(MENAFN- The Peninsula)
Doha: Qatari designer and researcher Naila Al Thani has underlined the urgency of turning towards sustainability in the fashion industry and the vital role designers play in moving to this direction.
Al Thani was addressing a recent virtual summit which saw the launch of the new Doha Design District at Msheireb Downtown Doha where fashion is one of the major focused elements.
A passionate materials designer teaching Fashion and Sustainability at VCUarts Qatar and an artist in residence at Doha Fire Station whose work explores themes of nature and biomaterials, Al Thani was winner of The Ellen Macarthur Foundations Circular Fiber Initiative Student Challenge in 2018. Her MA Graduate design project was awarded Special Sustainability Prize at the Techstyle for Social Good International Competition as well as won The Mills Fabrica Sustainability Prize.
Exploring the impact of the fashion industry on society and environment, she said that according to the 2017 New Textile Economy Report by The Ellen Macarthur Foundation 'every second an equivalent of one garbage truck of textiles is land filled or burned, more than $500bn is lost every year due to clothing underutilization and the lack of recycling as well as 1.2 billion tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions are produced annually by textile production which is more than all international flights and maritime shipping combined.
She noted how clothing production has doubled in the last 15 years and how the world consumes around 80 billion new clothing every year due to drastically rapid increase of new trends being produced and sold.
'The fashion industry is the leading polluter of water, air and soil in the world and textile dyeing alone is the second largest polluter of clean water globally. Every facet of the industry from production and distribution to use and end-of-life is a significant contributor to this chain on natural resources and environmental pollution and destruction, she said.
She underscored that 'the linear system of take, make and dispose has to change and become more circular and sustainable for the industry to sustain itself and to be less harmful to humans and the environment, and designers are change agents to move the industry into this new direction.
Al Thani's award-winning MA Graduate project called 'Seam Unseam which investigated garment longevity and sustainability through the use of alternative construction method offers an answer to the challenge of sustainability in the industry.
For this project, she sought to create a garment without the use of stitching as stitching creates difficulty in taking clothes apart; instead the seams are attached using a biosynthetic protein strip that is 100 percent recyclable and biodegradable.
As the strip can attach and reattach when needed and there's no marks or damages on the fabric, it allows quick and easy repair of tears and cuts, alteration, design change and transformation. Creating a reversible assembly extends the garment's wearability, allows for wearer adjustability and enables garment disassembly, she explained.
'Through this project I'm hoping to catalyse a debate surrounding how we construct as well as demonstrate how we can do things differently she ended.
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