Lesson video

Hello and welcome to your first textiles lesson with me, Mr. Telfer, or Mr. T, as it were.

We are going to investigate and explore a range of different areas of fashion, textiles.

So, yeah.

Let's get our stuff together and let's just crack on.

So, today's topic, we're going to be looking at understanding fibres and fabrics, but our focus of the lesson is going to be the impact of fashion.

Now, we're looking at both positive and the negative impacts of fashion because there's got to be a equilibrium, there's got to be a balance.

Always talk about a balance, okay? So for today's lesson, you're only going to need your exercise books or something to write down in, and your pens or your pencils or wherever you feel comfortable with.

The keywords, which I want you to take down now please, are fashion, is fashion.

And fashion is the popular or the latest style of clothing or your own personal style as well.

That you can have your own personal fashion.

Materials, so that's the substance that goes into making fabric.

Cotton, wool, bamboo.

We're going to talk about that later on in today's lesson and in your next lessons.

And the environment, that's the natural world that we're living in, and that we're impacting or affecting.

Okay, so moving on, what we're going to explore in today's lesson is something called fast fashion.

Going to look at the impact of fashion on the world that we're living in.

And we'll look at sustainability, and then we're going to look at your role in changing the world.

What impact can you have on changing the world? So fast fashion, has anyone ever heard of fast fashion? Well, I hadn't either, to be honest, but fast fashion is a buzzword, that's come around and you know it's used in retail stores more than anything.

So I don't think I'd use it 'cause I don't work in a retail store, but it describes inexpensive clothing that comes in and comes out of fashion, you know, ever so often.

So if you think about when you see a famous model on the catwalk and she's got her nice clothes on or he's got his nice clothes on, and then next week you see something very similar in the shops and can buy for less than a tenner, that is fast fashion.

Now you might not be interested in fashion, you might not really care.

You might just be happy to be putting on whatever you want to put on and one up and down.

That is fine, bit like me.

You might not like to go clothes shopping, bit like me.

But we can't avoid it.

We have to wear I think it's almost a bigger requirement that we wear clothes in the public, maybe.

But yeah, so we need clothes, we can't avoid it.

Now my last question, just before we move on when I was younger, fashion there was typically how many seasons, how many fashions seasons do you think there would be? There was four.

Winter, spring, summer and autumn.

That was it.

That was your winter collection, summer collection, da, da, da, da, da.

But in today's world, the world that you are growing up in, how many fashion seasons do you think there are now? So think about what we just said about fast fashion how it's trending over time.

How many seasons do you think there are now? Shout out your answers quickly, let me hear.

Right, so if you said 52 you was correct.

Okay, so near or on every week, there's a new fashion come out.

They're calling it a micro-season.

So what's in this week might not be in next week because some influencer on the Gramme or on TV has worn something or endorsed something.

So yeah, micro-seasons, who'd have thought about them.

So here's another question for you then, if there are 52 micro-seasons a year, Yeah, how much clothing do you think is made globally like around the world? If there's 52 micro-seasons, Hmm, so more than a hundred billion items of clothing are made each year around the world.

That is a lot of, I can't comprehend.

A hundred billion, don't know what it looks like.

But I know there's less people than that, so there's only 7.

7 billion people in this world.

So like a good teacher I am, I'm going to give you a little maths question.

So if you've got a hundred billion items of clothing, and we've got 7.

7 billion people, how many items of clothing does each person have? I'll give you the numbers.

So that's what a hundred billion looks like.

And that's what 7.

7 billion looks Pause the video, work out the answer, and I'll see you in a sec.

So there you go.

I rounded it up.

13 is your answer.

13 items of clothing per person.

So I don't know about you, but me personally I have bought more than 13 items of clothing this year.

Definitely.

And just imagine how many items of clothing some people get bought as well for their birthdays or Christmases, or even for religious ceremonies as well.

You know, so we all have different amount of clothing.

So have a little think about how much items you've possibly earned over the last year as well.

Probably more than 13.

Now what I'd like you to do is complete this quick task.

On the next slide there is a table that you can use to copy and fill in.

What I would like you to do is to to your room and count all the items of clothing you've got.

Socks, underwear, hoodies, any religious or ceremonial items, caps, bags.

Complete the chart and see how much items of clothing you've got.

You're probably going to get a surprise.

I'll see you when you get back.

So have you ever thought about the journey that your clothing makes from the beginning to the end? Like from where it was actually started from to how it got into your bedroom? No, I don't really, to be honest, it's not very often I think about it, but because of you, I am.

So what I've done, I've thought about some of my favourite clothing and put together a little idea of its journey.

Well so, the cotton was picked in America.

The cotton then had to get to Cuba to be turned into an actual fabric.

You know, the sheets of material for it to be used.

From then, that ends up getting shipped to England to a little place in London or Savile Row, where it got tailored and made into the jacket that it was.

And now that jacket is sold throughout Europe.

Probably throughout the globe to be honest, but definitely throughout Europe.

So you can see my journey started from United States, travelled through the Caribbean, into the UK, and then throughout Europe.

There's a lot of people along that journey.

So what I want you to do at the moment is just think about an item of clothing that you've got.

And at least how many people do you think was involved in that item of clothing getting to you? Pause the video, write down a list of people you think is involved, and I'll see you in a moment.

Welcome back.

Be interesting to see who you wrote down.

So I thought about people like the retail assistants, you know, the people who are in the shops every day making sure we get the garments we want.

At the beginning of the journey we had the farmer, all the guys who pick the cotton or the silk or the bamboo.

We've got the people who work in the warehouses and the factories who need to clean and process all the materials.

We've got to find the couriers as well, the pilots, the shipmen, people who are transporting these goods all around the globe daily.

And also, as I think about you're home now, and you're doing your online orders you know There's got to be people working in the warehouse to make sure those orders are there.

So there's got to be some person at the computer, there's got to be a person to pick it, and also you've got to have a postman for bringing it over.

So postman's involved as well.

Didn't think about that, did we? So this is all a positive because you can see that fashion opens up a world of industries where people can start working and maintain a job.

Great, but unfortunately as well, there is some negative impacts along the way.

Clothes that go to waste end up in landfills, and throughout the globe, that's 350,000 tonnes of wasted material just rotting in the ground.

In some parts of the world, you know where their factories are a bit unregulated, so to say, chemicals and toxins are dumped in the rivers and the lakes and the streams and that's obviously going to have a harmful effect on wildlife and humans who probably rely that water to drink.

Transportation as well.

When clothing's being moved around the world, you know, we've got aeroplanes , ships, big lorry vans, lorries or vans, but all those fossil fuels being burnt, the petrols, the diesels.

Maybe if you've got a coal train, I dunno, but all those fuels are going back into the ozone giving us harmful emissions as well.

And lastly, there's some ethical issues as well.

Now, some materials like leather, for example, you know, some animals get killed for their skin, fox, oxtails.

Now I'm not really, you know hunting and killing animals is not right, it's not fair.

It's my opinion, but it's not acceptable.

So that's the ethical issue and that's how fashion can be damaging the world as well.

Now, here are the tasks that I want you to do.

Is to think about your favourite item of clothing, and I want you to think about the positive and negative impacts on the environment that it's had along the way from where it was first picked, as a fabric, to how it ends up in your possession.

Okay, now pause this video, write about the journey of your favourite item of clothing and identify its impact on the environment.

So now I want to us to have a quick look at functional textiles or functional fabrics.

Has anyone ever heard of these things before? No, basically a functional textile or a functional material is a material or a product or item that's been designed with a specific requirement in mind.

So if we looked at sport, for example, going to use the example of football, I could think about the keepers gloves.

They're designed with stiffer materials to protect your wrists and your fingers, and also to offer extra grip for the grabbing the ball.

Whereas the football boots that the players are wearing were very lightweight material, Your bags and your sportswear might be made out of what materials or materials that keep you warm or dry.

In the house, you know, you've got textiles all around, but some you might not have thought about are the first aid, you know, your plasters or the wound dressings, they've got their functions.

And also if you've got pets, you might have some products that are made out of different functional materials as well.

For the animal's claws or their smells.

Ooh, in particular, ooh.

Now PPE, it's not something you're going to have every day.

But there are definitely functional materials.

Thinking about bulletproof materials or waterproof, or even fire-resistant materials which you definitely have in your house somewhere.

And last but not least, where I spend most of my time is in my car.

So my vehicle has got a lot of functional textiles also.

Now what I'd like you to do is either complete this brainstorm and add onto it, or start your own brainstorm and think about how many different areas and items where textiles or materials can improve our life.

Like I said, you can use my ideas to start you off, or you can do your own from scratch.

Pause the video now, complete our task and I'll see you when you get back.

So welcome back to the next topic we're going to look at sustainability.

What better way to start than with a little true or false question.

So we've looked at fast fashion already, remember, so sustainable fashion is called slow fashion.

True or false? Whoo.

It's true.

Okay, so slow fashion and sustainability that's about designing and making and buying our garments with better quality and longevity.

Remember, fast fashion is in and out, slow fashions, longevity.

Okay, make sense? Good.

So now we're going to have a quick introduction into the idea of sustainable fashion or slow fashion.

Now essentially it's a direct response to what fast fashion is.

And it can be called little things such as eco fashion or ethical fashion or even green fashion.

Now, before we dive into the answers I want you to have a little think about what this actually means to you.

So what do you think sustainable fashion looks like? Pause the video now.

Write your answers down.

And then we'll check in a moment.

So you may have wrote down some of these ideas, you know.

Slow fashion is quality over quantity.

So rather than create, you know, a hundred t-shirts, I might just create 10 really good quality shirts that are going to last a long period of time.

I might recycle my clothing or I could upycle or repair my clothing.

You know we said it's ethical fashion.

So I might be thinking wherever my clothes are manufactured, I want a safer environment, a healthier environment.

And I want people to get more better wages or fairer wages for what they're doing, whether that's farming or manufacturing, okay.

Supporting local makers and having a slower production scale.

So it's all opposes fast fashion, essentially.

Pause the video and write these things down if you haven't got them already.

And once you completed that we'll move on.

So now we're going to look at bamboo real quick as a sustainable fibre.

Now you think of bamboo and you think of those big green pieces.

It's actually grass, did you know that? It's from the grass family but bamboo is really actually quite hard.

So when you think about it being suitable for clothing, it's like, huh? Really? But the actual fibres of bamboo have got really really great material capabilities.

You know it's light, it breathes, you get absorbed moisture, it's great great stuff, it's a great material.

But that doesn't make it sustainable.

My question to you is, what does make bamboo sustainable? Pause the video now and write down some of your answers.

Okay, see you in a second.

So you may not known some of these things but bamboo is a fast growing grass.

I said that earlier, what it can grow in three months a tree might take 30 years to grow that size.

Amazing, it doesn't need any fertiliser, doesn't need any pesticides.

So there's no harmful chemicals in the ground around it.

And the farmer's not going to breathe in anything harmful or get it on his skin, which is good for the farmers.

It self-regenerates as well, bit like Wolverine.

So you can chop it down, it just keeps growing back.

You never have to go planting again.

Time-saving, amazing.

And lastly, bamboo is less costly to produce products and the products that are made from bamboo are biodegradable, which is great for the environment.

Winning.

So before I set you up on your last task, now, I just want you to have a quick think about how we can make positive changes and impact the environment that we're living in through textiles, through fabrics, through fashion, okay? So the first thing I'd like you to start thinking about is how we can recycle our clothing.

Rather than just throwing it out, we could actually genuinely recycle the material.

If your clothes are damaged, you know you've broken your zip or the buttons have popped off, it's easy enough for us to get them repaired rather than throwing it out and buying a new one.

If you was like me as well, I used to love it when my cousins used to hand me down their clothes.

They got some good designer jackets, and I'd be like, ooh, it was about 20 years old and too big but it didn't matter, points the same, you know? So you can hand down clothing to our younger people then and it's fine.

You can up-cycle your clothing as well, or textiles.

So it doesn't have to be clothes, it could be a pillowcase, could be bed sheets.

Could upcycle them and turn them into something that we're going to use more and more of each day.

You could also refuse to buy new clothing.

And you could reduce the amount of new clothing that you buy as well.

And you can start shopping at second-hand stores.

That's a bonus.

Save a bit of money, still get some nice clothes.

Also, it might be a bit tricky, it might be a bit pricey at first, but we should start supporting brands that promote sustainable clothing.

And there are some out there, if you look online, you'll find plenty.

And lastly we should start buying things that are made from organic cotton.

So this means the cotton's been grown without pesticides or fertilisers.

Which is then going to affect those cultivating it, and probably even irritate our skin, all right? So bearing all that in mind, what I'd like to do for your next task is demonstrate how you could improve your fashion footprint.

I'd like to identify some clothing that you've got at home or accessories that you don't use or don't wear and think about what you could do with it to help our world.

After that, I've got a couple of questions that I'd like you to answer, thinking about how textiles could be developed to help improve our daily life.

Pause the video now, use the next slide to help you.

And then I'll see you in a moment.

So we've reached the end of our first lesson, well done.

If you'd like to share any of the work that you've done today, online, please ask a parent or a responsible adult to be the one to do that for you.

Tagging us @OakNational on the Twitter and #LearnwithOak.

L, W, O, and I'll see you next time.