Nike alumna carves out zero-waste career
During one of the final presentations at Transformers ED UK, zero-waste design specialist and Nike alumna Danielle Elsener, founder of Decode, delivered an educational talk on zero-waste design principles.
Ms Elsener told the audience that an average of 15% of waste is generated at the cutting stage alone, meaning that zero-waste patterns can result in significant cost savings.
She described how dip-dyed indigo varsity jackets she created in collaboration with Settlemier saved the Portland, Oregon company around 13 inches (roughly 33 centimetres) of valuable fabric out of a single bolt, later working out that her process resulted in around 10 extra jackets being made.
On the design process, Ms Elsener cautioned that the elimination of waste should never compromise a design and advised that designers “should not just be adding waste to the shoulders of the wearer”, in terms of making smaller pieces of fabric ‘fit’ their final design (such as by adding patterns, for example).
Talking with fellow designer Mohsin Sajid, she described how she herself uses innovative fold techniques achieve more standard silhouettes following zero-waste principles.
Prior to the three-day event, Transformers Foundation released an in-depth cotton study, designed to root out what it described as “misinformation” in the industry.
Image: Danielle Elsener via Instagram (@decodecodecode)
