Clothing Controversies? On how clothing has become issuefied – or not – in the everyday lives of young Danes

Fast fashion is becoming faster and more damaging to our planet. At the same time, we do see a surge in less natural resource-demanding production processes and consumption patterns (Niinimäki et al. 2020).

These developments prompt us to ask: Can the mundane practices of clothing carried by young Danes be understood as a case of material participation in the climate and environmental crises (Jungnickel 2021, Marres 2016)? When, where, how, and why? And how might such practices relate to other everyday concerns?

The empirical materials are worked up in a teaching-based research collaboration (Damsholt & Sandberg 2018) with The House of Sustainability Kolding (Bæredygtighedshuset Kolding), which is a hub for sustainability and green transitions established by Kolding Municipality in 2021. Together we – that is, students enrolled at the design master’s programmes at Design School Kolding (DSKD) and the design management master’s programme at University of Southern Denmark (SDU), researchers at DSKD, and professionals working at The House of Sustainability Kolding – will:

1) explore ethnographically how young Danes relate to and value their clothing;

2) enable the young Danes to act as co-analysts and co-designers of new and more sustainable clothing practices; and

3) scale the most promising of the new clothing practices.

We thus seek to extend Ethnology’s long-standing engagement with mundane clothing practices (Melchior 2021) by teasing out how current renderings of future climate and environmental crises enter into and – perhaps – transform how young Danes relate to and valuate (Heuts & Mol 2013) their clothing.