Re-thinking clothes lines

It is not a very well known fact, but most of the environmental impacts involved with textiles and clothing actually happens during the washing, drying and ironing stage, when we are living with textiles and caring for them.

Most focus is often placed on the production stage of textiles, whether its the pesticides involved with cotton production, or the water and energy usage during the weaving, spinning and finishing stages. But the cleaning and drying of our clothes and textiles needs to be re-considered, and requires some 'joined up thinking' by machine manufacturers, clothing designers and even psychologists.

There have been some recent campaigns such as Marks & Spencer's 'Wash at 30' campaign, which are helping to shift our domestic behaviors. But more needs to be done and the next focus by government and industry is apparently going to be on encouraging people to use line drying more, rather than tumble dryers.

How can we make line drying a cool thing to do?

I'm a big fan of line drying and have never used a tumble dryer. It helps that I love all the accessories involved in line drying like pegs and washing baskets - in Australia where I grew up, you even get a trolley on wheels which your washing basket slots into, so you can wheel it down to the clothes line at the bottom of the garden. Of course, in Australia, there is a trusty round clothes line in the back of every garden. But how do you encourage people to line dry in the UK, where the weather is not ideal, and not every one has accesss to outdoor space? 

At a recent Defra event on the environmental impacts of clothes cleaning, we workshopped some ideas. One idea would be that we need to redesign indoor clothes racks. Like those Victorian pulley-system ones that you secure to the ceiling to save space.  But someone needs to also offer some sleek and groovy ones, for other types of taste. It would also help to start to build in spaces in new homes for indoor line drying.

The main point I took away from the event was that trying to encourage sustainable clothes cleaning practices is all about behaviour change, and as I said above, will involve the collaborative know-how of the many different players involved.

Art and the everyday

For years, I've have had in my possession a magazine cutting of an amazing rural property in Pennsylvania. There was a rambling old house with several out-buildings and sheds, all semi-derelict but somehow being kept upright by the owners creative ingenuity, love and care. There were also all these wonderful semi-permanent tent structures which were comfortably stuffed full of beautiful vintage bed linens and antiques. It turns out that the owner of this property is the poetically named J. Morgan Puett, a fashion designer and artist, and the property is called Mildred's Lane, named after the last remaining owner who died there aged 87, having lived alone without electricity or running water.

Puett has now made the property into an 'artists colony' where many different artists come to live and collaborate together on projects, happenings and exhibitions. Working as a sort of big art project in itself, Mildred's Lane is an attempt to collectively create new modes of being in the world - whether its questions about our relationship to the environment, systems of labour, or forms of dwellings.

"As a participant at Mildred's Lane these issues will be negotiated through the rethinking of one's involvements with food, shopping, making, styling, gaming, sleeping, reading, thinking and doing".

I love the idea that the everyday is rich with meaning and can be a focal point to explore creativity, beauty and sociality. Upcoming projects include an experimental apiary developed with Puett and local bee keepers and a project exploring the land on the property through map making, gathering wild foods and explorations in constructing 'dwellings', both traditional and experimental.

Images: www.mildredslane.com

Craft production

Having talked alot lately about the growing interest in how things are made and how one could participate more in 'making' processes, it looks like some of the most interesting shows at the Milan Furniture Fair last week were 'making' events.

Craft Punk was a show of young designers, either alone or in small collaborative groups, who were involved in 'onsite' craft production.

Simon Hasan was boiling leather, apparently the way they used to do it medieval times, and wrapping the softened leather around objects and furniture.

Sarah Becker was stitching and 'customising' left-over remnants from the Fendi leather goods factory (Fendi were the sponsors of the show).

Studio Glithero were creating beautiful ceramics using a special light exposure technique which turned the white ceramic a deep blue, and using sprigs of flowers to create a silhouette. Aptly called 'Brief moments of happiness', the objects created were simple and poetic.  

Creating the work in-situ like this, reveals the slow, hands-on and experimental nature of craft production and offers a more low-fi and alternative vision to the normal products and events on show at such a major design festival.

Images: www.designboom.com