Designing for Multiple Expressions: Questioning Permanence as a Sign of Quality in Textiles

Abstract

Developing alternative materials and methods of production and recycling is crucial to achieving more sustainable, circular textile practices. In addition to these, a shift in how textiles are perceived may well be needed. Textile practice has long sought to create textiles that, regardless of their material or post-production treatments do not subsequently change in expression, eliminating the fading of colors and wearing out of materials. Questioning this in order to evaluate quality, durability, and aesthetics may open up for greater circularity through extending product lifetimes, and allowing change to be embraced rather than delaying the signs of aging. This paper presents work that challenges the notion of permanence as a sign of quality in textiles by shifting the focus towards creating textiles that are capable of developing different visual expressions over time. By examining the natural changes in color of materials in plain and Jacquard-patterned woven Riikka Talman is a PhD-Student at the Smart Textiles Design Lab at the Swedish School of Textiles at the University of Borås, Sweden. Her research explores how inherent changeable qualities could be embedded into textiles to create materials that change or evolve over different timespans, enabling the designer to tailor a more appropriate lifespan for both textiles and the artifacts made out of them. She's been working with how different materials can be combined with textile structures to create expressions that change over time or in use, challenging the notion of permanence as a sign of quality in textiles.

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“…by molding it into a series of forms that yield different sensorial properties . Material samples that change over time, such as mycelium-based composites (Parisi et al, 2016) and textiles that respond to environmental conditions (Talman, 2019) similarly support the notion of the swatch as a space of possibilities. These expanded definitions of the swatch enable it to act as a prototype, a malleable idea of what a material could be.…”