Hester Vanacker defends her PhD on local upcycling
Institut Français de la Mode congratulates Hester Vanacker (MSc Luxury 2022) on the successful defence of her PhD in Civil Engineering at Arts et Métiers – École Nationale Supérieure d'Arts et Métiers. Her research was supervised by IFM Professor Andrée-Anne Lemieux, Prof. Lamouri Samir (ENSAM) and Kirsi Laitala (OsloMet). The jury comprised Pascal Morand, Irene Maldini, Kyungeun Sung, Roberta Costa Affonso and Evren Sahin.
Supported by the Chair Sustainability IFM-Kering, the thesis, Local Upcycling as a Catalyst for Reconfiguring the Global Fashion System: Conceptualization and Implementation, explores how local upcycling can help reshape the global fashion system.
Drawing on fieldwork in France, Ghana, Indonesia, Norway, the Republic of Congo and South Africa, the research challenges one-size-fits-all approaches to circularity. It argues for plurality over universality, and for sobriety and inclusivity in the transition to a more circular fashion system, one in which communities of the Global North and the Global South belong equally at the centre.
