Mart Drake-Knight2013-05-25T15:21:56-04:00Mart Drake-Knighthttp://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/author/index.php?author=mart-drakeknightCopyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc.HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Mart Drake-KnightGood old fashioned elbow grease.What if, Man? - The Power of Fashiontag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.23308632012-12-20T19:00:00-05:002013-02-19T05:12:01-05:00Mart Drake-Knighthttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/mart-drakeknight/Use less toilet paper. Buy an 'eco friendly' car. Don't over fill the kettle. Do less, use less, remember to reuse shopping bags: Will this will save the world?
There is no doubt that our climate, environment and global ecosystem is in trouble, but a lot of the alternative 'eco' products peddled to consumers go a long way to mask the real problems. The fact is, doing less and spending more will not secure our future, sorry people.
'Eco' is not sustainable.
After all, sustainability means a different thing. Sustainability is about living without compromising the needs or quality of life for future generations. It means living in a way that can go on without running out of resources, without degrading the environment.
So if the material that makes a product is genuinely sustainable and if the energy to make it came from a renewable source, by definition a company could go on manufacturing those products forever. If the products we buy are made in a sustainable way, we can shop as much as we like. Sustainability would mean a better environment and a better quality of life. What's stopping us?
It's a question we asked; Rapanui is our answer: We believe the real change must come from changing the 'perception' of sustainability among people, from a negative 'do-less' culture to the reality - sustainability is a wide-ranging issue with practical solutions - the outcome is something that everybody needs and wants: We just don't realise it yet. We must design products and economies that are genuinely sustainable and to make it stick, we must change the perception of the consumer.
How do we do it then? Waking the world up to sustainability seems almost impossible. But not if you are an intergalactic superstar of pop... Ask yourself: "What if David Bowie was an Eco Warrior?"
After all, the man managed to get millions of men to wear high heels, tight trousers and makeup. That was for real. On any given day it would be an impossible task, but Bowie convinced these men to go down the tight trousers and make up shop and actually pay for the privilege. This is a powerful demonstration of the ability of fashion and trend to guide perception and guide action. Fashion is power.
Right now it's so powerful that people are happy to shop in high street stores without any real clue as to where the clothing comes from, what it's made of and who made it - other than it probably came from somewhere in the third world, and that it's going in the bin in a month's time.
The scale of the issue is vast. If you take a moment to look around, clothing is everywhere and on every person from birth until death. It's a big problem, but it can also change quickly. A brand releases brown chinos and a year later half of the population might have gone out specifically to buy their own.
Imagine if those billions of pounds were not buying normal brown trousers or jeggings or wayfarers. Imagine if, instead, they were buying products made using wind-powered factories. Or made ethically, or made from sustainable materials. The world would be a very different place, with more renewable energy, more equality and a better environment. And if it was cool to be conscientious maybe we'd switch the light off when we walk past a switch left on, or vote for more renewable energy in our country.
A nice idea, but how do you find out which product is the most sustainable?That's why we developed our interactive traceability maps - to show you where clothing comes from and how it is made. The same reason is behind our A-G clothing ecolabel being developed with members of the European Parliament. We've even been invited to the EU to present the idea. Until these are more widespread, our aim is to use the power of our brand to influence perceptions, inform choices and create tools to make it happen.
Sustainability. It's not just about eco clothes. It's about making sustainability fashionable, man.]]>Invisible T-Shirt Breakthroughtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.13906122012-03-31T19:00:00-04:002012-05-31T05:12:02-04:00Mart Drake-Knighthttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/mart-drakeknight/
In partnership with the University of The Isle of Wight, we took the light transmitting properties of optic fibres and wove a jersey fabric to create an invisible t-shirt. The technology captures light on one side of a garment and relays it on to the opposite side.
The research has been around for a long time but the principle is actually quite simple - to take light from the front of the garment and relay it to the back - and vice versa. Optic fibres are simply light conductive threads. They capture the light in the space immediately surrounding the garment and relay them through the threads. If you can direct this light directly out of the shirt, as we have done, the result is a vivid perception of invisibility.
The University of The Isle of Wight and our Research and Development team worked hard to make the project a success and we hope to develop variants of the fabric for a wide range of applications. It will be quite some time before the technology could come to market, but an early idea that we have would be to make landfill sites invisible; sustainability is an out-of-sight, out-of-mind problem; we can throw invisible t-shirts in open-air landfill sites - or even just on the street - and nobody will know they are there.
Realistically the application of the project will be useful in a number of fields but the reason we got involved with the project was to raise awareness of the issue of transparency and traceability in fashion; it's easy to demonstrate this; what are you wearing now? Do you know where and how it was made?
It's difficult for consumers to find out that information - we think that traceability and transparency in fashion with allow consumers to make informed decisions about the products that they buy. If we have all the information available to us when we purchase products it is as simple as voting with our wallets - if not we're simply buying blind.
In a recent interview fashion designer Wayne Hemingway spoke of the award-winning eco fashion brand:
"What Rapanui is doing is game changing; they are at the forefront of fashion technology. People will see what they are doing and will want to copy it."
Watch a video of the t-shirt and the science behind it here or share the video or embed it in your website using this link: