The man in the Arran sweater

Fashion’s elephant in the room is so obvious it’s often overlooked.

‘The relationship between fashion and consumption conflicts with sustainability,’ says Dr Kate Fletcher.

Kate, a sustainable fashion and textiles consultant who lectures at London College of Fashion, is one of those rare people who make you feel as if your brain is expanding as you speak to them and who has a lateral, idiosyncratic take on the thorny oxymoron that is sustainable fashion.

As she points out in her book, Sustainable Fashion & Textiles, we buy many more clothes than we need and the clothes we buy, ‘exploit workers, fuel resource use, increase environmental impact and generate waste.’ Her definition is that, ‘Sustainable fashion is about creating a strong and nurturing relationship between consumer and producer.’

Her latest project, kicking off on 6 June, is a sustainable fashion photo shoot using ordinary people. Called Local Wisdom, people are invited to turn up (between 10 and 4 at Birdwood House, 44 High St, Totnes if you want to go) to tell the story of their outfit and be photographed. The catch is that the garment must be sustainable in some way; for instance, it’s shared between people, it’s never been washed, it links you with the natural world or perhaps it’s enjoying a third, fourth or fifth life.

‘It’s a classic piece of performance,’ says Kate, ‘but what I’m trying to do is make sustainability real to people, to make them see it as fantastic and show that sustainable fashion can be empowering and transforming.’

Her first model is a man wearing a hand knitted Arran jumper inherited from his father-in-law and shared with his wife, who wears it in the garden. It has never been washed and he says,

I’ve shrunk a lot of things over the years and it would also lose its fantastic smell – a mix of fresh air and wood smoke. It’s like part of the family. I could never throw it away.

The event will be followed by one in Bollington on 5 July, and hopefully many more.

Kate’s own approach to sustainable fashion is admirably frugal. When we meet she is elegantly dressed in a Chartreuse Merino wool top by John Smedley (whose knitwear is made and sourced in Britain), dove-grey Vivienne Westwood shoes, which she says are unique, slow-designer pieces that she’s had for five years, and a wool skirt, plaid with quirky, tailored angles, from B-store, a shop she has such a close relationship with the assistants select items they think she’ll like.

She only buys one or two pieces a year and spends a long time choosing exactly what she wants. ‘I’m wracked with guilt if I buy more,’ she says. ‘I have plenty of clothes so I put some of them away, then get them out later, look at them with fresh eyes and rework them.’ She adds, ‘Fashion is very important to me, I have a real passion for clothes, so I’m trying to find a new way for it to work for me.’

Website links: for the book, Sustainable Fashion & Textiles go to www.katefletcher.com, for the event, go to www.localwisdom.info

Sanjida’s latest novel is The Naked Name of Love, published by John Murray. For more from Sanjida, go to www.sanjida.co.uk