What constitutes an ecological yarn or environmentally friendly textiles? Where can designers and students find ecological materials to work with? How do we know that the yarn we have been offered is a truly sustainable yarn, that the fabric we would like to chose is a truly green fabric?
Here you can find results of research, information, links, a message board for current debate, and a questionnaire to help correlate current issues, and to develop this into a well informed tool for essential ecological change in textile design practice, from a designers’ perspective.
The aesthetic is essential in any fashion design, in any textile design, so ecological fashion designers and ecological textile designers have to be particularly clever, and they have to be correctly informed. Ethical fashion design, ecological interior design, sustainable fashion and textile design practices, need not only to develop a new environmental aesthetic, but to see whether existing practice can be adapted to be cleaner and purer.
Understanding the process, feeding back to suppliers, giving customers information, creating informed demand for best practice; this is part of the transitional phase we can design together. Towards a thriving new ecological design economy, based on zero waste, recycling, up-cycling, closed-loop production systems, local trading chains, lighter carbon footprints, preservation and utilisation of skills, designing for disassembly, and sustainability of communities, activities, creativity, resources, materials, energy and our way and means of life.
Annie Sherburne Trained at Hertfordshire school of Art and Design, St.Martins (fashion) and Goldsmiths (Textiles).
Annie has run her own business since the early 1980's and was a founding member of the International Felt makers association, and pioneer of feltmaking. She made patterned felt hats (examples of which are in the V&A and the Musee Des Modes in the Louvre in Paris)
The Felt was patterned by hand using industrial processes to create art works and textiles which were used by Jean Muir (OBE RDI) in 3 of her main collections, including the Australian bicentennial celebrations.
Annie designed and made buttons, jewellery, fashion accessories and hats for Jean Muir for 18 years.
Other examples of her work may be found in the Whitworth art gallery textile collection, the British Crafts Council collection, Kunstindustrimuseum in Trondheim Norway, The British Council jewellery collection, Lotus software HQ, HM Home office, and many other public, commercial and private collections internationally.
Annie has been incorporating environmentally friendly materials into her design work for 10 years, and has won prestigious awards for these designs and pieces.
These include The 'Soft Cobbles' Rug (felted rare breed and organic wool balls which look like pebbles) which won the textile category of the Peugeot design awards in 2001, and went on to reach the finals of the Elle deco first international design awards, and the classic design awards at the V&A.
Soft cobbles has also evolved onto 2 acoustic art installations at the architects practice Pascal and Watson, in London.
More recently, Annie has designed new rugs using a combination of yarns which represent the best environmentally friendly selection of yarns currently available. These include the landscapes, Moon in a boat series, which have been designed specifically for city loft-style rooms with multi functions, which use extra long pile techniques developed initially for Hussein Chalayan. Of these pieces, 'White Horse' has again reached the final of the Homes and Gardens Classic design Awards at the V&A.
The yarns include Alpaca from UK flocks, recycled yarns, naturally dyed linen, and factory yarn ends.
Annie is now doing post graduate research at Kingston university into environmental textiles from a designers perspective, and is developing recycled yarns which will be available for sale from her shop at 126 Columbia Road, E2. The shop is only open on Sunday mornings with the famous flower market, or by appointment, please contact her for further details.
