Researchers looking for ways to reduce textile waste have enlisted the knowledge of costume experts at one of Victoria’s best-known museums.
Main points:
- A research project aims to use old textile techniques to reduce waste in the clothing industry
- As part of the project, costumes from Sovereign Hill are being studied
- The average Australian consumes 15 kilograms of new clothing a year
Some of the costumes at the Gold Rush-themed Sovereign Hill museum have been preserved since the 1970s.
These quality skills of making and correcting, rather than throwing away, have caught the attention of RMIT researchers.
Clothing production has doubled worldwide since 2000, and overconsumption is rampant in the fashion industry.
The average Australian consumes 15 kilograms of new clothing a year and throws away a similar amount, according to research by the Australian Fashion Council.
When slow fashion was all the rage
But it wasn’t always like that.
Clothes were once made and cared for with maximum longevity in mind, says Wearing Out Sovereign project lead researcher Ricarda Bigolin, but these practices were lost with the advent of “fast fashion”.
Fast fashion is a term that describes the rapid production of clothing using cheap, low-quality materials to replicate and meet the demands of trend cycles.
“Fashion was never about buying really cheap clothes and wearing them once and throwing them away,” Ms. Bigolin said.
“The manufacturing costs, the material choices, it’s all designed so that you buy a new thing instead of keeping it.”
The museum’s head of rare trade and programming, Erin Santamaria, said the techniques used by the 1850s settlers — and Sovereign Hill in reproducing the costumes — to minimize waste were actually quite simple.
“The techniques were meant to create the maximum ability to change a garment, in size or fit, or to change the style when it was getting a bit tired or when the fashion changed somehow,” Ms Santamaria said.
“Simple things like deep seam allowances that allow for maximum flexibility, or different ways you can finish a seam line or hem to be able to go back into the garment so it can be adjusted or altered.”
Making old new again
Despite their simplicity, Ms. Santamaria said these techniques are rarely found in clothes made today.
The Wearing Out Sovereign project hopes to bring these “forgotten, circular economy practices” into modern clothing.
Researchers are developing a series of prototypes and material workshops to be held at the Rare Trade Center where the public can learn how to use these age-old techniques to make and adapt clothing for a maximum life cycle.
Ms Santamaria said using these techniques on a large scale would mean deviating from fast fashion practices and investing in garment production skills within the home and local communities.
“People have no idea how much time is involved in making clothes because it’s all done invisibly by people we don’t know overseas,” she said.
She has witnessed firsthand the value of knowing how clothes are made and cared for.
“We find that our staff know the costume department that makes their clothes. They see the effort and time that goes into them and they really connect with their costume,” Ms. Santamaria said.
“It’s really important to keep practicing and learning these skills because the globalization of the fashion industry may not always be the way things are headed.
“Keeping a homegrown skill here in Australia is really important, whether it’s doing something for yourself, or in the production and manufacturing facilities we have here nationally.”
