Kate Fletcher is a sus­tain­able de­sign­er, con­sul­tant, writer, and key opin­ion lead­er in fash­ion, tex­tiles and sus­tain­abil­i­ty. Her work has been at the fore­front of sus­tain­able de­sign in fash­ion and tex­tiles for the last fif­teen years. It has roots in in­ge­nu­ity, vi­tal­i­ty, care and re­source­ful­ness, and is fed by de­sign ideas and prac­ti­cal ac­tion. Kate Fletcher helped de­vel­op the con­cept of ‘slow fash­ion’, cham­pi­oning in­no­va­tive ap­proach­es to de­vel­op­ing sus­tain­able fash­ion prod­ucts and ser­vices. She holds a PhD from Chelsea Col­lege of Art and De­sign and is the au­thor of the book Sus­tain­able Fash­ion and Tex­tiles: De­sign Jour­neys (2008).

Topic: Fash­ion for Sus­tain­abil­i­ty

Adri­aan Beuk­ers is full-time Pro­fes­sor on Com­pos­ite Ma­te­ri­als & Struc­tures at the Fac­ul­ty of Aerospace Engi­neer­ing at Delft Uni­ver­si­ty of Tech­nol­o­gy and a part-time pro­fes­sor for Engi­neer­ing with Com­pos­ites at the Ma­te­ri­als De­part­ment of the Leu­ven Uni­ver­si­ty. In 2003 he be­came Vis­it­ing Fel­low of the Com­pos­ites Cen­tre of the Doshisha Uni­ver­si­ty in Ky­oto, Japan. In 2006 he was award­ed the ti­tle ‘The most En­trepreneuri­al Sci­en­tist of the Nether­lands’ by the Na­tion­al Board of Uni­ver­si­ties for the great num­ber of patent­ed in­no­va­tions and uti­liza­tions in his field. Beuk­ers’ ap­proach to ma­te­ri­als and struc­tures de­vel­op­ment high­lights the im­por­tance of us­ing min­i­mum ma­te­ri­al and en­er­gy to achieve the op­ti­mum phys­i­cal and me­chan­i­cal prop­er­ties pos­si­ble, with­out ne­glect­ing func­tion­al re­quire­ments. As co-au­thor of the books Light­ness (1998) and Fly­ing Light­ness (2005), he ad­vo­cates the study of na­ture’s or­gan­ic struc­tures as an in­spi­ra­tion for de­vel­op­ment of man-made poly­mer­ic ma­te­ri­als. Beuk­ers is on the ad­vi­so­ry board of the Light­ness Stu­dios that stim­u­lates de­vel­op­ment and ap­pli­ca­tion of lightweight struc­tures in co­op­er­a­tion with de­sign­ers, engi­neers and com­pa­nies.

Topic: Light Weight

Mark Liu is a Lon­don-based fash­ion and tex­tile de­sign­er who grad­u­at­ed from Lon­don’s Cen­tral Saint Mart­in Col­lege. He has worked as a free­lancer and con­sul­tant for fash­ion com­pa­nies such as Alexan­der Mc­Queen, Miss Sel­fridge and Ghost. He has used his ex­ten­sive ex­pe­ri­ence in the fash­ion in­dus­try and pas­sion for eco-sus­tain­abil­i­ty to push the bound­aries of fash­ion through in­no­va­tive tex­tile de­sign. By uti­liz­ing a unique cut­ting tech­nique de­signed to save 15 % of ma­te­ri­al on each gar­ment, Liu has come up with a so­lu­tion to re­duce wastage as well as pro­duc­tion costs. Liu en­vi­sions a fu­ture where in­no­va­tion and aes­thet­ics are driven by sus­tain­able de­sign: where eco-ef­fi­cien­cy cre­ates exquisite new prod­ucts for the con­sumer. He was re­cent­ly short­list­ed for the Fash­ion New De­sign­er of the Year Award.

Topic: Ze­ro Waste

Carolyn Strauss is the di­rec­tor of slowLab, a lab­o­ra­to­ry for 'slow de­sign' think­ing and cre­ative ac­tivism. She be­gan her pro­fes­sion­al ca­reer ex­plor­ing the so­cial and cul­tur­al in­ter­sec­tions of de­sign and tech­nol­o­gy. In 2001, Strauss turned her at­ten­tion to the grow­ing sus­tain­abil­i­ty de­bate in the de­sign field. In 2003, she found­ed slowLab to serve as a cat­a­lyst and re­source for de­sign­ers, artists and the pub­lic to ex­plore the prac­tices and po­ten­tial­i­ties of slow­ness as a cre­ative medi­um. Strauss al­so pro­motes slowLab's phi­los­o­phy and meth­ods through ex­ten­sive lec­tur­ing, teach­ing and cur­ricu­lum de­vel­op­ment at no­table mu­se­ums, con­fer­ences and aca­demic in­sti­tu­tions in the U.S. and Eu­rope. In 2008, slowLab opened an of­fice in Am­s­ter­dam to fur­ther its Eu­ro­pean pro­jects.

Topic: Slow De­sign-Slow Fash­ion