State of Fashion x NewTexEco symposium ‘Ties That Bind’

Tuesday 21 May 2024 saw the symposium ‘Ties that bind’, a collaboration of NewTexEco, ArtEZ and State of Fashion. We welcomed 160 visitors, a diversity of companies, researchers and students from the fashion and textile industry. Connections between the global North and the global South were central to the programme. Starting with the question: how neutral are the terms global North versus global South? Sunny Dolat, Kallol Datta and Tanveer Ahmed reflected on this and challenged the audience to ask: do we judge decision-makers by their skin colour or by their representation of ‘global North’ versus ‘global South’ views?

The ‘Every dressing practices’ session leads to an audience discussion on how the actual practices of ‘sustainability’ (making things last) and waste management take place in the global South, using Kenya as an example. In the ‘Textile surgery’ session, dissecting garments proved to be an excellent format to talk about the material, cultural and historical properties of clothing. In conclusion, former textile factory manager Kim van der Weerd made it crystal clear why the textile production chain is so long, and how the costs and risks of fast leadtimes are disproportionately borne by the chain in the Global South. How does the industry come to change, how do we design new systems? One of the answers lies in more equally cooperative, transparent production chains.

The sessions were recorded and will soon be available via NewTexEco for anyone who wants to watch one of the sessions back.

Photographer: Koen Kievits