A new fashion design practice as enabler for a fashion system change

Abstract

The term fashion has come to stand for particularly questionable profit-driven ecological and social imbalances. A closer look at its concept, however, shows that fashion itself is not the threat but rather contains solutions. To exemplify this, it is necessary to stress the difference between fashion and clothing. Nowadays, the fashion industry mainly promotes a supposed image of fashion. Nevertheless, a new perception of fashion in line with the 10R typology is beginning to emerge, as ultimately, society determines which clothing products become fashion. Clothing items are products realized by a design process. Today, contemporary fashion design moves away from disciplinary thinking. Designers make important material decisions, innovate processes, and have the potential to initiate thought processes in society. Fashion design practice should therefore be understood as an important knowledge culture with diverse mechanisms and principles. The cultural and social dimensions of design knowledge from design practices, as well as a designer's attitude, skills, and value systems, are of central importance to anticipate fashion for sustainable systems. The results of the artistic-scientific transdisciplinary research project Fashion & Robotics show how fashion design practices become not just fashion design solutions or technological advances, but catalysts for systemic change in fashion.