One X One: The Conscious Design Initiative Aims to Tackle Fashion’s Biggest Issues

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One x One is a conscious fashion initiative by Swarovski and Slow Factory Foundation support by the United Nations Office for Partnerships. It’s the first of its kind incubator project breeding cross-disciplinary collaboration to empower solution-based sustainable innovation. Supported with grants to promote emerging innovations, One X One: The Conscious Design Initiative aims to tackle fashion’s biggest issues– climate change, environmental degradation and social impact– within the framework of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals.

How are they doing it? First they’re looking at the three pillars of sustainability:

  1. Circularity

  2. Human-Centered Design

  3. Regenerative Technologies

    Under each of these pillars they’re pairing a designer with an expert in a specific area of sustainability to collaborate and innovate together.

Telfar Global X Theanne Schiros – Circularity

Designer Telfar Clemens and scientist Theanne Schiros will collaborate on a bag made from a “leather” substitute grown from bacteria. This partnership aims to recreate an iconic accessory using waste as a regenerative resource.

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Telfar Clemens is a Liberian-American designer and founder of his eponymous brand. He has spent the past decade showing collections that embody many ideas currently whirling through the zeitgeist: inclusivity, accessibility, equality, diversity and fluidity. He’s creating clothes and a business based on removing walls instead of building them.

 

Telfar Clemens is a Liberian-American designer and founder of his eponymous brand. He has spent the past decade showing collections that embody many ideas currently whirling through the zeitgeist: inclusivity, accessibility, equality, diversity and fluidity. He’s creating clothes and a business based on removing walls instead of building them.


Theanne Schiros PhD is Assistant Professor at FIT, where she teaches physics, chemistry and sustainability courses. She is the FIT coordinator and faculty lead for the international Biodesign Challenge, guiding students on how to rethink textiles through technology, biology and sustainable design.

 

Theanne Schiros PhD is Assistant Professor at FIT, where she teaches physics, chemistry and sustainability courses. She is the FIT coordinator and faculty lead for the international Biodesign Challenge, guiding students on how to rethink textiles through technology, biology and sustainable design.

Mara Hoffman X Custom Collaborative – Human Centered Design

Designer Mara Hoffman and workforce development program Custom Collaborative will create an advanced training program around various aspects of renewing garments. The goal of this partnership is to provide a case study for scaling the initiatives that both create job opportunities, which further women’s economic advancement, and contribute to circular models.

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Mara Hoffman is a New York designer whose brand focuses on sustainable materials, processes, and production in order to improve and extend each garment’s life, and lesson harm to the planet.

 

Mara Hoffman is a New York designer whose brand focuses on sustainable materials, processes, and production in order to improve and extend each garment’s life, and lesson harm to the planet.


Custom Collaborative is an entrepreneurship and workforce development program, founded by Ngozi Okaro, that trains and supports women from low-income and immigrant communities to launch fashion careers and businesses.

 

Custom Collaborative is an entrepreneurship and workforce development program, founded by Ngozi Okaro, that trains and supports women from low-income and immigrant communities to launch fashion careers and businesses.

3.1 Phillip Lim X Charlotte McCurdy – Regenerative Technologies

Designer Phillip Lim and researcher Charlotte McCurdy will employ carbon neutral materials to reimagine a new conscious luxury.

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Born in Thailand of Chinese descent, Phillip Lim is a key figure in New York’s wave of Asian-American fashion designers. Together with his business partner Wen Zhou, the designer has successfully established his brand, 3.1 Phillip Lim as one of a handful of important, fast-growing contemporary brands with a thriving international wholesale business.

 

Born in Thailand of Chinese descent, Phillip Lim is a key figure in New York’s wave of Asian-American fashion designers. Together with his business partner Wen Zhou, the designer has successfully established his brand, 3.1 Phillip Lim as one of a handful of important, fast-growing contemporary brands with a thriving international wholesale business.


Charlotte McCurdy is an interdisciplinary designer whose work focuses on making existential threats, such as climate change, more tractable through design. Her goal is to counteract the narrative of climate change as a problem without a solution.

 

Charlotte McCurdy is an interdisciplinary designer whose work focuses on making existential threats, such as climate change, more tractable through design. Her goal is to counteract the narrative of climate change as a problem without a solution.