Crafting Knowledge: Examining historic textile practices and citizenship for sustainability

Our western present-day clothing culture is problematic. Clothing consumption have reached unsustainable levels which threatens the environment and the ecosystems of our planet (Directorate-General for Environment, 2022; EMF, 2017). A more resource-conscious clothing culture is needed. The needed change involves industry, but also citizens as their “micro-practices of everyday care and maintenance of clothing hold promise of ongoing, resourceful fashion provision and expression” (Fletcher & Tham, 2019, p. 37 based on Fletcher, 2016). On a similar note, textile citizenship, has been presented as a sustainability strategy of re-skilling citizens, industry and designers driven by, e.g., learnings from historic circular textile practices (CE-PT, 2021). As the concept and strategy has not been fully defined, this Ph.D. project aims to explore the meaning of textile citizenship through hands-on interactions with historic textiles.