Course info

This course is an immersion into the philosophy and practice of slow fashion. Slow fashion emerged as a reaction against fast fashion: the excessive production of inexpensive clothes fueled by rapid trend cycles that makes the fashion industry one of the leading threats to the environment (with seventy-five percent of its supply chain material ending up in landfills, for instance). In contrast, slow fashion advocates for sustainable practices like minimal production cycles and textile recycling, transparent manufacturing, the use of natural dyes and fabrics, and, in general, a more deliberate and intentional relationship to clothes. In this course, students will be asked to think deeply about—perhaps completely rethink—the act of getting dressed. In addition to studying and critically assessing models of sustainable fashion, students will learn hands-on skills related to slow fashion such as natural dyeing, fabric identification, basic mending, vintage sourcing, and creating a capsule wardrobe, with opportunities for creative work influenced by exposure to textile artists. This course will also engage in slow fashion through the “slow” practice of research, with each iteration of the class anchored by a different research focus. For this Interim, our focus will be indigo: an ancient dye with a powerful global impact and a particularly complex history in South Carolina. Student research will contribute to a future art exhibition based on indigo at the Richardson Family Art Museum at Wofford.