Every year about 100 billion pieces of clothing are made, of which 30% are not sold and up to 85% of textiles end up in landfills.
As if that’s not alarming enough, when we wash clothes, 500,000 tonnes of microfibers are released into the ocean each year – the equivalent of 50 billion plastic bottles, according to Taylor University’s Vice-Chancellor and Chief Academic Officer Prof Dr Pradeep Nair.
As such, to raise awareness and advocate for ethical and eco-friendly fashion, the university recently held a fashion show to highlight sustainable clothing production.
Themed “Love, Earth,” the event called “The Show” focused on sustainability and featured a ready-to-wear collection of around 60 garments designed by 24 students from the fashion design technology program.
Bachelor of Fashion Design Technology first-year student Dania Mefiana Putri Ong, who created a zero-waste fashion collection for the event, said she did not know what sustainable fashion entailed before her participation in “The Show “.
“After we were informed that the theme of the show revolved around sustainability, we started learning about it. I also did my own research to better understand the subject to help me create my designs.
“This experience has made me want to get into sustainable fashion more seriously – especially zero waste – because no part of the garment is wasted during the design process,” said Dania, who hails from Indonesia.
Malaysian fashion designer Hatta Dolmat, who led the students for 14 weeks, described the students as “impressive and inspiring” because of their knowledge of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs) and how they presented their fashion models.
Producing sustainable fashion in Malaysia is still a struggle, he said, as most designers see it as a burden due to their lack of knowledge on the subject.
“The students showed that they have a clear objective and direction as aspiring designers and are not just creating glamorous clothes that don’t benefit nature,” he told the media.
The event was held at the university’s Subang Jaya campus on July 15.
Prof Pradeep said the alarming number of clothes wasted each year is a wake-up call to consumers, the fashion industry and education providers to equip future fashion designers with the knowledge, skills and creativity to tackle such complex problems.
“We continue to address current market needs and aid the country’s social and economic development by pushing the envelope in pedagogy and connecting our students to social causes and concerns with the Taylor Sphere ecosystem.
“Recycled raw materials such as t-shirts and plastic were used by our interior architecture and fashion design technology students to create woven art and texture pieces for ‘The Show,'” he said, adding that the program of fashion design technology includes enabling technology. learning and an impact-based approach so that students graduate with the skills to design clothing with a purpose and use technology.
The Show was a joint collaboration between the university, Kuala Lumpur Fashion Week, Life Line Clothing Malaysia, FashinFidelity and Hatta.
Divided into three segments, it unveiled the experimental artwear collection from recycled denim and clothing, the zero-waste fashion collection using Taylor’s innovative pattern-making technique that uses every piece of textile, and the fashion revolution collection to support the UN. SDGs by reusing and repurposing textiles from waste materials.
