Fashion Future: are young people still interested in sewing and creating fashion?

Is fast fashion and technology brainwashing the youth of basic skills? And what can we do to help teach young people to make-do-and-mend?

Sewing is often seen as a hobby or skill for an older person, however, there are still many young people wanting to learn how to thread a needle.

Students from around the world flock to London each September to study with the hopes of being the next top fashion designer. 

The University Of The Arts London (UAL) has six different colleges scattered around the City each with its own reputation.One of its most prestigious is: London College Of Fashion (LCF). Situated on Oxford Street; LCF has been in the heart of the fashion capital for over one hundred years; however, they have plans to move Queen Elizabeth Park in 2022 as UAL goes through a big regeneration project. 

One of LCF's main values is: “Fashion can change lives. Through teaching, specialist research, and collaborative work, we empower our students to think differently, using fashion to examine the past, build a sustainable future, and improve the way we live.”

Not only does LCF provide undergraduate degrees and masters, but they also offer a wide range of short courses such as womenswear design or sustainable textiles, which are either online or on campus. These are a great way to heighten knowledge and learn new skills. 

Although many 18-21 year olds want to pursue a career in fashion and have spellbinding technical skills, how many people are taking up sewing as a hobby?

According to research conducted by the British Heart Foundation around 6 out of 10 of people don’t know how to sew a button which is costing them an estimated £120,000 over their lifetime. Why don’t people know these skills that we see as so basic?

Not many schools offer textiles anymore, meaning children aren’t having the chance to learn these essential skills. 

As children we love to create things, arts, and crafts and making masterpieces to show our family however, why does this end? Once we enter adulthood lots of creativity is drained from us, except the lucky few who slip through the net. The daily grind can boil us down to all think the same. 

We know some young people have an interest in sewing, this is evident in LCF applications. However, it's not even about having a passion and making every garment themselves- not even we do that! But, nearly 60 % of the UK population don’t know how to sew a button, this is quite an alarming statistic. This is not helped by fast fashion, which equates to near 200,000 tonnes of landfill each year, this industry is responsible for 10% of emissions. 

So what do we need to do? We need to encourage people to repair their clothes and not buy new ones. Encourage children to make clothes or accessories for their toys, to kick start the passion. We need to shop second hand and use our valuable skills to make old, new. The materials we use need to be ethical and eco-friendly such as using natural dyes, cotton or wool that is ethical and doesn’t harm the animal - or even better faux wool. 

We need to make sure that our invaluable skills don’t go out of practice.