Redressing Fashion: transforming the fashion industry
Amy Twigger Holroyd, Associate Professor
I am on a mission to transform the fashion system. The fashion industry is incredibly damaging, both environmentally and socially. By challenging the status quo and exploring sustainable alternatives, I believe that we can reinvent fashion to be a force for good.
My research journey
During my undergraduate degree in Fashion Design, I realised that I wanted to break away from the mainstream fashion industry, so I pursued an MA in Fashion and Textile Design, with a focus on knitwear. This degree allowed me to explore my unique ideas further, and upon graduating, I brought my vision to life by launching my own knitwear label.
I founded ‘Keep & Share’, a slow fashion knitwear label, designing and crafting pieces in a countryside studio. My work emphasised longevity, versatility, and a deep connection between designer, maker and customer. I sold my creations to individual customers and boutiques both in the UK and internationally, striving to promote a fashion philosophy rooted in craft production and sustainability.
I decided to do a PhD when the ideas I wanted to explore became too big for me to handle within my knitwear design practice. I wanted to examine the entire fashion system and its accessibility to individuals, particularly those interested in making their own clothes. Engaging with the emerging sustainable fashion movement put me in touch with academic researchers, making the transition to academia a natural progression.
Once I started my academic research career, I quickly realised that it was a perfect fit for me. Surprisingly, I found it even more creative and diverse than design, allowing me to delve into the broader implications of fashion and sustainability.
Today, I run a project called Fashion Fictions, which brings people together to imagine, explore and enact engaging fictional visions of sustainable fashion systems. My research explores the varied and amazingly creative visions that are generated, and how people respond to the ideas within them. Some participants bring with them specialist expertise in fashion and textiles, whilst others bring expertise which is just as valuable – simple experience gained from wearing clothes, day in and day out.
By envisioning new, sustainable futures for the fashion industry, the creative process helps participants break through conventional thinking and demonstrates that alternatives to the current unsustainable practices are possible. The project recognises that we need to use far fewer resources to create fashion systems that are environmentally friendly. These new systems will require changes in our social and cultural habits, our economies, and how we live with our clothes. Instead of making small adjustments to how we design and make clothes, we need to completely rethink how fashion shapes our identities.
Thousands of people from around the world have now taken part in Fashion Fictions, from Colombia to New Zealand and from South Africa to Singapore.
Find out more about the project .
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Amy Twigger Holroyd
Dr Amy Twigger Holroyd is Associate Professor of Fashion and Sustainability in the School of Art & Design. Through design-led participatory research, she explores plural possibilities for post-growth fashion systems: alternative ways of living with our clothes that meet our fundamental human needs and respect ecological limits.
Meet our researchers
Forget lab coats and research papers. It's time to get personal. Meet the people behind the research and uncover fascinating truths about their experiences.
