5 Ways (2002 - 2003)
Principal Investigators: Rebecca Earley, Kate Fletcher
Funded by: AHRC

5 Ways was a project by Becky Earley and Kate Fletcher made up of five inter-connected approaches to fashion textile design. It brings together creativity and ecological thinking in fabric form and offers a range of starting points for understanding more about what ecological qualities such as diversity, participation and efficiency might mean for fashion textiles.

The project began with a team of designers and five simple briefs. From each of the briefs and associated workshop sessions a product idea was eventually developed.

The outcomes:

1) The No Wash project is concerned with designing and wearing a garment that is never laundered. Just by washing clothes half as often, overall energy consumption is almost cut by a factor of two. No Wash involves a jumper that is designed not to resist or repel dirt, but to wear it like a badge. Developed in response to a laundry diary that had been kept over the previous six months, this garment has wipe clean surfaces and extra underarm ventilation.

2) Fashion clothes capture a moment in time and are as quickly forgotten. But what if that moment was not one but many moments… a process of transformation? Updatable involves a series of transformations to a T-shirt. Instructions, sent through the post – in this case to the team of designers - suggest modifications which keep the T-shirt at the forefront of fashion and out of the dustbin for another season.

3) Where do you live? Where are your roots? The Local project captures the essence of your area and asks you to wear it proudly on your back. Local in this case involved the design and development of products for Brick Lane, London E1. A hand knitted bag from leather scraps was produced… something which is made from a local source of waste employing local people in the process.

4) Just like a cat, which ‘dies’ only to live again, our clothes can be resurrected. We can reuse a piece wholesale, or just key bits. Nine Lives takes the form of a top and skirt which is born again into a skirt embroidered with yarn from the jumper. A guide for embroidering is ready printed onto the skirt in its first life. The unravelling of the jumper and the making of the new skirt are deliberate acts of re-creation and show us the possibilities of engaging with our garments in a new way

5) Clothes protect our modesty and keep us warm. But they are also triggers for who and what we are. These insatiable emotional needs are triggers for dissatisfaction with ourselves, our clothes and lead to an escalation in what and how we buy. The Super Satisfiers project focused on our need for affection and developed the caress dress… The dress uses slits and subtle cut-aways to reveal hints of bare skin at the shoulder, the waist and the small of the back. Its purpose is to invite friends to touch and you to feel the warmth of others affection for you.

www.5ways.info