Detroit Design Students Turn Damaged Carhartt Garments Into Sustainable Fashion

Students at the College for Creative Studies (CCS) in Detroit spent their 2022 Fall/Winter semester working with Dearborn-based workwear maker Carhartt on a project centered on sustainability. Fashion Design and Color and Materials Design students were asked to build a story around returned and damaged Carhartt garments.

The class was divided into four groups, and each received its own prompt. Most of the students are from Detroit or the surrounding metro area, and they drew on their own communities as they designed clothing for people in everyday working situations.

One of the four groups of people the students designed for was Detroit's urban farmers. For that group, students produced a pair of pants and two pairs of shoes. The materials included puffer jacket samples, face masks and scrap leather.

Aki Choklat, the Linda Dresner Endowed Chair in Fashion Design at CCS, said the course was built, like many others at the school, to give students a real-world view of their industries. Research played a central part. "Anthropological field study is really important. We sent the students out there to observe… They went out there and they connected with the people in the neighborhood," he said.

Choklat also spoke about the city's wider fashion scene, which he described as thriving and on the rise. "We have many companies that have already come to us," he told CultureShift. He pointed to the attention Detroit received when Bottega Veneta staged a show in the city: "When Bottega Veneta came to do their show, we were all kind of freaking out. It really brought a lot of attention to Detroit."

He said designers today need a broad set of abilities to keep pace with a fashion industry that is changing. "They need to have very good digital skills nowadays. Of course, creative thinking, ability to translate original ideas into a product… It's all part of the education," Choklat said.

The student designs from the project are scheduled to be displayed at a major international trade show in Italy this June. CCS plans to offer the course again this fall to a new group of students.