rk considers place, community, and tradition. Her work is grounded in establishing connections and events that define shared experiences. She represents the tactility of these experiences through experimental wearable objects, textiles, system designs and interactive sculptures as a way to understand human interaction within the physical, political, social, and cultural environment.

Isabelle recently obtained her BFA in textiles and fashion design at NSCAD University. Isabelle’s work has been exhibited in Toronto, Halifax and Copenhagen. She has also conducted research projects investigating the future of fashion with KEA University, and has collaborated with a number of brands and organizations including Samsøe & Samsøe, Fashion Revolution and Threading Change. As the regional coordinator for Fashion Revolution Toronto, she has established a network of action-oriented and socially sustainable projects /exhibitions which deepen one’s connection to fashion, social responsibility and culturally relevant transformations. In her art practice she has created textile based design processes and solutions that establish connections to reinterpret textile production into a more holistic, environmentally and socially responsible industry. Creativity, equity, collaboration, and sustained empathy are the pillars of each of her projects.

Personal Details:
Isabelle Sain
Canada
[email protected]
+1 (416) 727-3565

Social media/website link: isabellesain.hotglue.me/?Title

Have you undertaken any sustainability education or training?: Yes, at ​​KEA – Copenhagen School of Design and Technology, BFA Sustainable Fashion, Exchange Semester

Your personal profile and motivations in applying to the Challenge:
Fashion is a force that is misunderstood and underestimated in its capacity for universal and connective power through a single idea or a collective of people. I believe it is the greatest influencer, with the right intentions it can be the vehicle for solutions to our social, economic and environmental issues plaguing the world today. There have been times where I have also questioned why I have such an inexplicable bond to this form of expression and the negative influences it has on the world. But this aspect makes me more determined to pursue a career in the industry in order to change the problematic dynamics. As an interdisciplinary Canadian artist and sustainable fashion advocate, I interact with sustainable strategies for the fashion industry and provide platforms which are responsive, innovative and creative.

The focus of my work is visually invoking raw effortlessness in clothing of the human body, while creating engagement and exploring processes with alternative textile materials to create experimental forms. I am redefining alternatives to the fashion system and aim to redefine fashion’s socio-cultural, environmental and political developments in contemporary society. Furthermore, all my work, fashion related or not, is a documentation and exploration of fashion beyond the cloth. If you look at everything around you, the languages, interactions, networks and spaces there is fashion, just not always made of the same fabric. By focusing and exploring on the process of material I am aiming to redefine the role that fashion plays. I conceptualize and focus critically on impact as well as look at developments in materials. There is a need today to find alternatives and disrupt the harmful practices of the fashion industry. My work consists of traditional textile materials as well as unconventional and readymade materials.

There is no doubt that there needs to be a shift in the fashion industry and I believe that my Fashion Values Challenge response will dynamically shift sustainable development and will provide me the framework to develop my concept into a tool that can challenge the current system. This program will allow questions to be posed regarding the fashion industry today: How should fashion be organized? How can collaboration build a stronger revolution? What spaces can we create? Fashion is not a simple but rather complicated system with great influence universally and, if created with the right intention, fashion can help move toward an equitably social, political, economic and cultural world. Furthermore if given the opportunity, I will create conceptual design, while having a deep interaction between the wearer, the object and the world it is brought into.

Your current educational institution:
I am a recent graduate from NSCAD University with a BFA in Fashion Design and Textiles.

Have you been nominated to apply? If yes, who nominated you?: No

3. About your idea

Redressing the Classroom: Transforming Value Creation

Description of the idea:
The industry's engagement with communities must come from a foundation of exploration, care, collaboration and creativity. My idea is developing a sustainable education program for brands so that they will be uniquely positioned to enrich sustainable systems and provide an exploratory stage of unlearning, relearning, co-learning as the site for a regrowth model. The program involves connectivity and cooperation with other brands, organizations and supply chain partners. This will pivot different brands’ teams to reflect on the gaps and areas that need meticulous care and focus within the business model from the lenses of economic, social and environmental sustainability.

A detailed description of your idea:
Fashion is a system that is based on relationships and conversions. The current industrial fashion system exists to uphold power and profit. Its dominance has resulted in a world obsessed with overproduction and overconsumption, built on the exploitation of land and labor, while wealth and power are concentrated into the hands of a few. Degrowth, although a holo-opposition to our current culture, is a space that at large remains theoretical. Degrowth calls for agency in expansively reimagining approaches and practices to slow our overall consumerist metabolism, because of the environmental and social implications. Social Sustainability is necessary for the degrowth model, meaning redistributing the finite resources we have depleted, meeting the basic and necessary needs for humanity and lastly focusing on wellness and social solidarity. There are cross functional issues within brands spilling over into the world at large and we are in desperate need of a degrowth model connecting planetary well-being and human justice. We need brands to re-learn, un-learn and co-learn with a curriculum that is connected to the people, and which is grounded in social justice and empathy; something that extends understanding of repercussions and of the challenges of the cycle of design, make and sell.
This system design demands an additional stage called exploration, where relearning, empathizing and research is the foundation. A sustainable curriculum geared towards organizations provides the necessary critical thinking to respond to social and environmental sustainability in order to solve the stagnancy of systemic progress. This sustainable education program will reflect the needs of the brand while encompassing their social, cultural and economic impacts through wellness, pedagogy and care. The curriculum programming consists of three components: Design, Connections and Response with cross-functional teams. Design dissects why we must redesign our systems and practice radical, restorative and regenerative sustainability. Connections connect brands and supply chain partners through the program to strengthen their relationship between people, nature and species. Connections are observing current sustainable practices, building partnerships, fostering cooperation with other organizations and reuniting with craft and nature. Lastly, Response is our future plans and leaning into visions. In this unit we are connecting the current goals and aims like the SDGs, the framework developed at COP as well as internal organizational ESGs. Response is concerned with the examination of our current structures and how we can integrate the theoretical sustainable learning into design, strategic planning and overall OKRs. The program formula is transforming business models where stakeholder engagements, cross functional supply chains and systemic issues will be covered from surrounding the industry from the origins of the industrial revolution and fashion colonialism. As a system design and business model shift, we are transforming the concepts of education as attestation to the de-growth model and build off of research and Indigenous knowledge to integrate empathy, collaboration, equality and creativity into the brand’s business model.

Have you been nominated to apply by your institution?
No

Project stage:
This Project is in its Concept Stage.