Free Online Sustainable Fashion Course
An excellent free course is Fashion and Sustainability: Understanding Luxury Fashion in a Changing World. This is a course co-created by luxury fashion specialists and researchers in fashion and sustainability. It is based on the research, teaching and practice of Professor Dilys Williams, members of the Centre for Sustainable Fashion team, and Kering’s sustainability team. Anyone is able to sign for this course on FutureLearn and it is 100% free. At the end of the course, learners also have the options of obtaining a certificate of completion for a small fee.
Know your Organizations
Within this course, it explains the organizations who developed the course: The Centre for Sustainable Fashion and Kering.
The Centre for Sustainable Fashion (CSF) is a Research Centre based at London College of Fashion, University of the Arts London. Their commitment is to use fashion as driver for change, to make sustainable fashion and to improve the way we live.
Kering is a world leading global luxury group. It develops luxury houses in fashion, leather goods, jewelry and watches that include Gucci, Bottega Veneta, Saint Laurent, Alexander McQueen, and Balenciaga. These brands are encouraged to reach their full potential through the most sustainable fashion.
It’s Legit Like a Real Class
The course runs for six weeks and it aims in providing information from people working in fashion, fashion educations and learners that are interested in learning about sustainability in the fashion industry. The goal is to provide information about innovative sustainable fashion research and business practices in the luxury sector.
Professor Dilys Williams, Director of the Centre for Sustainable Fashion and Lead Educator for the course, explains the importance of sustainability. She states that we are not accounting for nature, and that:
“We're not accounting for the cost to society in these garments that we're wearing. We need to reconsider this notion of the accountability in financial terms. And this is something that the course is going to explore. So we're already finding in luxury fashion that some of the most precious resources that we draw on for making beautiful clothes are no longer available, or the quality isn't as high. Some of the silks, some of the precious animal hairs that we use to really create amazingly soft and beautiful pieces, these are maybe no longer going to be available to us. What's going to happen in the future?”
Know Your Terms
Within the course, you are also informed of critical terms to be aware of and of agreements affecting our earth. The following are excerpts of two main concepts to be aware of:
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are a collection of 17 shared values and global goals set out by the United Nations, and have been adopted by countries to end poverty, protect the planet, and ensure prosperity for all as part of a new sustainable development agenda. Each goal has specific targets to be achieved by the year 2030, and for the goals to be reached, everyone needs to do their part; governments, the private sector, civil society and people like yourselves.
Paris Climate Accord
The COP21 Agreement, which stands for the Paris Climate Accord is a deal that was created in December 2015 that united 195 of the world’s nations in a single agreement on tackling climate change for the first time in history. It is an agreement within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) dealing with greenhouse gas emissions mitigation, adaptation and finance with a roadmap finalised by the year 2020.
Sign up to learn more about sustainability in the fashion industry at FutureLearn!!!! The first week of the course began October 21st, 2019. This blog post was not sponsored and was only made to promote learning within sustainable fashion.
