About Me: Sandy Black is Professor of Fashion and Textile Design and Technology at London College of Fashion, in the Centre for Sustainable Fashion, a University of the Arts London research centre. She formerly ran her own successful Sandy Black knitwear label, selling internationally. Her current research interests include inter-disciplinary design-led research (fashion, textiles, technology, science, culture, industry, sustainability) and the role of creative entrepreneurship, design and new business models in addressing issues of sustainability in the fashion sector. She publishes widely, including pioneering books such as Eco Chic the Fashion Paradox (Black Dog 2008), The Sustainable Fashion Handbook (Thames & Hudson 2012) and Knitting: Fashion, Industry, Craft (V&A Publishing 2012). Sandy founded and co-edits the academic journal Fashion Practice: Design, Creative Process and the Fashion Industry (Routledge Journals), published since 2009 and the first to address the central role of practice and practitioners in fashion research.

Her previous research includes the Interrogating Fashion network, funded by the Designing for the 21st Century scheme, a UK Research Councils initiative, bringing together arts and humanities researchers with engineering and science perspectives. This led to the project Considerate Design for Personalised Fashion Products to assist designers in developing more sustainable fashion products. Recent funding includes the FIRE series of projects, (Fashion, Innovation, Research and Enterprise), bridging academic research and designer fashion and a new project Rethinking Fashion Design Entrepreneurship: Fostering Sustainable Practices.

Sandy supervises and examines numerous PhD candidates, especially in practice-led and practice-informed textiles- and fashion-related topics, bridging practice and theory. With 15 completions and 9 candidates in progress, she has helped to establish a new expanded field for research in fashion and sustainability.