Senorita AweSUMO
Grey Sheep
Location
dunedin / new zealand
University
Otago Polytechnic School of Design
Fiona Clements. Pakeha, Kai Tahu, Clan Gordon, Craftivist, Zerowaste Textile Practitioner.
I grew up in Waitati, Dunedin. Connected closely with nature and environmentally minded, my beliefs are reflected in my textile design.
Senorita AweSUMO is my response to workplace related harm. Re-examination of my own beliefs and experience took myself and Senorita AweSUMO into a new phase of life, growing a holistic lifestyle, nurturing and nourishing the whole.
I believe that designers can serve their community by providing solutions to problems. Witnessing the amount of waste created in commercial fashion production, I set about creating a solution.
An opportunity to create unique garments and provide a local solution to a problem facing the fashion system globally.
Reducing waste without compromising style. My designs aim to mitigate environmental harm from modern fashion production. Up cycled garments minimise impact to the environment from disposable consumer items.
Utilising a textile resource recovered from landfill, commercial off cuts, and recycling centres, adding value to otherwise discarded materials.
Senorita AweSUMO empowers ethical and conscious consumers with unique environmental fashion.
Encouraging conscious consumption by spreading awareness and giving an environmental choice in clothing.
Global problem, Local solution.
Fiona is a voluntary member of the Permanent External Advisory Committee at the Otago Polytechnic School of Design.
Fiona was recently appointed to the Fashion Revolution working committee for Australia and New Zealand.
Senorita AweSUMO is a Fellowship 500 member of the Ethical Fashion Forum.
In 2015 Senorita AweSUMO received a Highly Commended from the Keep Dunedin Beautiful Trust for Promoting reusable fashion.
Fiona is also the Founder of Just Atelier Trust alongside Fiona Jenkin, we created this Trust because we felt the awareness surrounding ethical fashion and where our clothes are really coming from was missing from consumer society. We produce the Vogel St Party Fashion Show each year and run MEND/MAKE Awesome and Capsule Creation workshops monthly.
Zerowaste life in Design.
ZEROWASTE PHILOSOPHY
Designers should serve their community by producing solutions to problems.
Using fashions waste and utilising commercial off cuts, excess fabric and recovering textiles from landfills. By up-cycling and piecing together a global puzzle of growing resource consumption on a finite planet.
The current prevalence of 'fast fashion', and the commercial pressure to create quick to make, wear, and replace. This fashion system is very wasteful, and some factory conditions are unethical.
This emphasis is on low cost, rapid turn around, mass produced products and this makes for mass waste, with an estimated 8 - 30% of fabric discarded as waste in Cut Make Trim fashion systems.
A zerowaste philosophy looks towards a more holistic fashion system where consumers can have sustainable wardrobes, purchasing choices and becoming connected with our clothing again.
The zerowaste fashion system involves innovation and RISK design development. It incorporates many different ideas, styles and designs.
It means creating a collective manufacturing system, generating zerowaste patterns, understanding why we shop and how we use textiles. Teaching consumers how to make, mend, DO and tradition of craft.
