L (Luciana) Dos Santos Duarte

Biography

Researcher

Luciana Duarte was born in the South of Minas Gerais State, in Brazil. She currently lives in The Hague, The Netherlands, where she works as a PhD researcher at the International Institute of Social Studies, Erasmus University of Rotterdam.

She is also a PhD researcher in Production Engineering at the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG), in Brazil. Her thesis is about the ontologies and the social technologies of products made from Amazon rubber, inserted in the global value chain of fashion.

Lecturer

Her master’s degree in Production Engineering is a comparative study of the environmental impact of conventional CO/PET jeans and recycled jeans.

In 2011, when she was 24 years old, she created and taught the course of “Fashion and Sustainability” in the Fashion Design undergraduation degree at UFMG, as a counterpart of her masters scholarship.

From 2013 to 2019, she taught some courses in the undergraduate degree in Production Engineering of a particular college:

• “Product Planning and Design”,
• “Product Development Process”,
• “Ergonomics, Health and Safety at Work”,
• “3D Modelling”,
• “Sustainability Management in Production Engineering”,
• and “Factory Project and Industrial Installations”.

She has supervised several course completion assignments and undergraduate researches. She was an honored professor in the Production Engineering course, and her students received the best research award from all the courses and colleges of a private group.

Entrepreneur

Among all researches, ethical and sustainable fashion is her passion since the first year in the undergraduate degree in Product Design at the State University of Minas Gerais (UEMG). 

Seeking to answer daily “How can fashion be ethical?”, she created some fashion blogs and websites to provide the information she found, as well as to share professional experiences. In 2016, she lost five years of content created, went to court, won the cause, but not the content back. She restarted all the work.

From 2017 to 2019, the current website was developed with the UFMG Junior Computer Company. In 2019, she performed an artistic installation at the Fashion Museum, in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, to honor the excellent team of programmers and express the creation of the website.

Product Designer

She started working at the age 18 as a quality auditor for a Japanese technology car wiring company. It was a manual labor on the factory floor, so she could get money to do the entrance examinations in Product Design.

Already in college, in her second year, she started her research in Jewelry Design at UEMG, and at the Department of Chemistry at UFMG, researching and developing a sustainable composite based on bovine bone powder as a substitute for marine corals.

In 2009, a sustainable fashion entrepreneur at the Ethical Fashion Show (actual Neonyt), in Paris, found her blog and called her to work for his company. For a year, she worked as a style assistant and then as a fashion designer.

Her last job in the industry was as Jewelry Design Coordinator for a fast fashion company of semi jewels, in 2013.

Consultant

Since then, she has provided Consulting Services in Engineering, Services in Fashion Design and Services in Scientific Knowledge to diverse companies and institutions. Among the most relevant projects are:

• the development of the layout of a bag and shoe factory;
• reverse engineering of maternity bags;
• the audition of a carbon market project in the Amazon for the United States government.

Through the website Ethical Fashion Brazil, she communicates the services provided, as well as disseminates ethical and sustainable fashion products and services, and is curator of content.

Artist in her spare time

She has won several cultural and literary contests since childhood. There are at least five contests of a Brazilian television company, honorable mentions