Christopher Panneflek
Instagram Style
How can we reduce textile waste in the fashion industry?
Instagram Style is a digital engagement platform where people can discover new fashion ideas, materials, designs, and more. This platform will help inspire new trends in fashion and empower users through content from other users and influencers, to create a more sustainable future for fashion. It allows users to interact with those who share the same interests and ideas, locally and worldwide. This platform should collect your sense of fashion and use the data to help brands find inspiration for their new seasons. By having a platform where fashion creators can innovate sustainable methods in the fashion industry, we can help brands reduce their trend forecasting error percentage, which ultimately leads to less clothing left unsold and keeps them out of the landfill.
Insight
The fashion industry has received a lot of criticism over the years due to their negligent actions and behaviour leading to social and environmental issues. It is estimated that the fashion industry produces up to 10% of global CO2 emissions, this is roughly 1.7 billion tonnes annually. Furthermore, textile treatment and dyeing consume 1.5 trillion liters of water per year, making the industry responsible for 20% of industrial water pollution. It also pollutes the oceans immensely by putting 190,000 tonnes of microplastic into the oceans per year. Aside from air and water pollution, 92 million tonnes of textiles and unsold clothes end up in landfills annually.
Idea
Instagram Style aims to address the problem of textile waste in the beginning even before the clothing pieces are designed. Fashion forecasting is the process of determining the next trends for the up and coming season, a process that is mainly done in-house or outsourced to a trend forecasting agency. STYLE wants to disrupt this system and allow consumers to give their feedback and advice to brands. In a personalized world, it’s only right to allow the consumer to have an opinion on the next season's pieces.
Impact
By having a platform where fashion creators can innovate sustainable methods in the fashion industry, we can help brands understand their consumers better to reduce their trend forecasting error percentage. This ultimately leads to more clothing pieces being sold, keeping them out of the landfill.
Biography
Christopher Panneflek was born in Curacao, a multicultural Caribbean island. This allowed him to not only grow up with a vast variety of cultures but also to explore and find creative tasks to complete. Since he was little, he has dreamed of becoming a designer, maker, and inventor. He's always had a passion for sports cars, which sparked his love for drawing. As he grew older, he started experimenting with the field of making and began inventing crazy new ideas in his backyard out of pure curiosity. As he grew older, he realized that design was the thing he wanted to pursue in life.