Close up to clothes

[Boyd Roberts]

March 2012

Earlier in the month I attended a meeting on global education at which the keynote speaker was Lucy Siegle, a journalist on ethical living for The Observer, broadcaster and author of To Die for: Is Fashion Wearing Out the World? Lucy spoke about the complete chain from the source of the fibres used for clothes (including the way in which natural fibres are grown or produced), through production (what work is involved in making clothes; how this is done, whether by hand or machine; conditions of workers) to disposal – and the alarming amount of clothing that is simply sent to landfill in the UK rather than being reused or recycled.

There is a great deal of information out there about how clothes are produced  – with varying degrees of accessibility to school age students. And exploring the whole background to clothes can be a productive exercise – although it could take a lot of time.

I asked Lucy what she would do with students if she had just 30-60 minutes with them. She suggested that they should carefully look at their clothes – perhaps it would be easier to look at clothes they are not wearing.

• Look at the fibres and try to be clear what their clothes are made of – magnifying glasses or simple microscopes could be hand here.

• Think about the processes that must have taken place to process the fibres – including harvesting, cleaning, dying, weaving – and how these would be done.

• Look at how the clothes are actually made – cutting, sewing, addition of buttons, embroidery etc – and consider how this would have been done -  whether by machine or by hand.

• How much do their clothes cost? Of that cost where does the money go? How much to the fibre producer; how much to those making the clothes; how much to the retailer etc. ?

•  Think about what they will do with their clothes when they have finished with them.

There is plenty of scope to take this much further, with research etc, but a simple exercise like this may make them more aware of the resources and work involved in producing clothes. It may encourage them to take them less for granted; and perhaps to be more careful in how they use their clothes, less prepared to throw away clothes that could be reused or recycled.