Else Skjold

The site of the wardrobe is the departure and foundation of Else Skjold’s research approach. The central question is: how can researchers gain an analytical understanding of ways that people use and experience what they wear?  

This way, Skjold is in line with leading debates within fashion sustainability research that direct attention to the wardrobe and the everyday use of clothing and textiles. 

A look inside a person’s wardrobe reveals entirely different stories about what clothing and textiles do for people and about the continuities that persist over time, in contrast to fashion’s constantly changing trends. 

Since her early contribution to wardrobe research from the perspective of design, Skjold has consistently sought to extend and scale practice- and use-oriented insights into broader, systemic engagements for sustainable and circular transition.  

As Head of the research centre KLOTHING – Centre for Apparel, Textiles, and Ecology Research, Else Skjold has, since 2022, helped develop and consolidate knowledge and expertise within design for sustainability and circularity. 

With its focus on sustainable apparel and textile design, the centre represents a critical research capacity within the textile field. Skjold’s work focuses on educating future generations of fashion and textile designers alongside contributing to innovation and the transformation of the textile industry together with fellow researchers. 

The centre’s approach is grounded in practice and artistic research as well as scientific investigation. It is informed by Danish design traditions, industrial textile history, and local textile knowledge, while simultaneously drawing on design thinking and systems-oriented approaches.

As research leader, Else Skjold facilitates scientific investigations and output that is tied together by the conception of mission-based research, in which design is positioned up against other scientific fields and stakeholder insights. As such, her current research focus is affiliated with the Danish mission for circular transition, TRACE. 

Else Skjold is a familiar voice in the Danish public who for many years has engaged in various types of media, panel debates, and policy talks. 

As an acknowledgement of this, Skjold was in 2023 awarded the KH Prize by Statens Kunstfond for advancing professional dialogue and elevating public debate on crafts and design. Anni Nørskov Mørch, Chair of the KH Prize Committee, stated: 

“With remarkable impact, Else Skjold has brought design criticism into public debate and successfully set an agenda by communicating that sustainability requires an awareness of quality. Her research-based call to action is that society, the fashion industry, and individual consumers can act sustainably by cultivating an appreciation of quality and nurturing the pleasure of well-designed clothing with good fit, high-quality materials, and responsible production.” 

The speech is directed at the late icon in the Danish Modern movement Poul Henningsen (1994-1967), who in 1923 authored the column: “The Intention of Critique” (Kritikkens Hensigt): 

“Throughout one and a half Century, the driver of fashion has been shifting aesthetics with increasing new trends and fancies. If anything, this field has embodied the utopia of your time about the ever evolving new, and the unconcerned lightness of modern life. 

In these days and time I think a lot about the program you advocated for that revolutionized the 20th Century. A program that was about function, simplicity, mass production and modernity in a consistent strive forward. Standardization that made goods cheaper should give more people access to the Good Life. 

But today, the removal of the detail and aesthetics have deprived our products and turned them into a shadow of their intention. This is why the program of the future must get back to detail. To the unnecessary. The result. 

Indeed, it must be the very foundation of the new program to reinstall the many facetted richness, that your program so resolutely abolished. 

It must be based in a de-standardisation, de-rationalisation and re-enchanting of matter, form and function”

The overarching ambition of Else Skjold’s research is to bring together Denmark’s textile sector and contribute to rebuilding a Danish textile infrastructure that supports knowledge, competencies, and practical skills related to the storage, care, and repair of clothing and textiles at both national and individual levels. 

In affiliation with her role as scientific lead of textiles in TRACE, Skjold has recently contributed to the development of the National Action Plan for Textiles running from 2025 to 2029. Skjold herself is particularly responsible for two initiatives with focus on revitalization of cultural heritage in education and amongst Danish citizens and lead the task of evaluating impact of the plan’s achievements in accordance with leading research knowledge and the TRACE Impact Framework.