In this blog, we speak with Mila Burcikova, Reader in Fashion Systems and Research Development Lead at LCF’s Centre for Sustainable Fashion, whose work is helping to reshape the future of fashion. Through her Life in Clothes Research Fellowship (2021-24), she explores the intersections of fashion and agriculture, focusing on cyclical patterns and sustainable living within rural systems.
Mila is also working on the Future Fashion Landscapes project, collaborating with South East and South West England Fibreshed to create sustainable textile systems that align with the earth's seasonal rhythms. This approach invites us to rethink fashion's relationship with nature, aiming for a future where garments are produced in harmony with the environment.
Over the last 3 years, as part of my Life in Clothes Fellowship, I have developed its practice-based element, the Life in Clothes Almanac. In this context, an almanac refers to a record or guide that chronicles seasonal rhythms, activities, and observations—similar to traditional farmer's almanacs that document agricultural cycles but focused here on the intersection of fashion and agriculture.
The Almanac is a micro-scenario for a deeper understanding of fashion and agriculture at the smallest end of the scale – designer-maker practice and gardening. Taking inspiration from historical farmer’s almanacs, I followed the flow of seasons in my studio and the gardens attached to it to explore how fashion centres and priorities are shifted when fashion is truly grounded in nature and a rural space.
The resulting artwork includes, ten naturally dyed garments made from embroidered vintage linen, corresponding seasonal dye samplers, and evocative photo documentation of nature's cycles as reflected in the process of design and making across the 10 micro-seasons identified through this research.
As I mentioned, the Almanac work is a practice element of my much larger research project called ‘Life in Clothes: Place-based organic fashion systems for human and environmental healing’. This research was made possible by the funding from The Sheepdrove Trust, whose continuous support has enabled PhD and early career researchers at Centre for Sustainable Fashion to develop new and exciting trajectories of their choice.
Not many of us instantly make a connection between the clothes we wear and the ways we grow our food and other agricultural produce. Yet, every day we make a choice of wearing something that has been grown (e.g. cotton, linen), reared (e.g. wool, leather) or extracted (e.g. fossil fuel-based fibres such as polyester) from the earth. In short, we live our lives in clothes that all originated from earth’s living systems – hence the title ‘Life in Clothes’, looking at fashion and agriculture from both personal and systems perspectives.
The core provocation comes from asking what would fashion look like if it followed the rhythm of natural seasons rather than the market driven seasons of the fashion calendar?
My original intention for the Almanac work was to regularly spend time in the garden and in the studio and capture what is happening in one and the other in parallel. Yet, I found that over the winter months I found that I did not want to create anything in the studio. Firstly, the garden needed my attention more urgently. Secondly, I saw no reason to make anything.
When following the natural cycles of the local landscape and the garden, the early months of the year are very much about rest, recovery, repair – it is like being given extra time to rethink and recommence, a chance to correct the mistakes and failures of the previous year and have another chance with unfinished plans. And I felt the same in the studio. It was not a time for making.
In this sense, learning from the rhythm of natural seasons is as much about things one would do, or things one would do differently, as it is about things one would not do or would stop doing altogether. This, of course, is very different to the market logic of a fashion system that never pauses and always produces more regardless of consequences for the wellbeing of people and the planet.
The key lesson from this way of working is to build fashion on values that are healthier for people and ecosystems that surround us, the main shift that needs to happen is in our mindsets and expectations – the things that matter to us.
Currently, there is a lot of noise around regenerative fashion, part of the argument being that sustaining/sustainability is no longer enough. Instead, we need to actively take steps that have positive impact on improving ecosystem function, soil health, biodiversity etc. While on one level, this is a commendable effort, in my experience, the danger is that ‘regenerative’ becomes the next term to be absorbed into fashion’s fundamental extractive way of operating.
The idea of regenerating nature’s capacity to thrive, bouncing back from disturbance caused by many years of destructive human action of course appeals to me. What I have learned through this work, however, is that it is mainly us, humans, who need regeneration. Working the land that surrounds our home and studios has taught me that one needs to be constantly giving rather than just taking from the soil and landscape. Taking only goes so far in nature.
This means that what we really need to do is to regenerate ourselves. The main shift needs to happen within us, within our mindsets and values. We need to re-learn to put into the ecosystems more than we take out. In fact, living in tune with nature is often more about giving rather taking.
My work responds to the theme of Collective care by directly addressing fashion's contribution to climate crisis while generating a nature-centered scenario for improved practice.
The Almanac process unfolds a whole new paradigm for fashion through a conscious choice of a lifestyle that is better attuned to the rhythms of seasons as well as to our own creative cycles, and wellbeing needs. The first critical shift that needs to happen is in our mindsets, values and expectations – the things we care about and for – individually and collectively.
Alongside this, the Life in Clothes Almanac artwork creates an evidence base in support of the current collective initiative of the LCF Dye Society and UAL Climate Emergency Network to develop a natural dye garden at East Bank. There is an opportunity to integrate UAL’s Collective Care by linking UAL’s Biodiversity Action Plan, which is currently focused mainly on site-based actions, with the Olympic Park’s ambitious Biodiversity Action Plan. Through this initiative, we could contribute to and support the Park's plan, creating direct connections to the creative practices of LCF’s students and staff.
This interview draws on passages from Mila’s feature collaboration with The Lissome Magazine issue n⁰4 Love Ethics published in April 2024. You can also listen to Mila’s Almanac conversation for the Weaving Beings podcast.