials, ethics and business and how these all relate to fashion.
The global fast fashion industry has created unequal and unfair wages, working conditions and lifestyles for the workers while also producing a lower quality product. Slow fashion allows the utilization of sustainable materials and more ethical working conditions while producing quality products that can be better marketed and sold. With the monopolization of GMO cotton in the global supply-chain, many are questioning the supposed advantages of GMO cotton in the fashion industry. My research will focus on the state of sustainable fashion in India, by looking at how local and global clothing retailers who operate in India, approach issues of sustainability, more specifically focusing on cotton. My studies in the Integrated Design program at Parsons have exposed me to a variety of courses such as Business Ethics, Global Issues in Design and Visuality in the 21st Century, Design Thinking Lab, Materials and the Environment that have expanded my curiosity about the production process of fashion and have probed me to ask the question: How might we integrate ethically grown cotton into our local/global supply chain?
My interest in this issue has thus expanded and, as I have done more research to understand the growing, harvesting, and producing facets of the cotton industry, I have realized that much of the cotton sourcing and production occurs in India. As a major hub for trade and production, focusing my research in India will allow me to explore cotton’s route from crop to commodity, allowing me to investigate local and regional offices of global manufacturers and the ways they are considering issues of sustainability and ethics. With this knowledge I hope to look at how local and global companies based in India could operate more sustainably and ethically, while still profiting and expanding as a business.
In order to accomplish this goal, I plan to visit with the emerging class of young fashion designers who are committed to sustainability and ethical practices. I want to understand how they operate sustainably and see what models and systems they have in place to ensure ethical and sustainable standards. I want to find out more about how they developed their businesses to be sustainable. What was their reasoning to develop their business to operate sustainably? Was it always their goal to operate sustainably or did they evolve into practicing more sustainably? In addition to sustainable practices related to cotton, do they practice sustainability in other ways? Are they concerned with providing fair wages and good working conditions for their workers? I want to look at their business model and supply chain to see how it might compare to those of a company with no commitment to social responsibility. I want to see what we can learn from the operations of sustainable companies based in India. Though this research, I will evaluate the successes of these companies’ processes and also how they could be improved in hopes to design solutions to some of the problems uncovered during this research.
In addition to learning about the ways companies are behaving and researching what efforts have been made, I will also be examining the market for such a field within India. In order to understand this, I plan to interview shoppers and experience shopping experiences first hand. Is there a market in India for ethically produced clothing? Is sustainable fashion popular in India? What other parts of the world do these companies sell to? Does the average Indian consumer care about sustainability? Is the customer aware of the materials used in their clothing? Is the vendor aware of the background of their goods? What is the demographic of the consumers who care about ethically and sustainably produced cotton goods? Who does not care?
Ultimately, I will use this research to propose systems in which we can design and produce more ethically and sustainably. I plan to learn from these companies and bring my research back with me to integrate into my own design practice.
All in all, I hope to keep this blog fairly informal and honest and show you all how things evolve over the course of this process. Please comment with any questions or suggestions you may have for my time in India!
~ Sophie