To celebrate the Circular Economy Week in London (14-18 June), Post-Grad Community had the pleasure of interviewing Professor Becky Earley, a sustainable fashion textile designer and co-founder and Co-Director of the UAL Research Centre for Circular Design based at Chelsea College of Arts.

Our Interview

Q. Could you please give us a brief introduction to the meaning of the term Circular Economy?

A. I would describe a circular economy as one which has been optimised so that it does not need to use any virgin resources. All resources, materials, and goods are kept in constant flow so that we gain maximum value.

There is no waste. It is a system with no waste and it is an equitable system, which treats the planet and people in a fair and just manner.

Q. Can you tell us a little bit about the Centre for Circular Design?  How long has it been active and what kind of activity is coming from the Centre at the moment?

A. We began as a group in our textile department at Chelsea, exploring sustainable design for textiles back in 1996 and we have evolved through different research clusters until four years ago, when myself and my colleague, Dr. Kate Goldsworthy, launched the Centre for Circular Design, where we focus our research on the idea of circularity, recycling and closing loops in textiles.

We set up this Centre to bring together a truly diverse group of experts, but with a specific focus on making a circular textile industry through design. We work on projects with scientists and policy makers, consumer behaviour experts, and brands, these big consortium based interdisciplinary projects, attack the problems from different angles.

We have recently completed eight years of working with the Research Institutes of Sweden (RISE), in a programme called Mistra Future Fashion. We also developed a project called Trash-2-Cash looking at clothing waste streams, and making new fibres and new products in collaborative ventures.  Our latest project is HEREWEAR which is making bio-based circular clothing in regional locations across Europe.

Q. How is recycling different from Circular Design?

A. Recycling is just one part of the circle. Recycling is when the product gets to the end of its life, and you need to do things to it, to regenerate it and turn it into something else.

Circular Design considers all the decisions that happen around the lifecycle. So, it is all about the resources that you start with and how recyclable you make something right at the beginning.

Then it is about how that product is shaped, sold, used, and cared for. The extended use phase is where you repair, you reuse, you resell, you upcycle, and you keep these things going and going.

Q. Currently, although we acknowledge the Climate Emergency, we are still living this throw away life, with lots of clothes going into landfill.  How can we as individuals help transform our everyday practices, and how can we change the way we consume long term?  

A. We buy clothes because we have a need. Often an emotional need, rather than a physical one - a need for warmth, or modesty or protection, for example.  We buy things because we want to feel renewed, we want to 'feel like the new me' or 'I want to belong to this group of people'.  It is all about our feelings.

The most sustainable way to behave straight away is to take a fresh look at what you own and style it, cut it up, wear it differently, swap clothes with friends, try things on in different way. 70% of our wardrobe is not worn, so try having a good time without having to buy that new thing.

Q. How has the pandemic shaped our clothing lifestyle when we are using even less of our wardrobe hoards?  Are we experiencing more with buying fashion online?

A. I was hopeful at first that it would have a positive effect, that people would say, 'hey, gosh, you know, this is crazy, I do not need to go shopping, I have loads of stuff'. Then we found that the sale of online clothes has gone through the roof!  Anything that was pyjamas or sportswear products that are about comfort and reassurance increased.

We also found that people are quite quickly exhausted by the ideas that they must make something, sew it themselves, or repair. Many people realised that they were just simply spending too much money, and it was just excessive.  Perhaps they realised that money could be spent on better things. It is still too early to really say what the long-term changes are.

So, from the consumers point of view. it will vary. However, I think the biggest impact that we have seen is what it did to the brands. Their supply chains broke.  Their whole model, a profit-based model of bringing out new collections every six to eight weeks, keeping this stuff moving, collapsed and many brands had to address their model and look for new ways of building a relationship with customers to keep growing their business.

Big UK retailers have invested in their loaning schemes, their returning scheme, and rental offers, as well as certain new lines that will be circular.  This means increasing the use of recycled materials, increasing the product recyclability, and recycling routes that they were previously operating. Therefore, in terms of the brands, it has been a big wakeup call! The message that they are getting is that consumers are going to be asking more questions and be a bit pickier about how they spend their money.

Q. Who is responsible to adapt to circular design? How can companies adapt? How is versatility challenged through the way clothes are designed and sold?  Is there any government guidance for example?

A. It is everybody's responsibility. Design has a great power in educating the next generation of designers to use their creativity to change the world for the better. I think what we know is that designing a linear product that is cheap and throwaway is not what people want to do. The current generation of designers in industry, do not want to be part of a wicked, negative, impactful system they want to be better citizens.

We are all responsible. If you work in a brand, then you have a role. However, if you are somebody who loves shopping, then you also have a role - you must think about what and who you are buying from, and whether you really need it. I think governments could do a lot more and they absolutely must!

Q. Certain brands are doing pilots on sustainable fashion by running programmes like “refresh, remake and repair” Are we going to see more brands following this lead, and are they doing it for sustainability practices, or is it just a marketing strategy?

A. Depends on who you are talking to, of course,. What brands do is rather than invest in a whole venture costing thousands of pounds; they will dip their toe in. As they dip their toe they test, they get feedback, and then they understand whether that is going to be a successful venture for them.

We would like them to move more quickly, we would like them to believe us and just say yes, let us all make circular products. Let us stop over-producing. But that is not how the markets work. Brands need to evolve, and they need to find the right direction that suits them. There is certainly not  a blueprint that we can just hand over and then say, go off and be better. It is a process of change that needs to be supported.

Q. Which brands are adopting circular design responsibilities?

A. There are different evaluation charts out there.  The Fashion Revolution transparency index lead by Sarah Ditty, publishes a key report every year. You can also see things like the Global Fashion Accord.  They have a place that you can sign up as a brand to make four commitments, and then it ranks you on how well you are doing with your commitments compared to others. So, there are more places now where you can see how brands perform and there are some good ones in the UK.  I would say the real leaders are across Scandinavia.

Q. Excellent. Would you suggest consumers use the likes of secondhand charity shops, swap shops, even Depop as a way forward?

A. Yes, they play a really key role. They are part of the circular system! So, if you imagine the circular economy for the fashion industry, then what we are aiming for is this virtuous circle where everything gets recycled and moves continually through loops.  Then the resell loops are in here.  Basically  you have made something, you get it to the consumer, and then the consumer can sell peer-to-peer, or they can sell-peer-to-business, and business can sell business to business.

So, you have all these loops, and they are called extended life approaches, or longevity loops.  These are ways to keep products moving between users. What we do not want is to put loads of time, effort, and energy into making fantastic recycled recyclable products that gets used by just one consumer and then sent into landfill.

Depop, M&S and Oxfam Shwopping, are examples.  There are many ways that organisations are actively re-circulating goods. Some ways are better than others and this is important to know too. What we do not want is to be dumping textiles on other countries and causing problems there. We really must find in the UK and every country must find its way, to recirculate its own textiles within its own localised circular systems. There is more work now going on around the regional recirculation and the regional reprocessing of fashion textiles. That is exciting, because it creates much more social and community wellbeing, potentially, as well.

Q. So, talking also about accessibility and pricing, because obviously, it is cheaper to buy, maybe a second-hand bag that you found in a charity shop, is this like another way to looking at it? It is cheaper just to buy second hand like buying vintage? Is it worth the money?

A. It is a wonderful world of options, isn't it? It is up to us as individuals to use all these choices. We opt to define ourselves, through what we wear and the bag we carry - they speak about us. We all have our own budgets as well. I think secondhand and buying vintage and preloved or pre worn clothing is a brilliant way to make your money go further, whilst also giving yourself a chance to be more of an individual rather than high street trend driven consumer.

At UAL we can look at how we can design this range of options, we can design these choices, whether we are designing the clothes, or we are designing the resale platforms. You know, we work with communication designers, service designers, business studies experts, we have amazing experts at UAL! Then we have all the potential external partners to work with. So, imagine what it is like when you have this entire system of creatives working on these new ways to have fashion.

Q. Do people tend to go to fast fashion, because it has like this aspect of being cheaper? What are the consequences of fast fashion being perceived as something that is more accessible, or cheaper, than for instance instead of going to a charity shop? What would you say to these people?

A. Well, it is cheap, isn't it? It is just that the price does not reflect the actual cost. So, the price points do not reflect the actual cost of resources, the use of water away from communities and villages, the cost of the pesticides damaging farmers health.  When cheap products are made that have such impacts.  But consumers are becoming much more aware of the real footprint these days.

However, the problem is that we are all human and it is just in a whim of a moment, or in a particular need, we will still buy these things. Markets are still growing, look at the rise of Pretty Little Thing and Boohoo. We also need new legislation. That is where the enlightened consumer, or the activist hasless power perhaps. What is really needed is laws around transparency, laws around shipping, laws around overproduction, dumping and incineration.  We need a more regulated industry.

Q. So, for people that are thinking of buying fast fashion because of the cost, do you think that renting clothing is going to be the future? Do you think people renting their wardrobes, like subscriptions, are going to be a part of the responsible circle?

A. There is going to be a role for subscription and rental without doubt. In the pandemic, that was one of the areas that really, really boomed. People were, for example, on a Zoom call and thinking about enting or borrowing nice jackets or tops, to have an impact on screen and not having to own it, but return it. So, you can see that our needs changed during the pandemic and therefore the sort of ways to have fashion temporarily became clearer to more individuals and that's good.

But your question was on the back of fast fashion. I think there probably needs to be a redesign of fast fashion to suit these more emotional needs and to have lots of other viable options. As this generation gets older, they have families, they need a wedding dress, they have more parties to go to, they have work interviews, they have other needs. There are other ways to meet those needs. But fast fashion is often about a young group of consumers who are for the first time having their own money and their own freedom and their own wardrobe space away from home and radical new friendship groups and parties to go to. So that age that is being marketed to and being catered for by those ‘Boohoo and Pretty Little Thing’ brands.  It is very tricky to flip them into something else, you cannot start saying to them, 'stay at home and crochet', you know, it is very much about their social life and their sense of self and their emerging into the world. What we should do is design better for them, if that is their price point. If those are their needs, surely, we can meet them in a better way.

One of the options we are exploring is minimal impact materials and production. Things like compostable materials that are made in highly automated production rather than hand stitched, for example. If you want clothes just for an occasion, for a night or for a weekend, we have a different group of materials, other than cotton and polyester that would have a much lighter footprint, and would be able to disappear without a trace. We have been looking at paper-based materials, natural dyes and sonic welding as ways to make what we call ultra-fast fashion.

Q. What would you say to our students, if you could give them a message for Circular Economy Week, what would it be?

Look at the clothing you have and look at it through the eyes of someone else. Rediscover pieces and 'shop your own wardrobe'. But also, you know, for a £5 packet of Dylon you can colour your clothes yourself in the washing machine. Find your best local charity shop and go in every week for half an hour. Get five of your girlfriends together in the park, bring along a bag of clothes you are no longer wearing and swap them. Help each other get dressed before you go out but using the stuff you have already got because quite often that sense of rediscovery and invention is right there in front of you. You do not need to be in Topshop to do it.

So, try to be a zero-impact consumer and see if you can do it for a month, buy nothing new. Explore all the other ways you can have fashion.

Q. Excellent. Becky, thank you so much for your time, is something else that you would like to add?

A. I would just love to mention World Circular Textiles Day and what it is about because we are one of three partners that set it up. It was set up with Gwen Cunningham at Circular Economy Amsterdam, and Cindy Rhoades from Worn Again. We have made a commitment as a group on progressing the vision of a circular industry for the next 30 years now. Every year on 8th October, we will hold a mirror up to the industry and say so how are you doing? Are you going circular? Are you still doing the same things? What else can you do?

For us it has been about coming together as different organisations to try to accelerate the change and amplify the messages.  Get involved this summer – we need volunteers!

Related Links

• World Circular Textiles Day
• Mistra Future project
• Trash2Cash project
• Fashion Revolution World Circular Textiles Day
• Circular Economy Week
• Professor Becky Earley
• Centre for Circular Design

Some sustainable fashion resources

• DePop
• M&S and Oxfam Shwopping
• Comeswapandshop
• Swopped
• Get Swishing
• Upcycle Fashion - make do and mend in lockdown

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