Eco-chic: mastering sustainable fashion

Workshop overview

Workshop details

This engaging, hands-on workshop explores the environmental and societal impacts of fashion consumption, empowering students to adopt sustainable practices through upcycling.

Drawing insights from ABC's War on Waste, we will examine the staggering volume of textile waste generated by fast and ultra-fast fashion, along with the industry's broader environmental consequences such as resource depletion and carbon emissions. Students will learn how to creatively transform old or unwanted clothing into unique, eco-friendly pieces using basic sewing techniques and DIY methods.

The workshop aims to inspire a shift towards conscious consumption by providing practical tools and fostering a mindset of sustainability, creativity, and waste reduction in everyday fashion choices.

Students (and teachers!) are welcome to bring their own item of clothing to work with.

Curriculum links

Year 9 & Year 10

Design and Technologies

• Analyse how people in design and technologies occupations consider ethical, security and sustainability factors to innovate and improve products, services and environments (AC9TDE10K01)
• Analyse the impact of innovation, enterprise and emerging technologies on designed solutions for global preferred futures (AC9TDE10K02)
• Analyse and make judgements on how characteristics and properties of materials, systems, components, tools and equipment can be combined to create designed solutions (AC9TDE10K06)
• Analyse needs or opportunities for designing; develop design briefs; and investigate, analyse and select materials, systems, components, tools and equipment to create designed solutions (AC9TDE10P01)
• Apply innovation and enterprise skills to generate, test, iterate and communicate design ideas, processes and solutions, including using digital tools (AC9TDE10P02)
• Select, justify, test and use suitable technologies, skills and processes, and apply safety procedures to safely make designed solutions (AC9TDE10P03)
• Develop design criteria independently including sustainability to evaluate design ideas, processes and solutions (AC9TDE10P04)

Year 9

Economics and Business

• How economic decision-making involves the interdependence of consumers, businesses, the financial sector and government (AC9HE9K02)
• Processes that businesses use to create and maintain competitive advantage, including the role of entrepreneurs (AC9HE9K04)
• How individuals and businesses manage consumer and financial risks and rewards (AC9HE9K05)

Year 10

Economics and Business

• Factors that influence major consumer and financial decisions, and the short- and long-term consequences of these decisions (AC9HE10K03)

Year 11 & 12

Design

• Unit 1: Stakeholder-centred design
  • Recognise divergent thinking is used to create a wide range of choices in the develop phase
  • Propose design concepts that best satisfy the design criteria
  • Use illustrations with annotations or spoken notes to visually communicate design proposals to audiences
• Unit 2: Commercial design influences
  • Analyse the economic, social and cultural factors that influence how designers respond to the expectation of clients
  • Analyse how designers and design styles have influenced changes in the economy, society and culture
• Unit 4: Sustainable design influences
  • Recognise that sustainable design is influenced by decisions at a local, national and global level and is an approach to designing that seeks to support human wellbeing indefinitely while balancing the impact of economic, social and ecological sustainability
  • Analyse unsustainable design approaches that focus on a linear take, make and dispose model
  • Recognise that designers need to consider the whole life cycle of potential products, environments and services
  • Recognise how design decisions contribute to planned obsolescence (to artificially limit the useful life), which is a key strategy in increasing consumption and economic growth

Fashion

• Unit Option A: Fashion designers
  • Apply knowledge and understanding of fashion practices, including workplace health and safety, sustainability, ethics, designing, production, marketing and communicating with clients
  • Investigate fashion types: fast fashion
  • Select and demonstrate skills used in the fashion industry, such as elements and principles of design, including stages of the iterative design process; sewing, fitting and finishing skills; use of patterns, including making or adapting patterns
• Unit Option C: Slow fashion
  • Apply knowledge and understanding of fashion practices, including workplace health and safety, sustainability, ethics, designing, production, marketing and communicating with clients.
  • Investigate sustainability factors that affect the fashion industry; slow fashion vs. fast fashion; features of sustainable fashion; life cycle assessment (LCA) of garments; social, economic and environmental impacts of fast fashion locally and globally, e.g. sweatshop and child labour, factory disasters; differences between recycling and upcycling
  • Select and demonstrate skills used in the fashion industry, such as elements and principles of design, including stages of the iterative design process; sewing, fitting and finishing skills; use of patterns, including making or adapting patterns
  • Determine the sequence of processes to design and produce fashion garment/s that have been upcycled from preloved garments

Business

• Unit 4: Business evolution
  • Explain the interrelationships between sustainability, corporate social responsibility and strategies for a business in the post-maturity stage.

Cross-curriculum Priorities

• Sustainability: explores the knowledge, skills, values and world views necessary for people to act in ways that contribute to a sustainable future
  • Sustainably designed products, environments and services aim to minimise the impact on or restore the quality and diversity of environmental, social and economic systems
  • Creative and innovative design is integral to the identification of new ways of sustainable living
  • World views are formed by experiences at personal, local, national and global levels, and are linked to individual, community, business and political actions for sustainability