“Hope opens up a world of possibilities”

18 June 2025 Research news item

Daniëlle Bruggeman is a lecturer in Fashion at ArtEZ University of the Arts and, since this spring, extraordinary professor of Fashion and Sustainability at Radboud University. Her task? To establish connections between art and science. Radboud Recharge invited ten of Bruggeman's acquaintances to ask her a question.

Father Gerrit Bruggeman: Which global initiative for sustainable clothing inspires you so much that you would like to have set it up yourself?

‘I can't name just one initiative, because I feel first and foremost like a researcher and scientist. I love observing initiatives, analysing them and placing them in a broader context. That's where my strength lies. However, in this role, I do enjoy collaborating with sustainable, ethical initiatives. Among the many wonderful examples, I would like to mention Dutch textile designer and artist Claudy Jongstra. On her biodynamic farm, she utilizes local raw materials and traditional crafts to bridge the gap between art, culture, and agriculture, for example by dyeing wool herself with plant-based pigments. She shows how you can work with nature, instead of extracting raw materials and exploiting nature, as you see happening in the fashion industry today. Another example is fashion designer Joline Jolink, who grows her own renewable raw materials on her fashion farm, partly to raise awareness of the slow production process, such as the development of flax into linen. Outsourcing production has made us lose sight of this.'

Mette Gieskes, art historian and colleague at Radboud University: Is there a sustainable clothing initiative that can be scaled up to a global supply of affordable clothing?

'I am thinking of Fibershed, a global movement of farmers, producers, designers and local partners working on a new regenerative textile system. Growth in this movement is an upscaling of such local or regional initiatives, rather than the exponentially growing mass production and consumption of fast fashion. Within this local upscaling, lending and sharing systems are also very interesting, such as clothing libraries or The Clothing Loop, an app for exchanging clothes with people in your neighbourhood. In other words, a system of reuse instead of endless new production.'

Entrepreneur Zinzi de Brouwer: What role does hope play in your work?

'A common thread running through many sustainable initiatives, including our projects with ArtEZ, is to use fashion to create a vision of an alternative future, an imagination of how things could also be. Not only in terms of clothing production, but also a fundamental rethinking of how we interact with each other and with nature. Hope is a foundation for putting such visions into practice, an ability to take action despite all the problems and obstacles that can paralyse us. How hope can open up a world of possibilities is beautifully described in Rebecca Solnit's book Hope in the Dark.'

Wilfried Claus, Executive Board of ArtEZ: Which company in the fashion industry would you like to partner with for sustainable clothing production?

'In my view, the most interesting companies are not the initiatives that are increasingly moving away from industrial fashion production, but the ethical alternatives to making and wearing clothing, which approach fashion as a social and cultural practice. The renewed focus on local production is interesting, such as Enschede Textielstad by Annemieke Koster. Using recycled materials and local raw materials such as hemp and flax, production is tailored precisely to local demand, in close collaboration with suppliers and designers. I enjoy working with such frontrunners to gain new insights.'

Pedel Nico Bouwman, Radboud University: Every professor buys their own toga to wear at academic ceremonies. You have also purchased one yourself. Is there a more sustainable alternative?

‘That's not entirely correct. For my inaugural lecture, I deliberately did not buy a toga, but borrowed one, which is rare. Especially when you are a professor like me and don't attend academic ceremonies very often, a toga rental system is a great alternative to producing and buying a custom-made toga.’

Supervisor Anneke Smelik, Radboud University: Is a model for sustainable fashion conceivable without technical innovation? It was striking that you hardly mentioned this in your inaugural lecture.

'Technology is not my primary area of expertise. Moreover, there is already a great deal of attention in society and science for new materials and new technological developments and production processes. As a cultural scientist, I now prefer to focus on fashion as a social and cultural phenomenon. At the same time, new digital technologies have contributed to the acceleration of overproduction and fast fashion, and given the associated exploitation of people, animals and the planet, there is a need for renewed attention to the relationship between humans and nature, in which humans no longer occupy a dominant hierarchical position but are part of nature. This does not detract from the fact that technology can certainly play a role in such a new relationship between humans and clothing.'

Marjolein Oele, professor of philosophy of the humanities at Radboud University: What can we learn from older clothing techniques to make the current clothing industry more sustainable?

‘There is a lot to learn from old crafts and clothing techniques. I am thinking, for example, of the Crafts Council in the Netherlands, which offers projects and workshops to give old crafts a new lease of life, also as a form of education.’

Paula Fikkert, Dean of the Faculty of Arts at Radboud University: Sustainable fashion made in the Netherlands does exist (think Fair Made in Holland, Irma Borgsteede), but just like fair trade products elsewhere, it is as beautiful as it is expensive. What is needed to make fair trade affordable?

'Be aware that an affordable or cheap garment in the current industrial fashion system often does not cover the actual costs, such as a fair price for the cotton farmer and the raw materials, the regeneration of the land where the cotton is harvested, or a living wage for the makers in the factories. With a fair price and a fair distribution of profits, the price of mass-produced clothing in our high streets would have to be many times higher. The question then is: do we want affordable fairly made clothing, or a fair price? Certainly, it is a luxury to buy sustainable fashion, but affordability is also relative: buying large quantities of fast fashion may be just as expensive as one sustainable, fairly made garment, which also lasts longer, so that the wearer takes better care of it and repairs it when it breaks, thanks to its higher emotional value. It is not so much a question of affordability as of accessibility. And not in the sense of higher consumerism, more buying or selling, but by thinking in terms of other models, such as the aforementioned apps for sharing or exchanging clothing, or companies where you can rent or borrow clothing.’

Femke de Vries, fellow lecturer in Fashion at ArtEZ: We share an interest in posthuman fashion methods. What opportunities do you see for this method?

‘Femke's research questions the animal materials in our clothing and the representation of animals in the fashion media. Designing according to posthuman fashion methods is a form of regenerative design: it not only takes something from nature for human purposes, but also contributes back to biodiversity, for example. This way of designing deserves much more attention, building on existing research into more than human design. You can use clothing to redefine the relationships between humans and non-human actors, or to develop equal relationships between humans, animals, nature and technology.'

Partner Christiaan Buijnsters: We have two beautiful daughters, aged five and one. What lessons do you want to teach them about how to treat clothing and materials?

‘Our girls are still very young, of course, but I try to make the invisible visible to them. For example, that an apple doesn't come from the shop. By picking apples with them at a care farm in our neighbourhood, they see and learn that apples grow on trees. You can also involve children in the process of making clothes and in playful ways of altering and repairing them. A nice new example is 1 m2 of flax from The Linen Project, an invitation to sow one square metre of flax in your own garden. How do you harvest flax? How does it grow? How wonderful it is to involve your children in this sowing process.

Now that I have children myself, I realise that the system of borrowing clothes is much more common among children than among adults. Parents often receive clothes for their children that belonged to a niece or nephew or that they may have worn themselves in the past. This gives the clothes a story. I always tell our eldest daughter to whom the clothes she wears belonged to. She really likes that. For me, reusing clothes gives them more value than if I bought them in a shop. I also teach my children that when something is broken, it doesn't automatically mean it has to be thrown away. I always ask: “Can we fix it?”.’

Evening on Fast Fashion

The Nimma aan Zee sustainability festival in Lux is hosting a special evening on fast fashion on Tuesday 24 June at 7.30 p.m. For more information and to register, click this link.

Photography: Maaike Ronhaar

Contact information

Organizational unit: Faculty of Arts, Department of Modern Languages and Cultures, Radboud Institute for Culture and History
Theme: Sustainability, Economy, Art & Culture