CURRENT

[Nature’s] power is in us understanding that [it] has a value
that goes beyond its usefulness to us. The /iteracy this gives
us—the knowledge this gives designers—is deeply held and
has the potential to shape all our ideas and actions.

LSP Your upcoming book, Craft of Use
discusses a new role for design: “Framing
design and use as a single whole, the book
uncovers a more contingent and time-
dependent role for design in sustainability.”
Can you give us an insight (or preview) of
how you see the new role for designers?

LSP Craft of Use also discusses “ideas

of satisfaction and interdependence, of
action, knowledge and human agency, that
glimpses fashion post-growth.” This is
about much more than designers... can you
describe how fashion post-growth engages
with society and culture?

LSP Where is your work going next?

LSP In your acceptance speech for your
honorary doctorate at Emily Carr Univer-
sity of Art + Design, you spoke about the
skills of the future as “skills of anticipation,
rigorous imagination, and resilience.” Can
you expand on that? Andis there any other
advice you would offer to young designers
that you haven’t already mentioned?

KF Craft of Use starts from a very simple idea of change, that it is important to pay attention
to using things as to creating them. The role for designers in the art, culture and craft of use
is massive—and it is sometimes also a bit messy. For it means that designers will reach into
the lives of users in a continuous and dynamic way and together evolve and practice ideas
and behaviours of using things well. Things will be ambiguous, on-going, unpredictable.

The book is based on around 500 stories which I collected from the public over a 5 year
period, (including a healthy number from Vancouver!), documenting the craft of using
clothes. The stories reveal many opportunities for influencing sustainability goals—oppor-
tunities linked to the life and times of garments in real people’s lives—an underexplored
area for design in fashion. The book was enriched by Emily Carr students’ work to amplify
the ideas and practice of use of clothing—bringing progressive industrial and interaction
design perspectives on the ‘wicked problem’ of fashion.

KF Fashion provision and expression that operates beyond consumerism is a completely
different prospect for us all. It opens up the possibility that consumerism might no longer
be the defining force in the shaping of our fashion experiences. What will that mean? To be
completely truthful I am not sure yet. But what I do know is that fashion-as-usual is not an
option. The signs from the Craft of Use stories are that there are many small moments of
creativity, pleasure, satisfaction in engaging with clothes outside of the market. What we
will find out over the next years is what it will mean for designers and what will it mean for
all of us who wear clothes.

KF Ihave been doing some nature writing recently, pulling together short pieces that
explore kinship between people, clothes and the natural world. I have been writing
amongst other things about how fashion and birds are alike. I love both of these things
even more for what they say to each other.

And I have been working on a project called Fashion Ecologies, looking to map
garment-related resource flows, interactions and relationships in tightly bounded geo-
graphical areas, a small-scale whole, in order to understand more about the big picture.

KF Education is preparation for the future. And the future is changing. Perhaps what we
know most evidently is that the future is unpredictable. Hence why the skills of the future
are ones that help us live well within unknown conditions. We will have to experiment
with diverse ways of living and do that with a smile and find beauty and delight on the way.