ARTIST STATEMENT
The concept centers around designers’ critical assessment of their own identities, backgrounds, access to resources, their position in the fashion industry, and the consequences of creating sustainably within a system that is built for exponential growth.
CAN WE CREATE TRULY SUSTAINABLE AND CIRCULAR PIECES?
Amounts that are produced, demanded, consumed, and discarded as opposed to what is being reused, disposed of, and repurposed, outweigh any sustainability effort. Currently, only 1% of second-hand textiles are recycled into new clothes (source). Even if we design for circularity, using sustainable materials and practices, there is yet no such infrastructure and consumer mindset to enable a second life of products and materials at scale.Hence sustainable fashion remains a paradox that cannot be solved by creating another collection.
SYSTEM
→
MINDSET
→
BEHAVIORS
→
SYSTEM → MINDSET → BEHAVIORS →
In other words, we cannot create solutions within the same dysfunctional system that imposed a problem, otherwise, we are caught up in a loop that may only end by self-destruction. Although thedesigners were provided with resources and sustainable materials sufficient for 10 outfits as part of their residency at VORN Academy, they decided to create a reduced phygical collection not intended for the commercial market, aspiring to spark meaningful conversations about the relationship between fashion, sustainability, and self-expression.
HOW MIGHT WE UTILIZE TECHNOLOGY TO TRANSFORM FASHION AND LOWER THE NEGATIVE IMPRINT IN A SYSTEM THAT IS DESIGNED FOR GROWTH?
Instead of obsessing over problems that might leave us paralyzed, we can pave the way to a paradigm shift by asking the right questions. HOOKED phygital collection presents an open reflection upon all the questions designers posed to themselves along the creative process, leaving them for spectators’ consideration and inspiration to think of the problem from another perspective.
IF THE BESTSELLING PRODUCT COULD SIMPLY BE DESIGNED BY AN AI, ARE WE EVEN NEEDED?
HOOKED Collective’s intention is to disseminate hope in non-competitive collaboration in fashion, the role of community, conscious participation, and observing one’s individual patterns that collectively brought the society to this point.