International Journal of Film and Media Arts

Paradigm Shift for an Environmentally Conscious Tanning Sector

Roberto Liberi — 2024-06-21

The tanning industry has always been one of the sectors with the highest environmental impact due to CO2 emissions, the chemicals used and the huge consumption of water in production processes. But today, a paradigm shift is taking place whereby even the tanning industry is adopting low environmental impact production strategies and new communication channels to disseminate the social, environmental and economic values/objectives pursued by the tanning sector in response to a misperception of the leather production system by consumers.

Today, the largest fashion brands are shifting their attention to sustainable tanning production that focuses on a natural, vegetable-based tanning process that generates a metal-free and bisphenol-free type of leather/leather, and even biodegradable leather in some cases. The Solofra tanning district in Italy is one of the innovative districts in the sector, both creatively and in terms of research. It is precisely the constant research behind the production processes that has made it possible to arrive at a type of leather with a low environmental impact with qualities comparable to chrome-tanned leather. Furthermore, there are many companies that, in recent years, have experimented and perfected alternative materials with characteristics similar to those of animal skin but totally natural, obtained from plants, bacteria and fruit and vegetable waste. The path of evolution towards a conscious and sustainable tanning industry system is only at the beginning, but the paradigm shift is already underway.

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2024-06-21

Responsible Fashion - How Sustainability Approaches are Changing the Fashion Industries

Giovanni Maria Conti — 2024-06-21

Fashion is a complex field of research where innovation could be made both of deeper aspects such as production chain and of “superficial” aspects. Today fashion is not just synonymous with clothes or accessories; seen from another point of view, it playsan important role in the evolution of the culture of a given context. Poetry and attention to detail characterize the context where all Italian products are created. Due to the lack of important raw materials, Italians have since the dawn of time transformed their “know-how” and the care of know-how into a precious resource. In this sense, Italian design is full of examples, starting from small everyday life objects, perhaps of little significance, which stand out for their design, shape, and color, and which have become iconic.

The cultural context plays a crucial role today. While “global fashion” might not exist, a global issue impacting different cultures does instead - and this is precisely sustainability.

If sustainable fashion and ethical luxury, exactly antithetical to the concept of fast fashion, are now the center of a design way closer to man– worker, customer, etc. -, then we can say that the Made in Italy has always had the characteristics for fashion ethics. We believe that today, especially in Italy, much more attention is paid to the way a product is made: “fashion products”, as most products addressed to common people are usually defined, must prove a high level of care along their entire production chain: care to resources, care to their makers, care to their buyers.

Transmedia Costume as ‘Sustainable’ Costume? Blending Physical and Virtual Bodily Materialities

Sofia Pantouvaki — 2024-06-21

Combining tangible and digital means in costume design by merging live digital content with traditional costume materials opens new possibilities to create evolving performance dramaturgies and ‘unusual’ bodies. This article focuses on recent and ongoing explorations from the field of costume design for live and mediated performance that employ a combination of physical and virtual tools to design multi-layered characters and costumes. The study analyses experimental works that address questions of virtuality and materiality through the costumed body. Such works explore in practice ways in which the physical meets the virtual, and how art, body-oriented design, and performance-making merge and juxtapose with digital means through the medium of costume. The combination of analogue materials, digital technology and moving bodies can provide characters and costumes that can change and reshape over time, while also blending physical and virtual bodies. On a theoretical level, the article addresses the many dimensions and multiple ‘physicalities’ and ‘materialities’ that such costumes offer to the representation of human and non-/super-/post-human bodies and characters. The analysis suggests that the transmedia dimension embedded in the incorporation of physical and tangible materials with digital elements expands the materiality of the performing body and character and their interrelation through the(ir) costume. This creates a transmateriality resulting from the combination of materials, media and skin, that ‘traverses material substrates’ as expressed by Whitelaw (2012). The article aims to stimulate discussion on how digital tools may evoke new visions for costume design, and to propose that transmedia costume may carry a sustainability potential.

Bio-Jewelry, Sustainability and the Brazilian Jewelry Design: Reflections

Heloísa Dornellas — 2024-06-21

The impact of the production chain of conventional jewelry has reached alarming levels in recent years, especially the deforestation of the Brazilian Amazon region and the unregulated activity of mining companies. The consequent concern with human interference in the environment has influenced the change of paradigms in contemporary jewelry design, boosting what we know today as bio-jewelry. These are inserted in the “era of ecoresponsible creativity”, as called by Lipovetsky (2015), in which the ethical dimension of respect for the environment is added to product development projects in today’s world. Bio-jewelry is a product intrinsically linked to Brazilian culture, being considered an identity and heritage asset, with a sustainable appeal, valuing regional raw materials and the craftwork communities of Brazil. Taking this as the object of analysis, the present study has as a methodological basis the exploratory qualitative research, of descriptive character, through a literature review. Thereby, it was possible to point out the rise of bio-jewelry in the contemporary scenario. By joining natural elements richly found in the country, with noble materials, the creation of bio-jewelry with a differentiated design can be seen as an instrument of innovation and boosting in the national and international jewelry market.

Inclusivity in Fashion Design and Social Sustainability Finally Fashion Project

Alexandra Cruchinho — 2024-06-21

Finally Fashion is the concept that led us to carry out exploratory research, in a classroom context, to answer questions posed by creating new products. The questions reveal, as a starting point, a need for fashion design to intervene.

Finally Fashion stands for Finally Fashion and represents an ongoing search by a group of three wheelchair users with reduced mobility to find new products that are not unlike those usually found on the market and that follow trends. This social sustainability project seeks to include groups that, given their characteristics, are often on the margins of society in general.

The challenge was set by a group of Fashion Design and Production students from Lusófona University, who sought to adapt garments already on the market to the needs of this type of consumer.

In the first phase, the results were very satisfactory, and some of the questions raised regarding the project were resolved. However, they are still being studied for realising and testing prototypes later. The ideas proposed by the students were presented to the group (client), and essential input was received from the user to improve the proposals in the prototype realisation phase.

The students showed a very high level of interest in realising the project, which made it possible to show the broader scope and relevance of fashion design to the community from a perspective of inclusivity and social sustainability.