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What is folk fashion? Perhaps the words conjure up a mental image of a

‘peasant’ blouse, richly stitched with hand embroidery, or perhaps they
suggest a discussion of the great variety of regional textile traditions found
across the world. But no: when I say ‘folk fashion’, I am not referring to
specific styles of clothing, nor to established traditions of making. Rather, I
mean the making and mending of garments for ourselves, family and
friends; the items these activities produce; and the wearing of those clothes
once they are made. I use folk fashion as a catch-all term: an umbrella
concept that encompasses everyone involved in making their own clothes,
and everything they make. Thus, folk fashion garments can be of any type
whatsoever, with no fixed aesthetic.

The most important characteristic of folk fashion is that it is not practised

professionally, although there are plenty of professionals aiming to support
this activity through workshops, instructions and patterns. While folk
fashion is produced by amateurs, it does not indicate a particular level of
skill. Many people who knit and sew for themselves turn out beautifully
finished items, and these pieces are just as much included under my folk
fashion banner as somewhat cruder garments, which we might more
commonly associate with the word ‘homemade’. While in the past many
people would have had to make and mend their own clothes out of
necessity, today folk fashion is, in the main, taken up as a pleasurable
activity and a valued outlet for creativity.

I am stepping into dangerous territory by using the word ‘folk’. Whether

applied to music, art or craft, the term is highly contested and carries a great
deal of cultural baggage. For me, folk implies a participatory and inclusive
contemporary culture, open to anyone who wants to get involved. My
interpretation stands in contrast to the dominant historical understanding –
used by, amongst others, the Brothers Grimm – of ‘the folk’ as ‘the lower
stratum of society, the so-called vulgus in populo, the illiterate in a literate
society, rural people as opposed to urban people’.1 As if this patronising
definition were not bad enough, the traditions, dress and music of these
people have frequently been manipulated by elites and instrumentalised in
the interests of nationalism. Writing about the history of folk music, Stefan
Szczelkun argues that influential English song collector Cecil Sharp ‘took a
romanticised, cleaned up, censored and edited version of a past rural culture
and represented it as the ideal for a national song and dance’.2 Similar
processes have taken place in terms of dress. Historian Lou Taylor describes
how Eastern European countries such as Poland and Romania established
state structures to exploit local textile traditions as a vehicle for patriotic
propaganda in the postwar era.3
Yet folk is a mutable term, and alternative meanings are in circulation. In
2005, Folk Archive, an exhibition curated by artists Jeremy Deller and Alan
Kane, opened at London’s Barbican Art Gallery. The selected works –
including diverse cultural forms, from decorated cakes to hobby horses –
represented the artists’ view of what constitutes contemporary folk art. As
they explained, they define folk art as ‘the vast range of energetic and
engaging local creativity from outside prescribed art arenas’.4 Deller has
even suggested that YouTube videos are a new form of folk art.5 For Deller
and Kane, ‘the folk’ are not some peasant underclass, but rather, simply,
people. This understanding resonates strongly with my concept of folk
fashion: in both cases, we are concerned with cultural production by non-
professionals, creating work for their own enjoyment and self-expression.
While my initial motivation for coming up with the concept of folk fashion
was pragmatic – I needed a concise term that could refer to homemade
garments as well as the acts of making, mending and wearing them – I am
pleased to be able to align myself with Deller and Kane, and their valuing
of ‘everyday’ creativity.
And what of ‘fashion’? While not as inflammatory as folk, this term has a
similarly nebulous definition. There are many different interpretations of
this ubiquitous word, and fashions can be recognised in many areas – from
tangible things such as cars and houses to immaterial things such as music
and philosophy. In its broadest sense, the term refers to cultural forms
which are invented, accepted and discarded. I am interested in fashion in
the sphere of clothing and dress, so the description offered by sociologist
Joanne Entwistle is helpful: ‘a system of dress characterized by an internal
logic of regular and systematic change’.6 Some people argue that not all
clothing in the contemporary context should be described as fashion.
Theorist Ingrid Loschek, for example, suggests that clothing becomes
fashion only when it is adopted and identified as such by a large proportion
of a community.7 From this perspective, many homemade clothes would not
be considered to be fashion. But Entwistle points out that the fashion
system – this ever-changing system of dress – is so influential that ‘even
dress which is labelled “old-fashioned” and dress which is consciously
oppositional is meaningful only because of its relationship to the dominant
aesthetic propagated by fashion’.8 Essentially, all clothing decisions are
framed by the fashion system, and so – like it or not – we are all engaged in
it. Thus, as eminent fashion theorist Elizabeth Wilson argues, ‘in modern
western societies no clothes are outside fashion; fashion sets the terms of all
sartorial behaviour’.9 Wilson’s inclusive understanding makes sense to me.
Rather than setting up a binary categorisation of clothes versus fashion, it
recognises that all clothes, whatever their style and whatever the intentions
of their wearer, are connected to the fashion system. On a similar note,
sustainable fashion expert Kate Fletcher proposes that practices of garment
use – mending, for example – ‘are a fundamental part of the fashion
process. Users may be far away from fashion capitals. What we wear may
be old hat. But it is part of the fashion whole all the same.’10
Some people making their own clothes will be motivated by the desire to fit
in with current fashions and others to rebel against them; a third group will
be largely unconcerned with what is deemed to be fashionable at a given
moment, instead pursuing a personal vision for the garments they aim to
create. All of these makers, and all of these homemade clothes, fall within
the scope of folk fashion. Likewise, a home dressmaker making a type of
garment that would usually be mass-produced – such as a sweatshirt or a
pair of jeans – is as much a folk fashion maker as a knitter producing an
item that clearly corresponds with an established local craft tradition, such
as a Fair Isle jumper.

Starting the Quest

Folk fashion is close to my heart: I have been involved in this world, in one
way or another, my whole life. My mum made a lot of clothes for my
siblings and me when we were little. I picked up a taste for sewing from her
– along with a passion for knitting from my grandmother – and started to
make my own clothes when I was a teenager. I enjoyed this process so
much that I went on to study fashion and textiles and set up my own
knitwear label, Keep & Share, in 2004. Craft has always been integral to the
philosophy of Keep & Share; my pieces are made using craft techniques in
my studio by me or – in the past, when I was producing on a bigger scale –
one of my in-house machine knitters. After a few years of running the label,
I became interested in supporting other people’s making, extending my
activities to run hand- and machine-knitting workshops and participatory
projects in a range of settings.11 These experiences brought me into contact
with scores of amateur makers: people who, as I still did myself, spent time
and effort sewing and knitting garments for themselves or their family and
friends to wear. As we knitted together, the stories came spilling out: the
successes and disasters, the never-finished projects, the tricky finishing
tasks that never turn out quite right. Happily, I met plenty of people who
find making their own clothes to be an empowering, positive experience.
Yet for many makers, folk fashion is riddled with ambivalences and
idiosyncrasies. Despite my professional training, I had suffered my own
share of disappointments. By talking to others I realised that this was not
unusual, and in 2010 I embarked on a PhD to study this topic in much more
detail.
As part of my research, I hunted for previous academic writing about
making and wearing homemade clothes, and was puzzled to find very little.
A growing number of researchers are examining the process of making – I
will draw on some of this excellent work later in the book – yet I came
across very few books or articles discussing how it feels to wear something
you have made yourself. I did discover some fascinating tales of homemade
clothes in the past,12 but found contemporary accounts to be incredibly
scarce. This is particularly odd in the light of the striking resurgence of
sewing and knitting in recent years. An abundance of published material
instructs us in what to make, and how, but there is a strange absence of
makers reflecting on their experiences.

1. Machine knitting in the Keep & Share studio.

This book is the story of my quest to understand folk fashion. On this

journey I have gathered many stories of making and wearing homemade
clothes, and used theories of fashion, craft and culture to make sense of
them. Because the imperative of sustainability has shaped my work for over
a decade, I am driven to explore the ways in which folk fashion can
contribute to a more satisfying, equitable and environmentally responsible
fashion system. While I am fascinated by the vibrancy and complexity of
what is happening now, I cannot help but look beyond the present. As a
designer and maker I have a strong urge to build upon my understanding of
a situation to make an impact: to initiate change. Therefore, I am aiming to
analyse a set of creative practices which are often overlooked or even
belittled, and to propose a vision of how sewers, knitters and menders –
myself included – might recalibrate our practices to maximise the radical
potential of our actions.

Although I have gathered most of my research from within the UK,

contributions from makers and writers from North America and Continental
Europe demonstrate that the experience of folk fashion transcends national
boundaries. This is particularly the case now that knitting and sewing
enthusiasts are able to connect so effectively online with others who share
their passions. Yet it is important to note that I am not attempting a global
study: many countries, regions and communities with long-standing
cultures of domestic fashion making fall outside my scope. These contexts
are fascinating, of course, but I would need much more room, and research,
to do them justice. Essentially, I am looking at folk fashion in ‘post-
industrial’ regions such as the UK, North America, Australia and Western
Europe, which have major problems in terms of overconsumption, and in
communities where shop-bought clothes dominate, meaning that making
your own clothes is an optional – and relatively unusual – activity.

With all this in mind, in the coming chapters I will be focusing on

contemporary practice in the world of amateur fashion making, exploring
both mainstream and emerging practices. Along with stories of those who
are sewing and knitting clothes from commercial patterns, I will describe
people who are ‘hacking’ these patterns, and makers designing for
themselves. I will investigate the contemporary mending community and
share an in-depth project I carried out as part of my research, developing
ways of reworking existing garments using knitting techniques, skills and
knowledge. I will consider what happens if ideas of creativity and making
are applied to the wardrobe as a whole, rather than individual items. And I
will be looking forward, aiming to understand not only what is happening
now, but also ways that folk fashion might flourish and evolve in the future.

Making Conversations

In writing this book, I have drawn on my experiences of making my own

clothes, and of supporting others to do the same. There is something about
knitting, in particular, that seems to invite people to tell stories: of making
their own clothes, of wearing things made by others, of people in their lives
who knit. My making-related encounters with others inspired the research
that grew into this book, and some of these secondhand anecdotes, plus
occasional stories of my own making, appear in the following chapters.
Still, I did not want the book to revolve around my personal experiences; I
was keen to explore a diversity of perspectives and to share the stories of
others, in their own words. Therefore, I set out to talk to a diverse range of
people who sew, knit and mend their own clothes – and those who support
them by teaching techniques, selling supplies, designing patterns and so on.
Despite the varied skills, habits and tastes of these people, when I analysed
and reflected on the conversations, I found that common themes emerged.
These themes informed the development of my thinking about folk fashion,
and in turn the content and structure of the book.

The first makers that I talked to were the six women who took part in my
PhD research project in 2012–13. Because my research was focused on
knitting, I had appealed for amateur knitters to take part, and these women –
aged between 43 and 66 at the start of the project – kindly volunteered. The
first stage of the research involved individual interviews, where I asked
each woman about her experiences of fashion and knitting. We then started
to meet as a group at my knitwear studio near Hereford, a small cathedral
city in the Midlands of England. At the early sessions we knitted together
and discussed a number of questions about making and wearing homemade
clothes. We then moved on to four full-day workshops, roughly a month
apart, where we tested the reknitting techniques I had developed. The
project culminated in each of the knitters reworking a knitted item from her
own wardrobe.

In academic research terms, the core of this strategy was the activity of
making together, and capturing the rich conversation that spontaneously
emerged from this process.13 By working in this way, I was able to gather
incredibly rich qualitative research data. The group not only talked about
the tasks in hand but also contextualised the new experiences they were
having, relating them to memories from the past and hopes for the future.
By working together with them over an extended period, I was able to
capture the knitters’ feelings at each stage of the project, from the
anticipation of a new challenge, through the messy business of designing
and making, to their reflections on the finished items and the experience as
a whole. The valuable insights that I gained from my work with the
Hereford knitting group (sometimes referred to as the ‘Hereford knitters’)
run throughout the book – from the conversations about fashion, clothes
and making that feature in Chapters 2, 3, 4 and 7, to their experiences of
reknitting and designing, described in Chapters 5 and 6.

The project with the Hereford knitting group provided a fantastic

foundation for my research. The demographic of the group, though, was
relatively narrow: all women, in their forties, fifties and sixties, living in the
same area. In order to diversify the range of perspectives feeding into my
doctoral project, I needed to gather more stories and realised that my Keep
& Share activities presented an ideal opportunity. Since 2009, I had run a
free, drop-in communal knitting project from the ‘knitting tent’ which I
took to several UK music festivals each summer. People could stop by and
knit for as long as they liked, and all of their contributions added to a
collaboratively produced web of knitting which gradually grew as the
festival progressed. I was helped by a wonderful team of volunteer teachers,
which meant that anyone could take part – from absolute beginners to
experienced knitters. In recognition of the stories that flow when people
pick up a pair of needles, I invited people to share their knitting-related
memories on small cardboard tags and attach them to the knitting. Seeing
the variety and richness of the comments I was gathering, in 2012 I
suggested that people share their feelings about wearing homemade clothes;
this prompted many responses which fed directly into my research, and this
book. Although the tags are small, and therefore can carry only concise
messages, they often mirror – and neatly encapsulate – issues and attitudes
that emerged through much more extended discussions with other makers.
 2. Communal knitting – and comments on tags – at the Keep & Share
knitting tent.

When I came to write this book, I seized the opportunity to broaden my

net once again. I carried out another round of interviews with a more
diverse range of folk fashion makers, including people who support other
makers through teaching, designing and selling. Because many makers take
the time to record and reflect on their experiences in their blogs, I was able
to gather further relevant firsthand insights from a range of online sources.
These additional contributions extended my scope to include sewers and
menders, as well as knitters; men, as well as women (although participation
in folk fashion is predominantly female); and people representing a wider
age range, and geographical spread, than the knitters who took part in my
original research project. They challenged and extended my thinking,
helping me to build a more well-rounded account of contemporary folk
fashion culture.

Drawing on Theory

The central aim of this book is to explore and understand our experiences
of making and wearing homemade clothes. While the discussion is built
around the accounts of the people I talked to, I have drawn on theoretical
academic writing to help me make sense of their comments. This writing
emerges from several different areas; perhaps the most important of these is
fashion theory. Two key concepts from fashion theory are particularly
useful for understanding fashion experiences from the wearer’s perspective.
The first of these concepts is identity construction: the idea that in
contemporary society we are each engaged in an ongoing process of
constructing who we are, and use clothing as a means of ‘surfacing’
particular aspects of this identity. This process relies on the meanings
associated with our clothes, which are both multiple (garments may be
‘read’ differently by different people, and in different contexts) and mobile
(liable to change over time). I will be thinking in detail about the meanings
that are associated with homemade clothes, in the past and today, and the
implications of these meanings for anyone who chooses to construct their
identity through folk fashion. I will also be considering how the tasks of
sorting, managing and discarding clothes within the wardrobe are both
important processes in terms of identity, and potent opportunities for
creativity.

The second key concept relates to the ability of fashion to connect us

with others, an important social function. This connection is shaped by
identification and differentiation, the forces which drive us to fit in and
belong while maintaining a sense of individuality and uniqueness. When
dressing, we think about the people we will see that day – or rather, those
who will see us – and our self-image is largely informed by the ways in
which we imagine these others will perceive our appearance. Therefore, our
decisions about fashion are affected by those around us, connecting us
together in a tangle of perceptions and expectations. Once again, the
meanings associated with homemade clothes affect these processes and,
consequently, the way we feel about wearing things we have made
ourselves.

Another useful body of academic work is craft theory, which explores the
various motivations, benefits and challenges relating to the making process.
Unfortunately, there is not a great deal of academic literature discussing
amateur craft, and even less specifically focusing on folk fashion.
Nevertheless, benefits tend to be common across different types of making,
and so I have enjoyed gleaning insights drawn from a diverse range of
creative activities – from the vibrant ‘maker movement’, which is primarily
associated with new technologies such as 3-D printing, to architecture.
Although I am looking at the experiences of amateur makers, studies of the
practices of professional craftspeople are of some use, particularly for
understanding the intimate conversation which develops between maker
and material as a new piece is brought into being.

Some of the academic writing which has fed into this book comes from
outside the spheres of fashion and craft, such as work relating to one of the
central themes: openness. Openness is big news right now: the application
of this idea within an increasing number of spheres – such as open-source
software, open science, open manufacturing and open gaming – has been
described as a ‘megatrend’.14 In each of these areas, hierarchical
relationships and centralised authority are broken down, and the division
between professional experts and amateur users is eroded. Overall, the role
of the user is fundamentally shifted from passive observer to active
contributor; thus, this idea is particularly relevant to folk fashion. Many link
the growth of open culture to the rise of the internet, and especially web 2.0
technologies, which offer the opportunity for people to create, collaborate
and share. David Gauntlett, an academic and writer who is especially
interested in ‘everyday’ making, summarises this as a shift from a ‘sit back
and be told’ culture (typified by broadcast television) towards more of a
‘making and doing’ culture (typified by YouTube and Wikipedia).15
In order to explore the idea of openness in fashion, I have developed a
rather unconventional metaphor. I choose to see fashion as a commons and,
more specifically, common land: a valuable resource, shared by a
community. Within this resource, I see all of the garments in existence –
new, old, fashionable and unfashionable. On a more conceptual level, I see
every way of dressing throughout history. Fashion depends on this broad,
varied, vibrant resource; new fashions involve existing styles being
revisited, recombined and recontextualised. I believe that it is important for
us to have an open and accessible fashion commons in order to construct
our identities and connect with others most effectively. However, I am
concerned that mass production and industrialisation have ‘enclosed’ this
commons, restricting access to styles and knowledge and limiting our
ability to act independently. I will explore whether individual acts of
making – which are, as I have explained, inherently linked with open
culture – contribute to openness on a bigger scale. Could folk fashion open
up the fashion commons to tip the balance of power towards wearers and
makers, and away from manufacturers and retailers?

Elsewhere in the book I will connect with other types, and levels, of
openness. I will discuss the concept of reknitting and learn about the
emotions involved in opening, and altering, ‘closed’ items of clothing. I
will also consider how folk fashion opens up opportunities for design which
are not usually accessible to non-professionals, and observe how people
without formal design training respond to these opportunities.

Fashion and Sustainability

An important thread running through this book is the complex, fascinating

and important relationship between folk fashion and sustainability. Ideas
about slow and sustainable fashion have been at the heart of my own design
philosophy since I launched my label well over a decade ago. A desire to
live more sustainably is also a key motivation for many folk fashion
makers. They see making their own clothes as a way of bypassing the
environmental and social problems associated with mass-produced
garments, and of reducing their own fashion consumption. I am convinced
that amateur making does have genuine benefits in terms of sustainability.
Yet many people – particularly non-makers – make a rather lazy assumption
that amateur making is an inherently sustainable mode of fashion
participation. This is over-simplistic: my experience tells me that the
situation is rather more complicated.
The scale of the clothing industry is staggering. In 2000, sales of clothing
totalled over $1 trillion worldwide, with the industry employing 26.5
million people.16 The environmental and social problems associated with
this industry are significant and well documented, with negative impacts
occurring in all phases of a garment’s lifecycle.17 Fibre and clothing
production, transport and (in particular) domestic washing and drying of
clothing all consume huge amounts of energy. Problems arise from the use
of toxic chemicals in manufacturing, and from the vast amounts of water
used in cotton production. Meanwhile, textile and clothing workers are
subject to abysmal working conditions. A report on conditions for workers
producing clothes for the UK high street in the Indian city of Gurgaon, for
example, describes ‘systematic exploitation, violence and repression, long
and stressful working hours, casual employment relationships, and
exclusion from the social rights, protection and benefits they should be
entitled to’.18 While it can be argued that clothing production brings
valuable work to developing countries, low wages and a lack of training
mean that workers are often still trapped in poverty.19 The majority of
discarded clothes end up in landfill; much of the remainder is shipped
overseas for re-use, where it erodes local textile industries and traditions.20
The problems associated with clothing production have been exacerbated
by the advent of ‘fast fashion’. This phenomenon has brought falling prices
– between 2005 and 2009, for example, average prices of women’s
outerwear fell by 22 per cent – and massive increases in the number of
garments sold.21 Between 2001 and 2005, sales by volume of women’s
clothing in the UK increased by 37 per cent,22 and between 2006 and 2014
sales by volume of all clothing rose by 30 per cent.23 According to
Euromonitor, over 2 billion clothing items were sold in the UK in 2014;24
in her book Overdressed, Elizabeth Cline states that nearly 20 billion
garments are sold every year in the USA.25
When discussing the problems associated with the fashion industry, some
people optimistically point to initiatives which reduce environmental and
social impacts, hoping that such improvements will allow the industry to
maintain the incredibly high turnover of clothing it produces today. Yet, as
economist Tim Jackson points out, the benefits of making products
‘greener’ will be lost if the scale of material throughput remains so far
beyond the carrying capacity of the Earth.26 To give a simple example: if a
manufacturer decreases resource use and pollution by a fifth but sells twice
as many garments as before, their negative impacts will still have increased
significantly – rendering the whole exercise distressingly futile. Thus, it is
our levels of consumption, which are many times those of less
economically developed countries and far beyond natural limits, that must
be addressed. Rather than incremental initiatives that tweak at the corners
of an inherently unsustainable system, we need radical strategies that will
dramatically reduce the volume of garments produced and rapidly
discarded. These strategies are difficult to countenance in today’s growth-
dependent economic system. Thus, as Kate Fletcher argues in her book
Craft of Use: Post-Growth Fashion, we need a paradigm shift in terms of
both the fashion system and our understanding of prosperity more
broadly.27
Although I am highlighting the fundamental need to address
overconsumption in industrialised countries, it is important to avoid falling
into the rather seductive trap of seeing any and all consumption as
straightforwardly negative. After all, as Tim Jackson observes, material
goods have been used symbolically in all known societies, throughout
history.28 Objects play an essential and unique role in culture; Grant
McCracken argues that they ‘contribute […] to the construction of the
culturally constituted world precisely because they are a vital, visible record
of cultural meaning that is otherwise intangible’.29 Many environmental
arguments about consumerism conflate consumer society and material
culture. This is unhelpful, as anthropologist Daniel Miller points out:
whatever our environmental fears or concerns over materialism, we will not
be helped by […] an attitude to stuff, that simply tries to oppose ourselves
to it; as though the more we think of ourselves as alien, we keep ourselves
sacrosanct and pure.30
This might seem confusing: we need to reduce the amount we consume, yet
we should not see material objects in a negative light because of the
important role they play in our lives. Sustainable consumption expert Lucia
Reisch resolves this apparent contradiction: she distinguishes between
material satisfaction, which relates to the acquisition of objects or materials,
and non-material satisfaction, which relates to use.31 The idea of non-
material satisfaction suggests that rather than attempting to eliminate
objects from our lives, we need to learn to use them in a different way. This
is not a rejection of ‘stuff’, but a change in our relationship with it: from
ownership to use, and from ‘having’ to ‘being’. These ideas are helpfully
described in a six-point ‘Manifesto for the New Materialism’, which starts
with the positive statement that ‘liking “stuff” is okay, healthy even’ before
encouraging us to develop lasting relationships with our possessions, to
mend and to share.32 In the fashion sphere, many designers and activists are
working to address these issues. They aim to develop a satisfying and
appealing version of fashion which is not dependent on a rapid turnover of
clothing items, but rather uses – as Kate Fletcher and Lynda Grose put it –
‘material and non-material satisfiers to help us engage, connect and better
understand about each other, our world and ourselves’.33

Sustainability and Well-Being

Having thought about the environmental and social impacts of the fashion
system and briefly considered the complexities of consumption, I would
like to step back to explore the concept of sustainability itself in more
detail. The term is used a lot nowadays, yet people are often confused about
what it means. This is unsurprising, given that it is an abstract concept with
multiple competing definitions. The broad notion of sustainability was
developed in the 1970s in response to the great challenges facing the Earth
and its inhabitants: climate change, population growth, poverty, inequality,
biodiversity loss and the depletion of natural resources. The most frequently
cited definition of sustainability relates to sustainable development:
‘development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the
ability of future generations to meet their own needs’.34 Beyond this
description, much discussion about sustainability revolves around the
integration of environment, society and economy. These widespread
understandings of sustainability have been criticised, however, for their
shortsightedness and lack of vision. John Ehrenfeld, for example, describes
sustainable development as ‘simply an extrapolation of the past’, which can
only lessen the effects of unsustainable behaviour without changing
inherently unsustainable systems.35 This is an incredibly important point: if
our working understanding of sustainability is simply based on making our
systems and lifestyles ‘less bad’ – as demonstrated by the incremental
initiatives favoured by the fashion industry – we are unlikely to achieve the
fundamental changes which are evidently necessary. Instead, Ehrenfeld
offers an aspirational definition of sustainability: ‘the possibility that
humans and other life will flourish on the Earth forever’.36 This positive
definition appeals to me immensely; in its simplicity, it invites us to
consider alternatives to the systems which structure the world today.
Therefore, it is this approach to sustainability that will be framing my
thinking within this book.

When we start to think about sustainability as flourishing, a new element

enters the picture, alongside the familiar environmental and social factors
and concerns about overconsumption: individual well-being. A focus on the
individual within sustainability thinking may seem surprising, given that
individualism and selfishness arguably underlie many of the global
problems that we face today. Even so, many people propose that well-being
and sustainability are inherently linked. Tim Jackson, for example, suggests
that our current economic system has both created many environmental and
social problems and violated our individual well-being. As he points out,
this means we are losing twice over:

That environmental damage should turn out to be the environmental price

we have to pay for achieving human well-being would be unfortunate. That
environmental damage is an external cost of a misguided and unsuccessful
attempt to achieve human well-being is tragic.37
On a more positive note, Jackson points out that if this negative relationship
is inverted, the opportunity for a ‘double dividend’ arises. Similarly, design
researchers Carolina Escobar-Tello and Tracy Bhamra observe that ‘the
characteristics of sustainability overlap with the triggers of happiness’.38
From this perspective, well-being and sustainability can be seen as two
interconnected elements of human flourishing, and wellbeing can be used as
a way of approaching and exploring sustainability.
There are many different perspectives on well-being; it is another contested
(and politicised) area. Some use ‘happiness’, ‘well-being’ and ‘satisfaction
with life’ interchangeably. Others argue that wellbeing encompasses more
than happiness and life satisfaction, involving the actualisation of human
potentials and a ‘quest for contentment’.39 The New Economics Foundation
proposes that to enjoy positive wellbeing people need a sense of individual
vitality; to undertake activities which are meaningful, engaging, and make
them feel competent and autonomous; a stock of inner resources to cope
and be resilient; and a sense of relatedness to other people through
supportive relationships and a sense of connection with others.40 Focusing
on flourishing in terms of psychological well-being, Carol Ryff and Corey
Lee Keyes have developed a list of six aspects of human potential:
autonomy, personal growth, self-acceptance, life purpose, mastery and
positive relatedness.41 An alternative approach is proposed by the
development economist Manfred Max-Neef. He offers a list of basic needs
which he believes constitute well-being: subsistence, protection, affection,
understanding, participation, leisure, creation, identity and freedom. He
defines these needs as ‘essential attributes related to human evolution’
which are interrelated, interactive and non-hierarchical.42 Max-Neef’s work
is particularly useful for the dynamic way in which it relates satisfiers to
needs; he explains that the means of satisfying needs vary widely across
cultures and historical periods. Different satisfiers may be more or less
successful, fulfilling needs to different levels of intensity.
Many people working with concepts of well-being are concerned with
policy; they are tasked with supporting well-being within communities, and
must develop strategies for doing so. Thus, much discussion relates to the
challenge of measurement: assessing the subjective experience of well-
being in a coherent and consistent way. Fortunately, my task is more
straightforward. In this book, I am not trying to quantify the wellbeing of
folk fashion makers, nor to compare folk fashion practices with other
activities. Rather, I want to gain a qualitative understanding of the ways in
which folk fashion practices might contribute to, or hinder, individual
flourishing. To do so, I am taking a strategically broad view of well-being,
incorporating all of those characteristics described above. This enables me
to consider other people’s opinions, expressed from diverse viewpoints. It
also allows me to consider the emotions associated with the immediate act
of making alongside the deeper satisfactions that come into view when
considering folk fashion practices from a more holistic perspective.

Folk Fashion = Sustainable?

Does folk fashion make a positive contribution to sustainability? I would

like briefly to examine the arguments that support this view. When
considering this question, it is important to note that sustainability benefits
could emerge from folk fashion practices even in cases where makers are
not primarily motivated by environmental or social issues and have never
thought about their activities in such terms. For this reason, I am thinking of
folk fashion as being ‘incidentally sustainable’: that is, not necessarily
directly connected to sustainability initiatives, but with many potentially
positive attributes in that regard.

One of the most straightforward claims for folk fashion being a sustainable
practice is that making clothes at home minimises the social and
environmental impacts associated with globalised industrial garment
manufacture. Another is that mending enables us to extend the lifetimes of
our clothes. A further argument is that the slowness of making offers
benefits in terms of sustainability because it slows consumption and also
builds emotional attachment, which prompts us to keep wearing our
homemade items over an extended period. For Rosie Martin, who facilitates
amateur fashion making through her company DIYcouture, this slowness is
an important goal. She explains: ‘DIYcouture hopes in a small way to slow
down the process of consumption, helping people to produce long-lasting
garments that are precious, rather than disposable.’43 The intrinsic rewards
associated with making and remaking present an important – though less
immediately apparent – argument; they contribute to well-being, which I
consider to be an important element of, and route to, sustainability more
broadly.

3. Bringing new life through darning.

A further way in which making can be said to contribute to a paradigm of
sustainability is by prompting critical thinking about the material world,
which can lead to a change in behaviour. Philosopher-cum-motorbike
mechanic Matthew Crawford, for example, argues that those who are ‘able
to think materially about material goods, hence critically, [have] some
independence from the manipulations of marketing’.44 David Gauntlett
suggests that ‘in making things you feel more engaged with the world and
more connected to your environments. And therefore, you are more likely
to care for that world, rather than being the sit-back, switched-off
consumer.’45 A related point is that when people learn to sew, knit and
mend they become more self-reliant, and therefore more resilient.
Resilience – ‘the ability of a system, person or community to tolerate and
adapt to significant shocks’ – is a central concept within the grassroots
Transition movement, which explores ways in which communities can shift
to more sustainable lifestyles.46 Geographers Chantel Carr and Chris
Gibson argue that making skills are crucial for resilience, explaining that
‘the ability to work with materials, and to make, repair or repurpose
physical things, are vital skills, for a future where such resources become
increasingly limited’.47
The final argument for folk fashion as a sustainable practice is perhaps the
most fundamental: that it provides us with an alternative way of
participating in fashion – and satisfying our human needs for identity and
participation – which is not dependent on buying ready-made clothes from
the dominant forces of the high street. Fashion writer Rachel Kinnard, for
example, suggests that ‘a culture of home-based clothing production […]
represents a genuine alternative to the mainstream fashion system’.48 On a
similar note, textile researcher Emma Neuberg argues that the emergent
culture of making ‘marks a cultural shift in consumers’ attitudes by
challenging the individual’s relationship with passive consumerism and, in
particular, the consumption of mass-produced fashion’.49
But I must not get carried away: remember those tales of woe I heard from
many makers, frustrated by their failed projects and reluctant to wear the
things they had made? It is hard to believe that those pieces were treasured
and worn for many years; more likely, they were pushed to the back of a
cupboard and forgotten, just like an ill-advised purchase from the shops. If
we acknowledge – as we surely must – that the experience of making and
wearing folk fashion in contemporary culture is complex, then we have to
accept that the relationship between folk fashion and sustainability is
complex, too. In the following chapters I will attempt to get to grips with
the folk fashion experience; in Chapter 8 I will return to the theme of
sustainability, and see what new conclusions I can reach.

Notes

1Alan Dundes, ‘Foreword’, in Philip V. Bohlman, The Study of Folk Music

in the Modern World (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988), pp.
ix–x, p. ix.
2Stefan Szczelkun, The Conspiracy of Good Taste (London: Working Press,
1993), p. 3.
3Lou Taylor, ‘State involvement with peasant crafts in East/Central Europe
1947–97: the cases of Poland and Romania’, in Tanya Harrod (ed.),
Obscure Objects of Desire: Reviewing the Crafts in the Twentieth Century
(London: Crafts Council, 1997), pp. 53–65.
4Jeremy Deller and Alan Kane, Folk Archive: Contemporary Popular Art
from the UK (London: Book Works, 2005), p. 2.
6Joanne Entwistle, The Fashioned Body: Fashion, Dress, and Modern
Social Theory (Cambridge: Polity, 2000), p. 45.
7Ingrid Loschek, When Clothes Become Fashion (Oxford: Berg, 2009).
8Entwistle, The Fashioned Body, p. 48.
9Elizabeth Wilson, Adorned in Dreams: Fashion and Modernity (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1987), p. 3.
10Kate Fletcher, Craft of Use: Post-Growth Fashion (Abingdon: Routledge,
2016), p. 185.
12Accounts of folk fashion practices in the past include: Catherine Cerny,
‘Quilted apparel and gender identity: an American case study’, in Ruth
Barnes and Joanne B. Eicher (eds), Dress and Gender: Making and
Meaning in Cultural Context (Oxford: Berg, 1992), pp. 106–20; Angela
Partington, ‘Popular fashion and working-class affluence’, in Juliet Ash and
Elizabeth Wilson (eds), Chic Thrills: A Fashion Reader (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1992), pp. 145–61; Cheryl Buckley, ‘On the
margins: theorizing the history and significance of making and designing
clothes at home’, Journal of Design History 11/2 (1998), pp. 157–71; Carol
Tulloch, ‘There’s no place like home: home dressmaking and creativity in
the Jamaican community of the 1940s to the 1960s’, in Barbara Burman
(ed.), The Culture of Sewing: Gender, Consumption and Home Dressmaking
(Oxford: Berg, 1999), pp. 111–28; Rachel Moseley, ‘Respectability sewn
up: dressmaking and film star style in the fifties and sixties’, European
Journal of Cultural Studies 4/4 (2001), pp. 473–90; Sarah A. Gordon,
‘“Boundless possibilities”: home sewing and the meanings of women’s
domestic work in the United States, 1890–1930’, Journal of Women’s
History 16/2 (2004), pp. 68–91; Marcia McLean, ‘“I dearly loved that
machine”: women and the objects of home sewing in the 1940s’, in
Maureen Daly Goggin and Beth Fowkes Tobin (eds), Women and the
Material Culture of Needlework and Textiles, 1750–1950 (Farnham:
Ashgate, 2009), pp. 69–89.
13Further discussion of my making-based methodology can be found in:
Amy Twigger Holroyd, ‘Folk fashion: amateur re-knitting as a strategy for
sustainability’, PhD thesis, Birmingham City University, 2013. Available at
bit.ly/folk-fashion (accessed 7 October 2016); Emma Shercliff and Amy
Twigger Holroyd, ‘Making with others: working with textile craft groups as
a means of research’, Studies in Material Thinking 14 (2016), Paper 07, pp.
3–17. Available at
materialthinking.org/sites/default/files/papers/0176_SMT_V14_P07_FA.pd
f (accessed 5 May 2016).
14Michel Avital, ‘The generative bedrock of open design’, in Bas van Abel,
Lucas Evers, Roel Klaassen and Peter Troxler (eds), Open Design Now:
Why Design Cannot Remain Exclusive (Amsterdam: BIS Publishers, 2011),
pp. 48–58, p. 51.
15David Gauntlett, Making Is Connecting (Cambridge: Polity, 2011).
16Julian M. Allwood, Søren Ellebaek Laursen, Cecilia Malvido de
Rodriguez and Nancy M. P. Bocken, Well Dressed? The Present and Future
Sustainability of Clothing and Textiles in the United Kingdom (Cambridge:
Institute for Manufacturing, University of Cambridge, 2006). Available at
ifm.eng.cam.ac.uk/resources/sustainability/well-dressed/ (accessed 6
October 2016).
19Allwood, Laursen, Malvido de Rodriguez and Bocken, Well Dressed?.
20Andrew Brooks, Clothing Poverty: The Hidden World of Fast Fashion
and Second-Hand Clothes (London: Zed Books, 2015).
21Dominic Fenn (ed.), Key Note Clothing and Footwear Industry: Market
Review 2010, 13th edn (Teddington: Key Note, 2010).
22Allwood, Laursen, Malvido de Rodriguez and Bocken, Well Dressed?.
24Euromonitor, Apparel and Footwear in the United Kingdom: Industry
Overview (London: Euromonitor International, 2015).
25Elizabeth L. Cline, Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap
Fashion (New York: Penguin, 2013).
26Tim Jackson, ‘Live better by consuming less? Is there a “double
dividend” in sustainable consumption?’, Journal of Industrial Ecology 9/1–
2 (2005), pp. 19–36.
27Fletcher, Craft of Use.
28Jackson, ‘Live better by consuming less?’.
29Grant D. McCracken, Culture and Consumption: New Approaches to the
Symbolic Character of Consumer Goods and Activities (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1990), p. 74.
30Daniel Miller, Stuff (Cambridge: Polity, 2009), p. 5.
31Lucia A. Reisch, ‘Time and wealth: the role of time and temporalities for
sustainable patterns of consumption’, Time & Society 10/2–3 (2001), pp.
367–85.
33Kate Fletcher and Lynda Grose, Fashion & Sustainability: Design for
Change (London: Laurence King, 2011), p. 5.
34Gro Harlem Brundtland, Our Common Future: Report of the World
Commission on Environment and Development (1987), p. 41. Available at
un-documents.net/our-common-future.pdf (accessed 6 October 2016).
35John R. Ehrenfeld, ‘Searching for sustainability: no quick fix’,
Reflections: The SoL Journal 5/8 (2004), p. 8.
36John R. Ehrenfeld, Sustainability by Design: A Subversive Strategy for
Transforming Our Consumer Culture (New Haven: Yale University Press,
2008), p. 49.
37Jackson, ‘Live better by consuming less?’, p. 25.
39Beverley A. Searle, Well-Being: In Search of a Good Life? (Bristol:
Policy Press, 2008), p. 4.
41Carol D. Ryff and Corey Lee M. Keyes. ‘The structure of psychological
well-being revisited’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 69/4
(1995), pp. 719–29.
42Manfred Max-Neef, ‘Development and human needs’, in Paul Ekins and
Manfred Max-Neef (eds), Real-Life Economics: Understanding Wealth
Creation (London: Routledge, 1992), pp. 197–213, p. 204.
43Rosie Martin, How to Make a Cloak (London: Street Stroke Hothouse
Press, 2010), p. 3.
44Matthew Crawford, The Case for Working with Your Hands: Or Why
Office Work is Bad for Us and Fixing Things Feels Good (London:
Penguin, 2009), p. 18.
45David Gauntlett and Amy Twigger Holroyd, ‘On making, sustainability
and the importance of small steps: a conversation’, Conjunctions:
Transdisciplinary Journal of Cultural Participation 1/1 (2014), p. 13.
Available at http://dx.doi.org/10.7146/tjcp.v1i1.18602 (accessed 6 October
2016).
47Chantel Carr and Chris Gibson, ‘Geographies of making: rethinking
materials and skills for volatile futures’, Progress in Human Geography
40/3 (2016), pp. 298–9.
49Emma Neuberg, ‘Foreword’, in Melanie Bowles and the People’s Print,
Print, Make, Wear (London: Laurence King, 2015), pp. 6–7, p. 6.
References
1. Perlego eReader (ereader.perlego.com)