Thinking Textile Materials from Their Nature: Ethical Materials for Fashion Design with Technological, Social, and Aesthetic Sense

Abstract

This chapter aims at exposing the development of two research projects that started in 2016 at the University of Bogotá Jorge Tadeo Lozano, which are case studies of living laboratories. From them arise pieces of textile design and sustainable fashion following a systemic approach, by means of a methodology that includes recognition of the fibers, their material and its DNA, cultural analysis and re-signification, in order to establish a productive and ethical system within a mixed work methodology environment, a real articulation and transfer of information between community and academy. In so doing, product design cohabitates in the crossroad of social, scientific, and technological recognition and is thus integrated into a creative act of clothing design which in turn becomes a platform for dialogue that re-signifies culture and proposes product design with a socio-functional approach based on the work with the associated communities involved in the production of natural fibers such as silk, wool, mulberry, and rice starch.

Following a co-disciplinary approach for the softening and improvement of Creole sheep wool with peasant community, through the improvement in textile and fashion design with artisan community of silk in the department of Cauca, the silk nanostructuring for color change and luxury design, the characterization of antibacteriality in Creole sheep wool for functional fashion, and the generation of a biopolymer from rice, we were able to design living laboratories as co-disciplinary spaces that promote sustainability in fashion. In this way, in a country like Colombia, fashion can be thought of as a system with sustainability, local identity, and development that helps ameliorate the precariousness of the production conditions of rural communities, especially of women.