Timo Rissanen

Associate Professor Timo Rissanen is a fashion and textiles researcher and the UTS academic lead of the UTS/TAFE NSW Centre of Excellence in Sustainable Fashion and Textiles. He investigates the interconnection between sustainability and social justice as they relate to the contemporary fashion industry.

Timo’s practice-based research sits firmly within the UTS School of Design’s Material Ecologies theme. He has a growing interest in soil-to-soil fibre systems and Earth Logic, a research framework developed by Kate Fletcher and Mathilda Tham that puts natural systems at the forefront of fashion and textiles practice, as well as in the development of systems-level solutions to solving the challenges of fashion manufacturing waste.

He played a key role in establishing the Centre of Excellence in Sustainable Fashion and Textiles, which was launched in July 2021. A collaboration between UTS and TAFE NSW, the Centre will deliver education offerings and brand-based industry research partnerships with an emphasis on sustainability and Industry 4.0.

Timo produces cross-stitch, installation and performance pieces with a focus on labour, politics and love. His highly acclaimed work 15% was a performative installation in partnership with artist Salla Salin that sought to make visible the waste and labour of the global fashion industry. The work was performed live in Helsinki and New York City and later toured Germany, New Zealand and Japan as a video installation between 2012-2016. Timo recently completed a second project with Salin called Pieces of a Continent; this work, which was exhibited in Helsinki in 2021, looks at the relationship between land and time through an economic lens. His textile practice sits at the intersection of environmental humanities and queer materialities; Precarious Birds, an ongoing collaboration with Associate Professor Zoe Sadokierski, is a textiles-led response to the extinction crisis.

He has published two books on fashion and sustainability. Zero Waste Fashion Design (2016; the second edition will be published in 2023), co-written with Holly McQuillan, argues that fashion designers need to play more of a role in actively minimising the waste produced by their practice. In Shaping Sustainable Fashion (2011), co-written with Alison Gwilt, Timo writes about the need to embed future repair at the heart of fashion design processes.

In 2011, Timo co-curated Yield: Making Fashion Without Making Waste, a zero-waste design exhibition at The Dowse Art Museum in Wellington in New Zealand and later at the Textile Arts Center in Brooklyn in New York. Fashioning Now, an exhibition and symposium he co-curated with Gwilt, was exhibited at the UTS Gallery in 2009. Timo completed a PhD on zero-waste fashion at UTS in 2013 under the supervision of Professor Cameron Tonkinwise, Dr Sally McLoughlin and Dr Alison Gwilt.

He is a former Associate Professor of Fashion Design and Sustainability in the School of Fashion at the Parsons School of Design, The New School, and a founding member of the Union of Concerned Researchers in Fashion.

TEACHING INTERESTS

Teaching

Timo teaches Professional Practice, a final-semester subject in the UTS Bachelor of Design that prepares students to make the successful transition from university into the professional fashion world. His student-centred teaching approach is focused on understanding each student’s aspirations and equipping them with the practical capabilities and industry knowledge required to work effectively in this rapidly changing field.

Supervision

Timo supervises both master’s by research and PhD students. He has a particular interest in working with students who are passionate about fashion and textiles transitions towards more sustainable and just futures. He challenges students to think about fashion sustainability beyond the narrow, neoliberal context in which it sits today and to position their work as part of a broader paradigm shift that will define the industry of the future.

Current HDR student research topics include, decolonising fashion, augmented and virtual reality, and seamless knitting, among others.