REFURBISH

This book is the result of a six-year partnership between Kopenhagen Fur and Design School Kolding. In this period of time we have accomplished ground-breaking results together: We have done pioneer work and created new knowledge through close collaboration between a team of design researchers and company employees that sets new standards for Danish education and the fashion industry. We have developed new formats for teaching circular economy and sustainability that will reach far beyond this partnership in the present and future education of fashion designers. We have demonstrated that virtues of craftsmanship and consumer awareness hold important keys to developing a more sustainable fashion sector. And we have explored and confirmed that the fashion industry has much to learn from the way in which fur is valued and appreciated throughout its value chain, from farm to design and from wardrobe to end of life.

We are convinced that the future will bring more focus on the types of resource management and care represented in the case of fur. Scarcity of raw materials and enormous problems associated with textile waste from the fashion sector will, no doubt, fundamentally change the fashion industry within the next decades. Together we have shown that the case of fur represents some of the solutions to these challenges – a culture of slowness and appreciation in which garments are designed with great care for materials and for consumers, and in which retail and services for prolonging the use phase go hand in hand. We have also shown that the case of fur stimulates debates about the relationship between design and nature that are significant and important to understand and discuss, if we are to build a more sustainable fashion industry for the future.

This type of collaboration between research institutions and industry partners is rare and therefore worth celebrating. The work presented in this book is created through an equal partnership with open knowledge-sharing and shared results. It is the sum of all the involved employees who have created it, and neither of us could have achieved these results on our own.
This effort stands on the shoulders of all the knowledge we represent together, and out of it came something new. This is why this book is called ‘Refurbish’ which literally means ‘modernise’, ‘renovate’, ‘restore’ or ‘alter the appearance of’.