Colour Collective - The New Crafthouse X LCF

This episode reflects the launch of a new collaborative project initiative, now into it’s second year, with The New Crafthouse and final year Womenswear Students in the School of Design and Technology at London College of Fashion. We talk to Rosie Scott, the Director of the New Craft House, Xandra Drepaul, final year Senior Lecturer on BA Womenswear, and final year students Poppy White and Celine Asmar at the beginning of the project. We then return to summarise at the end of the project looking the inventing new craft processes the students developed from shredding to creating new fabrics from reusing fabric selvedge’s. This podcast also contextualises and examines sustainable fabric sourcing, from deadstock to new platforms for textile reuse. Post Covid, the growth of kilo sales and sourcing deadstock fabric has gained momentum across all courses here at LCF, and the impact and awareness of waste, circularity and sustainability in fabric sourcing has taken students from the fabric shops of Soho, to looking for creativity in deadstock and end of line fabric to reimagine their fashion visions in cloth. At Colour Collective Podcast we are interested to find out how this works in practice, to help students navigate this new landscape of saved from landfill textiles and discuss how we design now. As a student, the process of concept to colour to cloth in the creative process, now involves us as designers to look and reinvent a new life for leftover fabrics and find new processes to innovate construction, tactility and colour. Tutors and Students are embarking on new ways of working, a collaborative approach with resellers of designer fabrics, such as New Craft House x LCF project with final year students to inspire future designers to match their design ethos and values to sourcing and sustainability. As a lecturer over the years, I have witnessed many changes in the cycle of design process, but the sourcing of fabric for fashion designers has now entered another era. I want to find out how the growing concern for our planet, has brought us to rethink how we design, source and reuse fabric, and how this has shifted our creative thinking. Image credit: Patricia Chen @patriciaminghui