Sandy Black is a designer, author and researcher, and Professor of Fashion and Textile Design and Technology at London College of Fashion (LCF). She joined University of the Arts London (UAL) to develop and direct the college’s first multi-disciplinary MA programme in Fashion Studies, having previously directed the Fashion Textiles BA programme at the University of Brighton. Prior to academia, Sandy was director and designer for the Sandy Black Original Knits fashion knitwear company, selling knitwear and knitting yarn kits to prestigious stores internationally in USA, Canada, UK, Europe, Australia and Japan.
Sandy has degrees in both mathematics and design, and researches, writes and lectures on the intersections of textiles, fashion and knitwear design with emerging technology and science in the context of cultural, environmental and economic sustainability. She is a key researcher within UAL’s Centre for Sustainable Fashion at LCF. Her interests are inter-disciplinary, and focus on the role of design in addressing issues of sustainability within the designer fashion and textiles sector. Sandy develops networks and collaborative research projects, aiming to reconcile desirability and fashion with wellbeing and better lives. In 2004-05 she initiated the Interrogating Fashion network (funded under the AHRC/EPSRC Designing for the 21st Century initiative) to create a research agenda for future fashion and subsequently led the project Considerate Design for Personalised Fashion to assist designers in developing personalised fashion products to ultimately reduce fashion consumption but enhance fashion delight. She currently leads the F.I.R.E (Fashion, Innovation, Research, Evolution) series of research projects bridging academic research and designer fashion businesses.
Sandy’s publications include: The Sustainable Fashion Handbook, (Thames and Hudson 2012), Knitting: Fashion, Industry, Craft (V&A Publishing 2012) and Eco Chic: the Fashion Paradox (Black Dog Publishing 2008, 2011). She is founder and co-editor of the journal Fashion Practice: design, creative process and the fashion industry (Routledge) now in its 10th year of publication.