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Sustainable fashion design: towards a considerate design tool

Funded by: The Open University Business School

Background

Fashion is a fundamental part of how people express themselves and is also used to signal membership of a group. How individuals purchase and consume fashion is deeply embedded in these social processes. Production behaviours associated with the industry are often characterised by cost reduction in global supply chains. With textile and fashion consumption having increased 25% in five years, it is only by changing the behaviour of both customers and producers that environmental impact will be reduced. A significant proportion of the garments which are produced are worn relatively little before being thrown away or passed on, typically because the fit is poor or because they do not adequately meet consumers’ needs. Changing this behaviour pattern requires a deeper understanding of the needs and aspirations which drive this behaviour and of the attitudes which consumers have towards the clothes they buy.

Methods

The research will address this problem from two directions. The first will involve taking a quantitative and statistical view of consumer groups and the types of garments that they buy. This work will build on existing research on consumer classification and will be complemented by in-depth studies of clothing habits to understand why individuals buy particular items, how they wear and look after the garments and how they pass them on. By relating this in-depth understanding of individuals to what is learned about the attitudes of different consumer groups, a picture will be developed of how particular groups can be incentivised to consume textiles in a sustainable way.

The second direction will involve developing a design tool for use by clothing designers in order to encourage more sustainable consumption. Many clothing designers would benefit from a more detailed picture of consumers than they have at present. These designers must mediate or ‘trade off’ between consumer and producer behaviours, through evaluating the sustainable and ethical dimensions of these stakeholders. These dimensions include, for example, washing frequencies, energy, resources used (eg water) in manufacture, material toxicity and working conditions. Designers and businesses have to understand which of these factors they can influence directly and which they must work around. Key perspectives to consider include companies’ design processes, global production (particularly in developing countries), marketing of garments and consumer behaviour.

Building on a previous research project (EPSRC/AHRC funded project "Considerate Design for Personalised Fashion", 2007-09), the aim is to construct: (i) an easy to use footprinting tool which designers can use to assess the environmental impacts and ethical issues of a particular design. The tool could be used at any stage, from conception to production, to enable designs to be compared and design decisions justified; (ii) a supply chain mapping tool to assess the resource and cost implications of each process step in terms of resources and costs as well as sustainability and ethical measures. 

Research team

Links

Research centre: Responsibility and Regulation (R&R)