Fashion Highlight is an academic journal dedicated to research in the field of fashion design, with a perspective that investigates both the conception, design, production and communication of the fashion product, and its cultural, aesthetic and technological implications. Fashion is a constantly evolving sector, capable of reflecting and influencing the transformations of society through design, innovation and experimentation. The journal welcomes studies that explore fashion design in its many forms: from the design and production of fabrics, garments and accessories, to the analysis of applied materials and technologies, to connections with related disciplines that enrich the sector, such as communication, economics and social sciences. Although rooted in the field of fashion design, Fashion Highlight recognises the value of transdisciplinary intersections, welcoming contributions that broaden the understanding of fashion as a cultural, economic and technological phenomenon. Fashion Highlight is indexed in Scopus ISSN: 2975-0466 [Online] OPEN CALL FOR PAPERS Issue 7 (2026) THE LANGUAGES OF FASHION: CRITICAL REFLECTIONS ON FASHION DISCOURSES Guest Editors: Benjamin Wild and Natalia Berger Full papers deadline: 10 January 2026
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The Italian fashion journalist, Anna Piaggi (1931-2012) offered a potential response for prosperity fashion through her singular approach to self-fashioning. Her wardrobe collection, containing approximately 3,000 garments and accessories, contained museum-quality objects which could be likened to the holdings of major museum collections such as the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the National Gallery of Victoria. Consequently, through my PhD thesis, I have argued that the wardrobe collection can be likened to the museum collection. The positioning of the wardrobe as collection then offers opportunity for intersections with broader ideas around slow fashion (Fletcher, 2010). For Fletcher, slow fashion need not solely be the slow manufacture of garments in an artisanal process but can incorporate broader ideas. This research proposes that Anna Piaggi offers a revised consideration of what the slow fashion wardrobe can be and that the wardrobe can become a slowly assembled collection, on par with or likened to a museum collection, that is continuously reinterpreted.
Copyright (c) 2025 Paola Di Trocchio https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Beyond Domesticity: Revaluing Gendered Textile Arts in the Context of Relational Prosperity
This paper explores the historical undervaluation of textile crafts within Western societies, particularly concerning their strong associations with female labor. Despite their rich cultural and social significance, textile arts have often been relegated to the margins of artistic and economic discourse, overshadowed by forms of expression deemed more "legitimate" or valuable (Nochlin, 1971). This research aims to challenge these perceptions by highlighting the inherent value of textile crafts and their role in shaping a more relational and ethically grounded concept of prosperity in fashion. The study begins by examining how gender biases have contributed to the marginalization of textile arts. Traditionally viewed as "women's work," these crafts have been undervalued both economically and culturally, resulting in a limited appreciation of their significance By analyzing the social and political dimensions of textile art, particularly through the practice of knitting groups and other communal activities, the paper argues that these crafts are vital forms of relational art (Newmeyer, 2008). They foster community, sustain cultural traditions, and serve as powerful tools for social connection and political expression The practice of textile arts, particularly when understood as relational art, exemplifies the new conception of prosperity, offering a model for a fashion industry that prioritizes the common good over purely commercial interests. The relational aspect of textile crafts exemplifies a form of prosperity that is not purely economic, but deeply rooted in social connections and community building. This reflects the idea of prosperity as a resource generated by a community, contributing to both economic and human value within ethical and environmental constraints. A case study of Italian textile artist Maria Lai is presented to illustrate how textile arts can contribute to this reimagined prosperity in fashion and impact the relationships with the urban space). Lai’s work, deeply rooted in her community and personal narrative, demonstrates the potential of textile crafts to transcend their marginalized status and become central to a more inclusive and ethical understanding of fashion. Her art reflects a vision of prosperity that values cultural heritage, communal ties, and sustainable practices, providing a compelling example of how textile crafts can shape the future of fashion. Ultimately, this paper advocates for a reevaluation of textile material culture within the fashion industry, urging a shift towards a prosperity that is relational, ethical, and sustainable.
Copyright (c) 2025 Jacopo Battisti https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
The profit-centric mentality within much of the global fashion industry causes great harm to societies, environments, and international economies. This focus has come under stark criticism from academia, industry, and consumers who call for broader, more inclusive definitions of success. These should consider people, places, interconnections, and relationships, alongside financial gain. This paper explores how our engagement with fashion’s future can be expanded by looking into its past. This backwards gaze employing a ‘sustainable prosperity’ approach can provide both context and examples for current and future industry application. Focusing on fashion businesses established prior to the rise of fast fashion, we indicate the value of non-traditional sources and viewing business success from a more holistic perspective. We ask how ‘prosperity’ might be defined for a more diverse range of fashion firms. Utilising examples from the 19th and 20th centuries, we suggest that the boundaries of business history of fashion methodologies and sources should be extended. These should account for social, environmental, and collective as well as economic and technological success. If we wish fashion to extend the concept of prosperity, this approach should also be applied within historical contexts as well.
Copyright (c) 2025 Alice Janssens, Liz Tregenza https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Dress cultures are more extensive than Fashion (Niessen, 2022), and their diverse dimensions are conceptualized here as situated_fashions and textile_knowledges. Drawing on Haraway’s concept of situated knowledges (Haraway, 1988), such dress enables rich belongings with more-than-human worlds, grows interdependent prosperity and sustains intra-active relationships (Barad, 2007). The paper presents and discusses the results of the seminar NatureCultureFashionStudies – Autoethnographic Field Research, which took place in spring 2024 at the Institute of Material Culture, Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg. The aim was to find a certain language for the relations between nature, culture and fashion that expresses the vibrant materiality (Bennett, 2004) of these fields. During the research-based learning other functions of textiles became important, and with them the material, the cut, the processing. On this mental, sensually perceptible and fertile soil, textile literacy grows, and other fashions prosper.
Copyright (c) 2025 Dagmar Venohr https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
The fashion industry is dominated by the mass-market sector, characterised by extremely short production times, low manufacturing costs and high volumes of garments driven by short-lived trends. In this process, the profits are prioritised over users’ needs, while the negative effects of overproduction are overlooked. Despite raising awareness of fashion production’s detrimental consequences, the design process often remains a mystery and there has been little research on including co-design approaches into it. Can involving users in the design process contribute to a behaviour change towards more sustainable fashion consumption? This paper adopts a research-through-design approach to bridge the gap between co-design and fashion. Drawing from design for behaviour change, we strive to redefine the concept of prosperity from a profit- and trend-motivated to focusing on the needs of the users through inviting them to participate in the design process. We propose a five-step framework for a collaboration between fashion professionals and users. The framework elements - brand research, understanding the user, defining function, building identity, and user test - facilitate an exchange of perspectives and encourage participants to become researchers of their relationship with clothing. The findings of this research invite designers and researchers to further explore this emerging field.
Copyright (c) 2025 Maria Maciejko, Alberto Iberbuden, Alejandro Lecuna https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
A New Fashion Design Practice as Enabler for a Fashion System Change
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.
Copyright (c) 2025 Christiane Luible, Johannes Braumann https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
This paper explores the use of propositional design and digital tools for sustainable material and immaterial value creation in fashion design. Stuart Walker argues that within the current capitalist system, it is ‘virtually impossible for the discipline of design to effectively and substantially address the interrelated issues of environmental responsibility, social obligation and personal meaning’ (Walker, 2013). Propositional design objects are not design solutions but are concerned with ‘challenging conventions, positing questions, and offering directions for reform.’ Walker calls this ‘non-commercial, academic, research-based designing’ (Walker, 2013) propositional design. Alongside the increasing drive for more sustainable systems for fashion, digital tools have begun to change the way that fashion design is enacted. There has been a significant shift from the traditional physical craft skills of pattern cutting and sewing, to the use of software and digital spaces, used in tandem with the traditional fashion design studio environment. Software such as CLO3D allows for accurate patterns to be created digitally, emailed, and exported anywhere with an internet connection. Together with the changing context of the fashion industry and the growing desire to reduce waste, lower consumption, and redefine our relationship to clothes, these digital spaces provide new ways of thinking about and creating value. Propositional design approaches free the fashion designer to venture beyond aesthetics into systems-led thinking for radical sustainable change.
Copyright (c) 2025 Rosemary Wallin https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Traditional manufacturing models are increasingly unsustainable and vulnerable to environmental and geopolitical challenges. Industry 4.0 principles integrated with cutting-edge 3D knit technology form the basis for the proposed Future Factory Network (FFN). The FFN enables localised production on a global scale, where the physical location of designers and consumers becomes irrelevant; aligning with circular economy principles and offering extensive design options. Produced with near-zero waste, minimal post-processing, and highly customisable, 3D knit products offer an ideal solution for sustainable manufacturing. This research will develop and test a novel manufacturing model that leverages existing resources to adopt slow fashion principles within a scalable, efficient, and agile framework. The FFN model aims to enhance brand sustainability and circular economies through smart manufacturing systems and advanced 3D knit technology. Whilst this model addresses manufacturing processes, the behavioural shifts needed among consumers and stakeholders are intrinsic issues beyond the scope of this research.
Copyright (c) 2025 Patricia Chircop https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
The Notion of Prosperity in the Aesthetics of Fashion
The notion of prosperity has its own religious genealogy: in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Max Weber famously linked the notion of prosperity with the Protestant Reformation. As crucial as Weber’s theory is for different approaches to luxury, this paper focuses, instead, on a different understanding of prosperity in fashion, thus paving the way for a new religious genealogy of the notion. This genealogy imagines an approach to fashion that sees prosperity as happiness. Indeed, from a religious and ethical perspective, prosperity is, first and foremost, the search for happiness in this life. Several monotheistic traditions overlap the notion of prosperity with that of divine grace or blessing, meaning that true prosperity can only be achieved through the exercise of virtues. Thus, only virtues can create a new meaning and new aesthetics of prosperity in fashion. By offering a more theoretical reflection on the notion of prosperity in fashion, this paper intends to determine whether different forms of aesthetics might offer a clue for the understanding of prosperity and wealth in order to herald true prosperity in fashion.
Copyright (c) 2025 Alberto Fabio Ambrosio https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
The Mutual Contribution of Visual Epistemology, Visual Literacy and Eco Fashion Design to the Building of Prosperity Fashion
Artistic practice and creative industries, including fashion and the fashion world, are of great importance for spreading and raising ecological awareness. But for this to happen, fashion and the fashion industry, which is considered one of the biggest polluters, must adopt a prosperous vision of the world and our future towards sustainability and environmentally friendly practices. In this paper, we propose that fashion design, as an exceptionally visual medium, could use the means of visual fashion literacy and visual epistemology in the name of building environmental awareness. We will demonstrate this in three steps, dictated by three provocative questions: What is it that we avoid seeing? What is the new vision of prosperity? How to see the invisible?
Copyright (c) 2025 Magdalena Germek https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Negative Aesthetics and the De-Beautification of Fashion
This paper explores the emergence of "disgusting fashion" as a deliberate aesthetic strategy within contemporary design, positioning it within the frameworks of Negative Aesthetics, abjection, and art-horror. Drawing on philosophical theories from Georges Bataille, Julia Kristeva, Carolyn Korsmeyer, and Noel Carroll, the paper examines how fashion engages with disgust not simply as a reaction, but as a generative force that challenges normative ideals of beauty, identity, and the body. Using Carroll and Contesi’s taxonomy of disgust in art, the study proposes a tripartite framework for analyzing garments based on whether their subjects and/or materials (vehicles) evoke disgust. Through case studies of designers such as Alexander McQueen, Lady Gaga, Alessandro Michele, and Michaela Stark, the paper demonstrates how fashion utilizes grotesque materials, symbolic violence, and bodily excess to provoke visceral responses and engage in sociopolitical critique. It argues that the incorporation of disgust functions as a transformative tool—destabilizing traditional boundaries between the self and the other, the inside and the outside, and the beautiful and the abject. Ultimately, disgusting fashion reveals how negative emotions can generate powerful aesthetic experiences, offering new ways to understand fashion not as adornment, but as a philosophical and cultural force.
Copyright (c) 2025 Danae Ioannou https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Cultivating a Relational Fashion System for Prosperity
Wearers are locked in endless cycles of acquisition, disenchantment and disposal. Time spent with our garments is fleeting. We are encouraged to have clothes, to buy clothes, but not to care for them, to be in an embodied relationship with our clothes. We need to implement practices of care and relationality in more-than-human worlds or face ecological and societal collapse. Care is an intersectional relational practice that encompasses the entire spectrum of sustainability of our world - social, cultural, spiritual, and economic.[1] In response to over a decade of ongoing research-through-design project engaging in a “conversation across worlds," as articulated by de la Cadena and Blaser (2018) fostering dialogue and interaction between diverse epistemologies, ontologies, and cultural perspectives the authors enacted a short temporal deep-wearing project that centres decolonial body-garment relations. This paper contributes to defining the concept of prosperity fashion by cultivating alternative value systems and modes of exchange for holistic, metaphysical oneness with our clothing in our everyday lives. This aligns with a process of decoloniality, embracing diversity in ways of knowing and being, through mind-body-spirit that towards the aim of multispecies flourishing, goals that are far outside of the capitalist, growth-oriented lens. Drawing from Indigenous Knowledge; Chinese, Celtic and Māori; making visible and assigning value to what was erased by Modernism, the Cartesian divide and the colonial order. It applies Taoist theory and methodology that accepts that, everything, including ourselves [3] and our clothing is energy.
Copyright (c) 2025 Jennifer Whitty, Associate Professor, Lecturer https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Fashion education programmes continue to proliferate in parallel with a dramatically changing climate and heavily degraded ecologies. The dominant linear fashion imaginary is incompatible with Earth’s cyclical systems. Fashion education programmes therefore should work critically to engage with these crises, introducing a new repository of socio-ecological thinking and practices. Ecological economist E.F Schumacher reminds us that in contexts like these, if we are to have yet more education, then it is going to have to be an education of a very different kind. This paper challenges fibre-centric discourses, as well as uncritical reflections on continued economic growth in the sector, to which, mainstream circular fashion initiatives align. Authors developed the workshop series Recompose for the MA Fashion programme at the Royal College of Art, where the cohort engaged with bioregionalism, regenerative design, and reflective practices through situated environmental learning. The study presents student reflections on this process and further develops these through interviews with fashion designer Lee Roach and practitioners in regenerative fibre and food systems. The paper cautions against practices that are fibre-lucid at the expense of becoming system-blind and invites the fashion education community to adopt regenerative pedagogies tailored to their local contexts, fostering diverse practices that challenge globalised fashion systems and support bioregional fibre production.
Copyright (c) 2025 Delfina Fantini van Ditmar, Louis Alderson-Bythell, Zowie Broach, Lee Roach https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Sustainable Design for Healthy Communities
Empowering students with knowledge of sustainable development can inspire them to become fashion activists. This case study, Sustainable Design for Healthy Communities, demonstrates how service learning deepens students’ understanding of sustainability through real-world application. Design students engaged with concepts such as material selection, circular and zero-waste design, and lifecycle thinking, while also incorporating user experience strategies. Through rapid ethnography, students identified local community needs, built personas, and created journey maps to develop impactful, community-centered design solutions. This process shifted their perspective from fashion designers to fashion activists committed to community well-being. In collaboration with instructors and community partners, students produced a sustainable product collection, a web-based marketing campaign, and a series of educational craft workshops. These workshops empowered them to lead initiatives promoting sustainable lifestyle changes. The project illustrates how a systems-thinking approach can transform fashion education and activate students to use design as a tool for social change and environmental impact.
Copyright (c) 2025 Barbara Trippeer, Johnnie Stark, Hae Jin Gam, Phillip Park https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
To approach prosperity fashion holistically, conventional constructs about fashion design processes and the interpersonal relations they lead to should be questioned and reoriented. To set this viewpoint in context, this article begins by reviewing the current state of fashion and its implications for production and consumption (both of which have expanded significantly), triggering a fluidity of identity focused on image and performance. Next, the article assumes an ontological perspective of fashion as art and/or design, examining to what degree each category emphasizes the esthetic, functional and use aspects; each paragraph is followed by our perceptions and appreciation for specific designs and designers, writing in the first-person plural and intentionally indenting these inserts. The third section highlights the significance of processes that emphasize the representation of the phenomenological body; by drawing on our sensory, bodily knowledge, backgrounds, and research practices, we utilize an autoethnographic format to describe our individual explorations in pattern design, both grounded on intuition as a creative force. To conclude, the extracted meaning from the two self-narratives conveys the concept of prosperity fashion as a meaningful and multidimensional (i.e., non-consumerist) understanding of the relationship between body[maker]—process—body[user].
Copyright (c) 2025 Nuno Nogueira, Ines Simoes https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Wool as a Complex Economic, Environmental, Social, and Cultural System
Wool has played a crucial role in the history of mankind for a long time, its versatility bringing together different cultures across the continents. A network of wool production, processing and trade flourished in inland and mountainous areas, fostering strong social, economic and environmental values associated with this raw material. However, the wool industry declined in the 20th century due to globalisation and competition from cheap synthetic fibres, reducing native wool to a by-product. Environmental challenges arose as wool was discarded or abandoned, and critical activities such as fleece washing ceased, exacerbating the crisis. Today, despite structural difficulties, initiatives aim to revive regional wool by creating small, independent systems that defy traditional production models. These projects focus on sustainable, short supply chains and systemic design, renewing the value of native wool through innovative, culturally significant products. This environmental movement involves the mobilisation of local resources and the promotion of sustainable co-existence between people and their environment. Through the analysis of case studies, this research seeks to explore how such initiatives can inspire future policies that promote a sustainable, holistic vision of prosperity, encompassing social, environmental and ethical well-being.
Copyright (c) 2025 Vittorio Giannetti, Marco Manfra https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
This study explores how the transition to sustainable models can restore the value of wool, a traditional material rich in environmental and cultural potential, through innovative strategies of recovery and renewal of production processes. Greasy wool, often considered an unnecessary and costly by-product, is valued when integrated into a sustainable supply chain, stimulating local economic development and creating new opportunities for communities dependent on wool production, particularly those using indigenous sheep breeds. In this context, the concept of "Rifiutocreatura" (WasteCreature) is emerging as a fundamental tool for rethinking textile waste management. No longer a problem to be disposed of, but a potential resource ready to be regenerated in a resilient and conscious production system. This paradigm shift: waste becomes a "creature" waiting for a new life through recycling, eco-design and upcycling processes. The aim of this study is to provide a critical and proactive vision for the valorization of wool, illustrating how the regeneration of this fibre can be a central element in building a sustainable and ethical future textile. This study pretends to concretely demonstrate how such model can reduce environmental impact but also contribute to a fairer redistribution of resources along the production chain and its territory.
Copyright (c) 2025 Gianni Montagna, Elena Pucci https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Old fashion system lays on a network made of family businesses, from prestigious tailors and bootmakers to modest clothing retouchers. In the global capital of fashion, Paris, they have been almost wiped out by the delocalisation along the 20th century. However, since its damages have been measured, there is a trend through young fashion entrepreneurs aiming the renewal of French fashion savoir-faire. Since 2019, I am studying some of these initiatives in the field of leatherwork (maroquinerie), and focusing from 2021 on one particular Paris brand : Laperruque. Working there both as an anthropologist and as a craftswoman, I have questionned the stakes of developing a small-scale company, limiting its growth, and identified the limits of such entrepreneurial initiative. Starting from scratch, with barely no investment fund, the two founders of Laperruque refer to traditional business model and not to start-ups, laying on financial speculation. However, the company is not just an unchanged reproduction of ancient familial businesses, since they also try to fix some of the contemporary working failings and the main fashion industry’s issues. The following paper highlights the ideals constructed through the young craftsman-entrepreneurs’ discourses and the negotiations necessary for their project to last.
Copyright (c) 2025 Francine Barancourt https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Algorithmic Culture and Sartorial Prosperity
The article defines the term "prosperity fashion" by focusing on the nature of work in contemporary fashion. Our aim here is to redefine the concept of labour by balancing solitary work against collective imagination, creative invention against algorithmic creativity informed by sartorial knowledge, and solitary genius against empathy towards local communities. The paper deals with three main assumptions. First, it posits that in contemporary fashion design there is a newfound interest in tailoring and sartorial literacy. Secondly, it argues that this interest in tailoring is a consequence of contemporary algorithmic culture. Tailoring can be seen as an agency that unites craftsmanship, algorithmic culture, and a spiritual approach to clothing. Thirdly, in the final part of the argument we deal with the case study of a contemporary designer community (Terike from Budapest) connected through sartorial literacy, highlighting how this community embodies the principles of the sartorial turn. The article concludes by advocating for the decolonization of tailoring as a civilizing process (Wild 2014), using the Terike community as an example of local sartorial creativity and of "defashion" (Niessen 2022). This examination underscores the need to recognize and preserve diverse sartorial practices that challenge dominant narratives within the fashion industry.
Copyright (c) 2025 Anna Keszeg, Terike from Budapest https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
With the world in a state of climate emergency, fashion faces significant challenges due to its massive environmental and cultural influence. Clothing accounts for over 60% of textiles, with production doubled whilst use has declined by 40%(Ellen MacArthur Foundation, 2017). Existing linear supply chains leave significant ecological impacts, with waste being a predominant factor. Rissanen (2013) estimates that 15% of fashion waste occurs during garment assembly. Given the complexity of textile and fashion industries parallel to rising environmental degradation, multilevel solutions are crucial to ease environmental strain. This study aims to bridge the gap between fashion and textiles by employing bacterial cellulose growth patterns to create textiles imbued with fashion attributes, focusing on form as the main designable quality. Fabrication is recorded and evaluated through contextualisation during body-artefact juxtaposition in workshop contexts, aided by visual and written documentation. The output consists of two artefact series illustrating proposed biofabrication methods bridging fashion and textiles, augmented by a revised methodological flow informed by resulting design process and material outcomes. Contextualising biofabrication in practice and prolonged interaction expands possible ways of making, dressing and embodying unconventional aesthetics, resulting in more prosper forms of fashion.
Copyright (c) 2025 Carolina De Lara, Daijiro Mizuno https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
This paper explores clothing as a multidimensional sensory experience and examines how fashion might better support neurodivergent individuals, a group who often experience heightened sensory interactions with the environment. In current fashion practices, the visual design of clothing is typically prioritised, often overlooking the needs of those who prioritise non-visual senses. Neurodivergent wearers may find certain design elements, like garment labels or fabric textures, impactful to their comfort and subsequent wellbeing. This research investigates the intersection of fashion, neurodivergent experience, and the senses. Using participatory design methods, this paper illuminates strategies to create garments that support neurodivergent needs, advocating for an approach that prioritises the wearers wellbeing through non-visual, sensory experiences in fashion.
Copyright (c) 2025 Brittany Thorpe https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
In an era dominated by tidal waves of visual stimuli across various digital platforms, we find ourselves scrolling and swiping incessantly. Images flicker momentarily before disappearing, stored away in unseen databases. When we consider imagery related to fashion, particularly printed textiles, we observe that these pieces also showcase a multitude of visuals but, unlike their digital counterparts, printed textiles are permanently situated within a specific time and place. This permanence highlights a stark contrast with the rising tide of fashion waste, revealing the fleeting nature of our throwaway culture. Print lies at the core of the waste crisis in today's fashion landscape. Alarming statistics surrounding fashion production and waste underscore the issue; printed garments are disposed of just as swiftly as digital images are scrolled into oblivion. Wearing printed art is both majestic and powerful, yet contemporary fashion seems to be out of sync with this value. This research delves into the illustrious chintz, a motif that has maintained its appeal over centuries and has been cherished in the realm of fashion. An exploration of this motif and its applications on fabric reveals concepts of artistry, upcycling and the appreciation of printed pieces as heirlooms. This paper draws on historical lessons that could inform our modern approach to print design in fashion today, creating a bridge between textile artistry and fashion design while fostering deeper connections with garments through interaction with established print techniques.
Copyright (c) 2025 Danielle Kremer https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Unveiling Potential Landscapes in the Age of Dematerialization and Digital Progression
Fashion, as a cultural system, has redefined the concept of individual affirmation and social status, promoting irrational and unsustainable consumption. The production of clothing and accessories, supported by a capitalistic and plutocratic system, has placed enormous pressure on the environment, contributing to issues such as pollution and resource depletion. This situation has prompted individuals, rather than corporations, to reflect on the future of their existence and reconsider their lifestyle and consumption patterns within an increasingly ecologically and ethical focus. In an attempt to safeguard their interests, fashion conglomerates are seeking to reinvent their strategies by shifting towards more sustainable business models. In addition, there is talk of a future in which the sense of belonging and the satisfaction of desires will no longer rely on the possession of material goods, but rather on experiences and digital representations. This phenomenon often described as "phygital"—a fusion of physical and digital medium and experiences—implies a radical transformation towards a post-materialist society. This paper investigates the future of fashion in the Anthropocene, exploring how the industry might transition to a sustainable model through dematerialization, the fusion of physical and digital experiences, and coexistance of both animism and transhumanist principles. We analyze the ecological impact of fashion, the rise of conscious consumerism, the integration of "phygital" experiences and the role of transhumanism. Through an exploration of these dynamics, we propose a vision of prosperity in fashion aligned with the future of sustainability in the paradigm of efficiency and digital progression.
Copyright (c) 2025 Carlos Gago, Anna Zinola https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
PARASULI Project. Upcycling of Beach Umbrellas for a Sustainable and Prosperous Fashion
The PARASULI project proposes an innovative redesign of beach umbrellas, transforming them into sustainable fashion products while integrating the concept of prosperity thinking. This holistic approach goes beyond traditional design thinking, embracing economic, social, and environmental dimensions to create an inclusive and sustainable future. Prosperity thinking redefines prosperity not merely as economic growth but as a balance between social well-being, environmental health, and respect for ecological limits. PARASULI applies these principles by transforming waste materials into unique garments through upcycling, promoting zero-waste practices and circular economy principles. The launch of the project was marked by a significant call to action, in which the designer invited nonprofit organizations and local communities to actively engage in the collection and transformation of used beach umbrellas. Once collected, the umbrellas were cleaned and processed by local artisans, resulting in jackets that embody responsible design and social innovation. This project demonstrates the potential of fashion to go beyond profit to promote relational prosperity, redefining the interaction between design, economics, and community. PARASULI highlights how systemic approaches can contribute to a more sustainable future, reinforcing the role of independent designers in building inclusive and interconnected development models.
Copyright (c) 2025 Maria Cristina Falsone https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
This research, interrogates and offers insight into the potentiality of leather, emphasizing that it is time to re-align thinking, provoke introspection and challenge existing norms. The aim is to demonstrate the value in forming a prosperity fashion philosophy centered on a specific by-product (leather), which offers a more ethical and sustainable viewpoint. Examining and promoting creative circular initiatives integral to a specific sub-group and creating an open collaborative and cumulative knowledge transfer, it is hoped that these shared ideas and practices gain strength, to create a blueprint for a prosperity fashion philosophy. To provide an actualized possibility for re-alignments and new approaches for leather production, consumption, and value as a starting point for cultural discussion. Challenging the fast fashion industry by presenting a slow, flexible future where leather fashion become investments because of their flexibility, and durability. Urging us to collectively forge new systems that disrupt and replace the current destructive cycle. Decreasing the negative impact of fashion on the environment, and people, through a focus on the ultimate circular material.
Copyright (c) 2025 Kayla Owen https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
As fashion and design researchers, we have embraced a human-centered design approach that emphasizes the relationship between people and objects as functional tools. Yet, fashion goes beyond utility; it embodies frivolity, playfulness, and social communication, often conveyed implicitly through garments. This article envisions a future where our engagement with fashion transcends mere appearance, highlighting research involving fashion designers collaborating with blind individuals to understand their relationship with clothing. Using ethnographic studies and qualitative interviews, the research examined how non-visual senses influence garment selection and wear. Designers emphasized tactile, auditory, and olfactory experiences to create “invisible” textiles and garments, challenging the conventional emphasis on visual aesthetics in fashion. This initiative encouraged designers to move beyond functional or trendy solutions toward meaningful interactions embracing diversity. Findings revealed that fashion enjoyment, decision-making, and emotional connections can be redefined beyond aesthetics to promote sustainability, shareability, engagement, and equality. Invisible fashion is designed for those often excluded from traditional human-centered design. While not fully realized as post-humanism or more-than-humanism, this approach suggests a new fashion paradigm valuing all senses equally and fostering positive experiences for humans and nonhumans alike.
Copyright (c) 2025 Martina Motta, Giovanni Maria Conti https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Strategic Design Approach into Fashion System
As world grapples with the consequences of unsustainable fast fashion system, it is necessary to act to overstake its design, productive and distribution models, while keeping fashion items as affordable as possible. Within this scenario, craftsmanship seems to be the most effective pattern in meeting the current design scenario and consumer needs. In fact, local fashion practices offer countless of benefits: they incorporate cultural sustainability, preserving both material and immaterial craftsmanship heritage (Brown & Vacca, 2022); they focus on a small-scale production, counteracting a pleonastic overproduction of goods; they deliver a higher quality goods, being the craftsman able to manage the entire production process (Sennet; 2009). It is all about evolving that production model based on local economies (Livesey, 2010) to limit the impact on the environment and enhance the human resources of communities, while preserving their cultural heritage. To this purpose, since 2019 the authors have carried out a didactic experimentation within a Fashion Studies master. This paper describes and illustrates the results of this activity, which has involved about 150 international students – mainly from BRIC countries – with various bachelor’s degree, not only belonging to fashion field.
Copyright (c) 2025 Gianni Denaro, Loredana Di lucchio https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
This paper investigates the production of Palestinian textile and clothes before and after the 1948 Israeli occupation and the shift to fast fashion as a consequence. It also foregrounds how contemporary efforts in sustainable fashion production are hindered by the ongoing occupation of Palestine. Through a chronological analysis, the article highlights revived Indigenous sartorial and social practices. It examines their role in facilitating connections between producers and consumers—extending the life cycle of clothing (whether acquired or gifted) while also enhancing the prosperity of collective creators. The case studies presented demonstrate how Palestine’s partially forced, extra-slow fashion production is positively influencing international consumers to reconsider their consumption habits, particularly in terms of production pace.
Copyright (c) 2025 Diana Mounayer https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Under the British dictionary and ChatGPT, **Prosperity** is defined in the context of today and the future in multiple dimensions, reflecting economic well-being and broader aspects of human development and societal health (OpenAI, 2024). As defined in contemporary and future contexts, prosperity encompasses sustainable growth, social equity, environmental stewardship, and adaptability to evolving global dynamics. This paper investigates how Colombia can navigate a prosperous fashion future amidst economic stagnation and the historical dominance of the Global North. By leveraging Colombia’s rich biodiversity, this research illustrates how biodesign can transform challenges into opportunities, reshaping the fashion industry through innovative practices and ethical considerations.Through qualitative analyses of perspectives from Colombian biodesigners and fashion designers, the study examines the potential of local resources, ancestral knowledge, and emerging technologies to redefine sustainability. The findings highlight biodesign as a transformative tool that bridges social equity, environmental sustainability, and economic viability, showcasing a roadmap for a regenerative and inclusive fashion ecosystem. This exploration underscores Colombia’s role as a model for integrating cultural heritage, biodiversity, and cutting-edge innovation into the global fashion narrative.
Copyright (c) 2025 Carolina Obregon, Giovanna Danies Turano https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Exploring the Role of Local Fashion MSEs in Vietnam’s Creative Economy
This study examines the opportunities and challenges that local fashion Micro and Small Enterprises (MSEs) face as they contribute to Vietnam’s creative economy. A key strength of these enterprises is their commitment to sustainability, reflected in their localised production processes and strong community engagement. This approach sets them apart from international competitors and provides a model for how fashion can foster a broader, more holistic notion of prosperity, one that goes beyond economic growth to encompass social and environmental well-being. The research is grounded in semi-structured interviews with local designers and an observational analysis of these MSEs’ digital presence. Through this exploration, the paper contributes to the discourse on “Prosperity Fashion”, demonstrating how localised, sustainable fashion practices can support a more inclusive and culturally rich economy.
Copyright (c) 2025 Ms Lam Hong Lan, Associate Professor Donna Cleveland https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
This paper explores India’s agropastoral desi oon (wool) textile traditions and their significance in embodying prosperity, focusing on hand-spun and handwoven Pattu textiles. Pattu is a multifunctional textile—used as a shawl, skirt, blanket, mat, or rain cover—valued for its durability and warmth in desert climates. The word “Pattu” derives from patti, meaning narrow-width fabric, woven on pit treadle looms (Khaddi) (Rustagi, 2021). Two narrow strips (pattis) are stitched together to form a blanket or shawl (Munshi et al., 1992). Grounded in Indigenous and Local Ecological Knowledge (ILEK), Pattu’s making involves intergenerational hand-spinning, weaving, and embroidery practices. These textiles not only reflect the ecological rhythms of desert life but also sustain a meaningful relationship between communities and their environment. Crafted from locally sourced desi oon, Pattu embodies both ecological sustainability and cultural identity (Jaitly, 1990). By exploring embedded skills, seasonal rhythms, and collaborative production, this paper highlights how Pattu supports rural livelihoods, preserves intangible cultural heritage, and fosters community resilience. In an era of climate crisis and industrialized fashion, Pattu offers a culturally rooted, sustainable alternative that reconnects people, place, and practice.
Copyright (c) 2025 Pramila Choudhary https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
The fashion industry faces significant challenges, including human rights and environmental concerns, prompting a shift toward sustainability. This shift reflects heightened awareness among stakeholders. However, alongside these positive developments, a trend has emerged: greenwashing. Defined as misleading consumers about a company’s environmental practices, greenwashing complicates the industry’s efforts to adopt sustainable practices and can perpetuate harmful behaviors. Despite extensive research highlighting the negative impacts of greenwashing, it continues to rise, indicating a gap in understanding the processes behind it. Various factors contribute to greenwashing within fashion businesses, yet these dynamics remain poorly understood. While market forces promoting greenwashing are recognized, the specific activities and organizational structures driving these decisions need further exploration. This research investigates the inner workings of fashion organizations, aiming to identify the structures and processes that lead to greenwashing. Through in-depth qualitative interviews with industry experts, it was found that greenwashing often occurs unintentionally due to misaligned goals, lack of knowledge sharing, greenhushing, and a need for shared definitions of sustainability claims. The findings underscore the need to adjust business structures and processes to mitigate greenwashing practices in the fashion industry and emphasize the importance of developing universal definitions and standards to enhance sustainability efforts.
Copyright (c) 2025 Mollie Shield https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Discovering the Myth of Metaverse Fashion
This study contributes to defining ‘prosperity fashion’ by critically examining early metaverse fashion narratives, revealing a focus on economic gain for companies rather than holistic well-being, aesthetics, and consumer needs, thus highlighting the demand for new myths that could potentially seduce consumers to shift from physical to virtual apparel, whose specific emphasis remains to be determined through further research and discourse. This paper focuses on one case study – the 2021 Roblox Gucci Garden event, specifically analysing the widely referred transaction of a virtual Gucci Dionysus Bag with Bee that sold for more than its physical equivalent. A critical discourse analysis of mass media coverage demonstrates how this single transaction evolved into the most cited example of metaverse fashion’s investment potential, becoming a foundational myth in the emerging metaverse fashion discourse.
Copyright (c) 2025 Natalia Berger https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Play to Prosper in Fashion Give Me Back My Agency!
The fashion industry plays a major role in driving planetary decline, primarily through encouraging overconsumption and fast fashion. While the industry’s impact is well-documented, less attention has been given to the role of consumers in sustaining these systems through their decisions and everyday practices. Engaging consumers in exploring the industry’s complex challenges is essential, and playful experiences offer a promising perspective. This contribution investigates the potential of games to foster transformative change. It begins with an overview of Italian case studies, showing that while educational games on sustainable fashion can raise awareness, they often fall short of prompting lasting behavioural change. To address this, a game-based project was developed in collaboration with an Italian B-Corp focused on eco-social sustainability. Using a participatory approach, company staff joined a one-day workshop to map the fashion supply chain and co-create game mechanics, dynamics, and aesthetics. A prototype was tested with participants of diverse backgrounds, using pre- and post-gameplay questionnaires to assess changes in interest, knowledge, and practices. Preliminary results suggest that gameplay can influence perceptions and behaviours, though revisions are needed to include more actionable content and everyday best practices.
Copyright (c) 2025 Giulia Teverini, Letizia Vaccarella https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
This paper discusses the design of “I finded,” a mobile app aimed at mapping and promoting second-hand clothing stores within Porto’s historic centre. Developed as part of a master’s thesis at the University of Porto in 2023, the app addresses the rising interest in second-hand clothing and the limited awareness of such shops in Porto. Given the fashion industry’s significant environmental impact, the project encourages sustainable shopping choices to o support eco-conscious consumer behavior and environmental sustainability. The app’s main goal is to make second-hand stores more accessible, featuring a consistent store page format with a summary, image carousel, style description, target demographics, customer reviews, location with map, and contact details. Research methods included questionnaires, interviews, visual analysis, and observation, with a focus on inclusivity, diversity, and usability in design. Two shops, “Kilo” and “Com Sotaque,” served as test cases, each offering unique aesthetics within the second-hand market. By integrating sustainability into design, this project aims to promote environmental conservation and encourage a sustainable future. The app represents a concrete outcome, with the next step being potential collaborations with local institutions to bring it to life.
Copyright (c) 2025 Susana Barreto, Ana Carolina Fidelis https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Shaping a Purpose-Driven Fashion Industry by Design
The European Commission has emphasized the insufficiency of current sustainability efforts and the need for drastic emission cuts by 2050. New EU regulations, such as the Green Deal and the Eco-design for Sustainable Products Regulation, reinforce this demand for sustainable industrial transformation. Within this framework, the fashion industry faces major sustainability challenges due to its reliance on linear, profit-driven models. These dynamics foster overproduction and globalized markets, prompting a reevaluation of production systems. Purpose-driven enterprises have emerged, aligning business strategies with values and sustainability goals. This article examines how design can guide the fashion industry towards prosperity via purpose-driven models. As setting design goals shapes strategic vision, design becomes central in aligning innovation with sustainable objectives. Research shows that the design phase holds significant potential for sustainability gains. The author conducted an iterative study of European fashion firms, combining desk research with case studies to identify key purpose-driven practices. The resulting model highlights how companies voluntarily integrate profit with social and environmental impact. Three case studies illustrate the application of this model and its broader relevance. This work explores how European fashion firms use design to move from economic growth toward holistic, ecosystem-focused prosperity.
Copyright (c) 2025 Erminia D'Itria https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Sustainable Fashion Through Traditional Turkish Women’s Clothing Techniques
The production of garments from fabric involves multiple stages, each contributing to the final product’s design and the resulting fabric waste. The fashion industry produces 97 million tons of waste annually, of which 18 million are leftover textiles. Fast fashion increases the amount of textile waste created by industry and consumers. The zero-waste approach has begun to be implemented in clothing design to minimize the amount of fabric waste generated in the pre-consumer production stage. The collection design and patternmaking stages, well before the cutting process, present a pivotal opportunity to apply zero-waste fashion design techniques. At the design stage of zero-waste clothes, the fashion designer and pattern maker precisely plan to ensure that fabric pieces fit together like a puzzle using the entire fabric width. In response to the growing concern over fabric waste, this paper explores how traditional garment construction techniques can be applied to contemporary garment design to reduce waste. Traditional construction methods were used for three dress patterns to explore how they might affect fabric utilization and garment production.
Copyright (c) 2025 Dr. Ceren Aktas, Elvan Ozkavruk Adanir https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
System Design for the Sustainable Enhancement of Italian Wool Production Chain
The Italian wool industry is facing considerable challenges, largely due to mounting environmental concerns that are undermining its economic viability and sustainable production management. This paper presents the strategy of the FiLA National Observatory project, launched in 2024. The project objective is to reconfigure the value creation processes through a circular economy approach for the indigenous wool supply chain, establishing an energy-neutral, human-centred, and inclusive model. Italian wool (20-30 μm) is facing significant challenges in the international market, particularly from finer New Zealand wool (15 μm). Additionally, approximately 10,000 tonnes of annual greasy wool production is often treated as special waste, highlighting the urgent need for a systematic intervention to understand the strategic positioning of Italian wool within the broader context of the textile supply chain. This should extend beyond fashion and knitwear design to encompass a wider macroeconomic landscape. By 2025, the FiLA Observatory will develop a digital platform to support networking and system competitiveness, promoting innovation in processes, products, and services. Through mapping actors, identifying research opportunities, and defining macro-economic trends, the project proposes a comprehensive model that integrates economic, productive, environmental, and social aspects, ultimately contributing to a new paradigm of prosperity in the fashion industry.
Copyright (c) 2025 Rossana Gaddi, Luciana Mastrolonardo https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Well-being has traditionally been measured through economic growth and the accumulation of wealth, often neglecting the limitations imposed by natural resources (Latouche et al., 2011). The current economic model overlooks the principles of the circular economy, which are increasingly undermined by anthropogenic phenomena such as global warming. Additionally, growing geopolitical instability is weakening conventional governance systems (Sachs, 2015). Within this context, the European Commission’s “Safe and Sustainable by Design” (SSbD) framework (2022), aligned with the objectives of the European Green Deal, promotes a systemic approach that integrates safety, sustainability, and functionality. It aims to reduce the use of hazardous chemicals and minimize environmental impacts throughout the entire life cycle of products and processes. There is an urgent need to rethink production systems through a “reparative, regenerative, and restorative” economic model (Sbordone et al., 2022), which transcends the limits of the circular economy by prioritizing biological cycles and the bioeconomy (Fava, 2022; Giampietro, 2024). The Quintuple Helix model contributes to redefining relationships among stakeholders, placing natural capital at the center (Carayannis et al., 2012). In this scenario, design intrinsically connected to life plays a critical role in re-establishing sustainable relationships between humans and the environment (Antonelli, 2012), particularly in the fashion and textile sectors, by fostering locally grounded initiatives focused on repair, regeneration, and territorial enhancement.
Copyright (c) 2025 Ilenia Carmela Amato, Eleonora Cecere, Maria Antonietta Sbordone https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
We have a palette of colors, but what if we take sounds as a starting point for designing practice? What could be a sonic palette for sonic wear? This paper introduces new ways of thinking with the body in time and space as a sonic composition. It presents experimental research on fabricating sonic material using 3D printing on textiles technique for developing different sonic expressions as musical notes. This experimental Sonic Palette is seen as a way of bringing awareness about otherness, and commonness with those with visual impairment while exploring alternative possibilities and unusual approaches to materials. Sonic Palette introduces a new experience of wearing, nonetheless, it suggests an experimental language, extended vocabulary, and expressions in the field of fashion and textile design. Aesthetics of interaction and experience rather than aesthetics of appearance propose considering garments as musical composition and musical instruments. The expansion of sensory plentitude and expressiveness of materials with non-visual, experience-based, and time-based expressions is an example of inclusive ways of thinking, designing, and presenting fashion for example for those with diverse visual abilities.
Copyright (c) 2025 Vidmina Stasiulytė https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
This article presents an innovative methodological alternative devised from both a technical and artistic approach, in order to offer a systemic response to sustainability in the fashion industry through the use of ecofriendly materials and techniques, inspired by artisanal tradition and knowledge of nature, on which research is carried out by determining and formalizing the final product. An analysis of natural fibers and pigments has been carried out, as well as experimental tests with chromatic treatment and plant printing techniques, such as “Ecoprint” and “Shibori”, which have resulted in the design and development of a tote bag model as a practical example. From these initial solutions, the project remains open to the incorporation of new patterns and traditional techniques, always respecting ecological processes. This initiative aspires to consolidate itself as a comprehensive sustainable fashion proposal that, since its inception, is committed to authenticity, aesthetics and respect for the environment.
Copyright (c) 2025 Carmina Escandell Lorente, Amparo Galbis Juan https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Fur, valued for its various natural qualities, has historically been a staple in fashion, often signifying status. However, traditional animal-based fur is a controversial material increasingly subject to governmental and organisational bans. Alternatives include synthetic and next-gen materials. Although synthetic fur is more sustainable than animal fur regarding carbon footprint and animal welfare, it still contributes significantly to environmental issues, including microplastic pollution. Next-gen furs are animal- and petrochemical-free alternatives. However, their success is challenging to compare with synthetics due to their natural properties and the substantial time and financial investments already made in the latter. Based on traditional secondary research employing a ‘capture-edit-search’ approach, this investigation explores the potential of defining material properties to be prioritised or avoided when designing a next-gen fur. Starting from an analysis of the traditional material’s properties, the attributes commonly associated with animal-based fur are explored to help formulate strategies to consider when designing next-gen alternatives. As demonstrated, it is unlikely that a next-gen replacement for animal fur will fully replicate the material’s characteristics. However, in a design-driven transition, knowing what to avoid is as important as knowing what to achieve. Therefore, establishing honest design priorities could contribute to a more prosperous fashion future.
Copyright (c) 2025 Isabella Enrica Alevato Aires, Stefan Lie https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Analyzing Sustainability in Fashion Through Bio-Synthetic Materials
The environmental consequences of the fashion industry are undeniably severe and contribute to environmental pollution and degradation in many ways. While sustainability discussions are continuing, new material trends are emerging and the source, production process, and experience of these materials also affect the fashion industry. Synthetic biology is a promising tool combining bio-design and bioengineering. This new bio-synthetic approach offers an innovative path toward ethical and clean fashion production by transforming microbes or bacteria into “living factories” that produce sustainable materials. However, a broader evaluation is required to grasp the full potential and ethical challenges, especially regarding the commodification of living organisms for mass production. It is imperative that research be conducted to assess the environmental, social, and economic impacts of bio-synthetic materials, particularly in the context of the “living factories” concept. Considering the ethical risks of exploitative practices and the need for transparency, this study examines bio-synthetic applications in fashion, their impacts on sustainability, and their implications for planetary well-being.
Copyright (c) 2025 Filiz Ozbengi Uslu, Dr. Arzu Vuruskan https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Production and marketing of fashion are organized into very short cycles of substitution with overconsumption of styles, attention and people. Collections are short-lived, and the window exposing models is soon closed. Revitalization and replacement go hand in hand, but the couple seems to become increasingly out of time and at odds with a new cultural awareness calling for restructuration, holistic views and regenerative practices for a common good (Buckton et al., 2023). Naturally, for the industry’s changes to appear as authentic, they need to include the practise of marketing. For this purpose, this article will contribute to defining the concept of prosperity fashion from an interdisciplinary perspective by untangling the narrow visual marketing narrative intertwining fashion and youth and exploring the possibilities for widening the scope to including mature people as an integral, aesthetic part of fashion branding. Furthermore, it will suggest central discursive building blocks in the aesthetic construction of the industry’s position as part of a natural world of longer and more natural lifecycles.
Copyright (c) 2025 Dorrit Bøilerehauge https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
From Waste to Wealth: Redefining Prosperity in Fashion
The fashion industry is under increasing pressure to reconcile economic growth with environmental responsibility. This paper examines the 2024 Tanween Sustainable Fashion Challenge, organized by Ithra and supported by Vanina as the knowledge partner, as a case study for advancing regenerative practices in the sector. The challenge invited designers to transform undervalued local materials into luxury fashion items, using a framework rooted in the quintuple helix model to facilitate collaboration among industry, academia, government, society, and environmental stakeholders. The six-day design challenge employed agile methodologies, integrating charrette and sprint formats to enable rapid prototyping and interdisciplinary teamwork. Participants developed innovative material processes, linking ecological responsibility with cultural heritage. In the post-challenge phase, an extended network of expertise and collective intelligence was mobilized to support the winning proposal, ensuring its progression from concept to prototype through advanced material development. This paper explores the challenge’s structure, its hybrid models for fostering innovation, and its integration of cultural dimensions. By embedding global expertise into local contexts, the initiative demonstrates how collective intelligence, cross-sectoral partnerships, and a glocal approach can redefine prosperity. It positions fashion not only as a tool for ecological stewardship and sustainable development but also as a medium for cultural engagement and systemic transformation in the pursuit of regenerative practices.
Copyright (c) 2025 Joanne Hayek https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Business author John Elkington´s key assumptions, presented in his 1997 work Cannibals with Forks - the multiple perspectives view, global data and future-oriented temporality - continue to inform mainstream fashion sustainability today. If fashion is to move beyond a singular profit-driven vision toward shared well-being, the research community needs to increasingly steer studies toward using reflexive approaches, by actively mobilizing and problematizing existing frameworks, not aiming to subvert or debunk or to vindicate or defend our normative point of view, but to critically problematize it. In this article, problematization methodology is used to identify and challenge the assumptions underlying Elkington’s work and contemporary fashion sustainability research. By analyzing this seminal text the article contributes to the critical problematization of design disciplines, fashion sustainability in particular. Retaining hope and moving toward prosperity fashion in its true sense calls for dialectically questioning and unravelling one’s own position, and scrutinizing and reconsidering some commonly held assumptions. This will enable us to make space for different positions and lines of thinking, which are desperately needed in fashion research.
Copyright (c) 2025 Aino Helena Korhonen https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
As a theoretical framework, the concept of flourishing according to John Ehrenfeld, can be used to consider the future of fashion. Redefining sustainability in terms of flourishing, can be a way for fashion companies as well as consumers, to be guided through the radical change that is needed within the fashion industry. Through applying a qualitative method of textual analysis, the paper reveals how flourishing can be integrated into a future fashion industry, with a focus on Being and caring as the main characteristics. The data is gathered from the fashion company babaà’s website and analyzed in relation to earlier research on systemic change within the fashion industry. This, in order to provide practical steps for fostering flourishing within the fashion industry. In conclusion, one of the biggest impact a company like babaà can have, is through how they tell their story to their consumers as well as through showing how they as a company let caring steer their choices, with a specific focus on locality. This article builds on Ehrenfeld’s concept of flourishing by illustrating its significance in fashion communication.
Copyright (c) 2025 Paulina Ryden https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Wearing has long been the primary act of fashion, yet fashion consumers additionally engage in a complex, interactive relationship with garments when they are not worn. This paper explores the nuanced relationship between care and fashion consumption by examining the acts of care involved in doing the laundry. In identifying laundry as a series of seemingly small quasi-events that intertwine identity, social norms, and cultural consumption, caring for fashion can be reframed by abstracting typical laundry acts, such as progressing folding into a caring act of holding. Common consumption patterns and behaviours can be altered by disrupting standard laundry practices and engaging consumers in care activities based on joy, fulfilment, or even frustration. Examining how we consume fashion objects in our homes through the laundry basket can provide further insight into body-object relationships from the perspectives of care, maintenance, and dependence. This can thereby redefine expressions of bonding and our engagement with material culture by suggesting the consumption of acts as opposed to things as a means to care for fashion.
Copyright (c) 2025 Helga Halldorsdottir https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
The fashion system is notorious for perpetuating inequalities and exploitation, driven by entrenched power dynamics that dictate which ideas and interests prevail. While sustainability often dominates discussions on alternative paradigms (Henninger et al., 2016), care has emerged as a critical perspective, emphasizing processes over outcomes (Franzo, 2023). This approach highlights practices that responsibly manage time, resources, and expertise, fostering positive relationships between people, the environment, and territories. This paper draws on data from CreAbility, an ongoing action-research project involving Italian micro and small fashion enterprises, as well as associations and designers known for their social and cultural impact. The project aims to foster networks of practices that promote collaboration and enrich the theoretical debate on fashion’s potential to generate social and economic value (Moore et al., 2023). Through periodic focus groups with diverse stakeholders, the study examines the concept of prosperity beyond mere economic gain, exploring how these actors challenge existing hierarchies and contribute to ecological, social, cultural, and economic well-being. The initial findings highlight key aspects for the fashion system to address in order to act as a positive agent of change in the Italian context.
Copyright (c) 2025 Ludovica Carini, Silvia Mazzucotelli Salice, Cecilia Cornaggia https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Contrasting Hierarchical and Decentralised System Analogies to Revalue Prosperity
The hierarchical capitalist system exploits all living systems, including labour. Revaluing prosperity ideologies involves freeing the production of new systems from an opportunistic economy and fostering subject formation that values “complexity, diversity and multiple ways of belonging” (Braidotti & Regan, 2017, p. 182). Agents in the fashion system struggle to adopt the counterhegemonic ontologies required for true sustainability. A responsive, integrated, and decentralised system and an ethic of care are needed to empower more role players to address dynamic societal challenges. This paper contributes to redefining the concept of prosperity by contrasting analogies of the hierarchical capitalist fashion system with alternative decentralised structures, thereby identifying intervention points to enable agency for fashion system participants. Drawing from Nel’s (2025), PhD research, critical discourse analysis and a constructivist qualitative methodology grounded in theory through desktop analysis are applied. The characteristics of decentralised systems offer intervention points in the fashion system, promoting a framework that moves away from exploitation and integrates agency — enhancing economic resilience by diversifying economies and reducing vulnerability to global market fluctuations. Revaluing prosperity paradigms, from prosperity for the privileged few through capitalist profit motives to more inclusive, decentralised notions of prosperity could promote well-being for all.
Copyright (c) 2025 Lisa Nel, Desiree Smal, Allan Munro https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
This paper defines and investigates models of environmental movers (EM), based on a long-term collaboration and community-based project about fashion, sustainability, identity, with a focus on environmental solutions to ecological, class, and social justice. We describe and evaluate the first two years of “Handle with Care” project, a long-term community collaboration between a high school and university classes, which includes Envirochic/Chic Shack, an environmentally friendly boutique planned, developed, and implemented with a local high school in the United States. This space provided a platform to explore and advocate for sustainability through fashion and style.
Copyright (c) 2025 Alessandra Von Burg, Nathaniel French, Terry Matthews, Roksanna Keyvan, Toni Hines, Farah Alsakhita, Gina Giorgio https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
The concept of uniqueness is becoming increasingly central in consumer purchasing decisions, the desire for exclusivity and authenticity is manifested through the growing adoption of garments that enable individuals to express their identity, enhancing the personal value of the clothes they wear. This study explores the affective dimensions of fashion, focusing on the rise of hyper-personalized and pre-loved garments as key drivers of a paradigm of slower, sustainable consumption. Far from being simple trends, these practices enact significant transformation in how individuals and objects relate. Drawing on philosophical frameworks, the paper positions garments as transitional objects that embody personal and collective narratives, fostering emotional durability and a deeper connection with materiality. While hyper-personalization, empowered by digital interactivity, invites consumers to collaborate in the creative process, transforming garments into existential companions, the re-ontholisation of pre-loved garments challenges fast fashion’s disposability, framing second-hand clothing as a means of ethical resistance and ontological continuity. These dynamics, intertwined with principles of slow fashion and circular economy, point to a broader socio-cultural shift toward inclusive prosperity, balancing individual well-being, environmental integrity, and social justice, reframing fashion as a critical practice renewing its role as a medium for reimagining a more sustainable and existentially resonant sartorial culture.
Copyright (c) 2025 Michela Musto https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
The concept of prosperity is often associated with economic growth and the success of a product on the market, neglecting or downplaying the impact on the environment and people according to a model that has long been considered unsustainable. What is your definition of prosperity and what do you think are the tools and approaches to develop it? In 1992, a book was published called ‘Wealth Beyond Measure’. Its lead author was the ecological economist Paul Ekins, and in 200 highly illustrated pages, key concepts in economics and ecological economics are unpacked for non-specialist readers. In one illustration there’s a wheel, an old wagon wheel style of wheel, with each of the spokes representing a different contributing factor to prosperity. In the illustration, the wheel is distorted, egg-shaped, with the one spoke bigger than all the others. This spoke is production and income and it is drawn like this to show that these factors have been exaggerated over others, like the quality of the environment, health and care for the future have been. This picture has been handed down to us in the global North and neoliberalism has normalised it. It is worth asking ourselves: how do we understand prosperity? Is it something related to economics? Or is it something broader? Does our notion of prosperity radically extend to include all species and care for the Earth? This is where I think prosperity finds its roots, in a non-hierarchical, respectful and reciprocal relationship with the living land. This, of course, is not new insight. First Nations and indigenous cosmology (which precedes the 17th Century Enlightenment) is typically based on inter-generational wisdoms that had always been tethered to lands, waters, animals and bigger worlds we cannot name or know. How is it possible to rediscover and encourage new sensory and direct experiences with clothing and the body, creating a new relationship between the human and the non-human? Clothing is a membrane between body and world. It mediates our experiences. It can be a route to greater understanding of where we are and how we are. Understood like this, fashion knowledge becomes situated knowledge, situated in the lived experience of the body moving through the living world. The dressed body then becomes a way to unlock ontologies and epistemologies of connection and relationality to nature. It becomes about ways of being that are rooted in awareness of our deep dependence on the ecological systems that support our lives and our clothing lives. Granted this is not the traditional starting points for fashion scholars and practitioners. But I find it liberating. A literature review in this case is an engagement with what we wear and where we are realizing that the two things cannot be separated. And that when we work in this way with situated understanding we may begin to act as more resource-constrained members of the ecological community. The debate on sustainability in fashion often only finds technocentric answers, focusing on individual aspects of change such as innovative materials, circular processes and lifecycle assessment. Do you think this is enough or is a deeper change in the cultural and symbolic models of fashion necessary? And, moreover, does it still make sense to use the term ‘sustainability’? Individual product improvements and technofixes are part of response to ecological and social injustice in fashion, but they are certainly not all of it. They are useful when deployed in time-bound, specific, targeted ways. But they will not deliver the systemic overhaul of the sector that is necessary for ecological health and more resilient communities. Without challenging the social objective of economic growth - without getting that deep - things will, at best, get worse more slowly. There is a dynamic future for fashion ahead, though it will necessarily become a sector with a smaller metabolism and it will need to serve new functions. It will also encompass different activities, different roles, different allocations of time between paid and unpaid work, different relations with nature. Is the right term for this ‘sustainability’? Perhaps. I don’t mind so much what we call it – the thing that matters is the experience to which the word points. What is important is that action is enabled and we feel the effects. For some time now you have been emphasising the link between fashion and the ecological crisis, highlighting the need to overcome the dichotomy between humans and nature. As you have written in your previous contributions, it is essential to be aware that the systems responsible for the serious threat to our planet Earth are human-made. How can this change of perspective translate into concrete practices for designers and companies in the fashion industry? It is about a switch from seeing things as separate, as isolated parts or elements organized in a hierarchy; to seeing things as connected and with no one thing more important any other. If the needs of humans are not outranking those of river, what happens to the design brief? If using all the fabric in a order – not wasting any – is essential in order to honour the resources invested in the making of this fabric, then what happens? Do you think that fashion can stop being the cause of environmental and social crises and become a vehicle for shared well-being? Where can we start? Certainly this is a shared endeavor - yet we have to start individually, we have to do our own developmental work of finding a link, a connection with the ecological systems that support our lives, no one can do this for us. And then from a place of deep understanding and connection we dress ourselves and start to think about and practice fashion from this changed starting point. This is not about needing to find wilderness or untamed nature. This is about recognizing that everything, including us, including fashion, is interconnected, and then acting accordingly. You have long explored the concept of ‘fashion localism’ and design in response to the territory. How can we rethink the fashion system to incorporate dynamics more rooted in specific places and ecological contexts? Localism is recognised as a central tenet of sustainability that will, it is hoped, solve at root many of society’s theoretical and practical problems. Its promise arises from two main sources: first, the different ways power is divided when the scale of living is revised - smaller, local scales change the influence that people have over decisions that effect their lives; and second, the recognition that a community’s well-being depends on the health of the ecosystems it lives within, which that same community is uniquely placed to understand and influence. So re-scaling fashion and adapting it to place offers the prospect of self-determined jobs, greater agency within communities and healthy ecosystems. It is a holy grail of sustainability action and place of great hope and possibility for those invested in the work of deep and lasting fashion change. Fashion design is often seen as a force for innovation and change. However, in a context of ecological emergency, design that slows down, reduces and simplifies may be necessary. How do you see the future role of the designer in this transition? And what is the role of fashion education in training more responsible professionals? What we know about the future is that it will be less certain than ever before, more ambiguous, less predictable. And so in this future what we need are the skills of resilience, of grounded imagination and a willingness to engage in diverse experiments in living differently. These are, roughly speaking, design skills. The future has plenty of scope for designers, though not perhaps in the old places. Designers going forward will take roles as facilitators of change, as visualisers of new stories, as experimenters, as educators. Certainly fewer new material products will be made, but there will be plenty of manipulation and organization of existing material stocks…
Copyright (c) 2025 Paolo Franzo https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
The concept of prosperity is often associated with economic growth and the success of a product on the market, neglecting or downplaying the impact on the environment and people according to a model that has long been considered unsustainable. What is your definition of prosperity and what do you think are the tools and approaches to develop it? I’ve not considered the term prosperity before the conference so I can’t say I have an interpretation for myself. The term I use is cohabitation, the idea of living together well. Some qualify this further with the word “thriving”, which I believe is a good addition, but the term is rich enough on its own. It takes more than compatibility or fair exchange to live together, to dwell in place among differences and similarities. It requires kinship and accepting entanglements to use posthumanist language. For me, it’s important that cohabitation is collective or at least requires others and some form of collective participation. It is also active in that to live with others requires being there together, creating shared places, and lastly it is temporal or durational–the length of time together defines in part the cohabitation. To prosper and to thrive can be seen as an individual matter, separate from place, even exclusively about the interiority of the mind or self. I don’t mean that as a critique but more as a comparison to highlight what cohabitation as a term brings. In terms of approach, I see cohabitation as the goal for designing or what I call designing-with to invoke a more-than-human context for designing. In other words, it can be a measure for the success of what and how well we design. If a thing is designed, how does it contribute to living well together throughout its life and after, well past human use (which we then call “waste”). Further, we can ask how the thing designed existed in the world but also what it took to create a thing and its effects on cohabitation. I want to be careful about methods, so we don’t view emerging techniques as fixed and immediately teachable. This is a necessary area of design research that is difficult given the fullness of the challenge to design from a decentered position and as a relational subject (as required by designing-with or posthumanist understandings of design). Nevertheless, there are compelling theoretical starting points that we have explored (along with other design researchers) such as noticing (Tsing 2015), translations (Latour 1999), landscape ethnography (Watts 2019), diffraction (Barad 2014; Haraway 1994), and learning to be affected (Lorimer 2015). The work is to move these methods from the analytical to generative considerations of design: the actions and commitments required of designers. I’ve conceptualized this as repertoires, to signal a more-than-human inflection on methods based on attunement and embodied actions. I have with others explored these in our practices in designing-with plants, pollination ecologies, textiles, networked devices, mycelium, and bioplastics . These are early explorations and as I said in the end of my keynote, I caution against rushing to instrumentalize what we know now into practice. This caution is inspired by Isabelle Stengers’ ideas of cosmopolitics (Stengers 2005) and slow science (Stengers 2018) that ask us to fully accept the challenges to know and further not to resolve differences so easily, especially in the context of neo-liberal pursuits. Rather to take the time (it will take time if done properly) and keep differences of knowing intact. The concept of ‘designing-with’ that you propose challenges the tradition of anthropocentric design. What was the main motivation that led you to develop this more relational and inclusive approach? What are the limits of traditional design and how can ‘designing-with’ overcome them? My motivation was to engage the community that I was doing much of my research in, namely human-computer interaction (HCI). On a high level, HCI is a fascinating enterprise to understand the relationship between humans and computers. Its starting points were between technical and human cognition but over time evolved to include social, philosophical, and political questions about human-technology relations. This has led to fascinating and constructive tensions in HCI between those who pursue a science of technology and generalizable models of users and those who focus on power in the relationships as a matter of race, gender, ethnicity or decoloniality, as examples. What fascinates me in these discussions of who we are putting at the center of our research or what is the appropriate technology, or which technological needs are addressed, is the relations between these questions and perspectives. How these concerns are connected, not only reveals what brings them together but what governs them or shapes them. What is “appropriate” for whom; whose “needs” are we concerned with; and which beings and matter are included in the question of “who”? In HCI, these relations are governed by human-centeredness. What is not said does not need to be said since we can readily assume we are talking about humans. Human-centered design or user-centered design is an instrumentalized or practical implementation of human exceptionalism. In design, and this instrumentalization goes well beyond HCI to include design and its many variants, the humanist notion of humans as the privileged actors in the world is how we conceive of (and educate) designers; and human concerns are privileged over others in constructs of users and consumers. In professional design or the corporate world of design, late-capitalism and consumerism merge tightly with human-centered design to form the governing force of what is design, its values, and its aims. It’s worth noting that Rosi Braidotti makes clear that despite the marketing rhetoric, corporate bodies and the global economy have long gotten over the exceptionalism of humans, flattening all life to be various sources of extraction whether human biology, labour across species, agriculture, or mining (Braidotti 2013). My earlier research was timid given all this but set the tone. It questioned the concepts of user and designer, i.e., who designs and what do we mean by use (and for whom)? I later adopted a counterfactual strategy of inverting the privilege of humans over technology inherent in most HCI and design to decenter designers and users to ask what it means to be a thing? This question cannot be answered but it revealed other approaches: how things can be designed to ask that question that points toward a decentered form of designing; and how the notion of things is “leaky” to cite Donna Haraway (Haraway 1985) or more vividly described by Nancy Tuana as having a “viscous porosity” (Tuana 2008). Whatever is designed is not discrete but becomes entangled, not in the sense of the social conditions of things, that is well researched, but in feminist and cyber-feminist realizations that reveal posthumanist and new materialist relations. I would trace these entanglements as best I could to of course find that humans are entangled with nonhuman actors and forces . This revealed to me the problematic of designing with a relational ontology, in which humans and nonhumans (myself, the things we designed, and other things, and the world) co-mingle, shaping each other into meanings and actions. And that a relational ontology made effects and meaning dynamic, changing or in a constant state of becoming to use another posthumanist term. It is from this point in my design research and writing of Things We Could Design (Wakkary 2021) the ideas of designing-with, much of what we have been discussing here, came to be articulated. Of course, there were others in my field (HCI) that were also exploring these concerns (Forlano 2017; Light, Powell, and Shklovski 2017). I don’t have the space here to discuss the limits of traditional design, but I can comment on how designing-with can inform directions. I will say that I increasingly came to see human-centered design as defuturing, to borrow Tony Fry’s term (Fry 1999), in that it was obscuring and precluding other more expansive possibilities for designing. Designing-with can be seen in this light. Designing-with can contribute to change in a variety of ways and along a continuum. At one end it asks for a radical change since the governing assumptions are very different than status quo and where our attention should be is also radically different. I tried to outline some starting concepts in Things We Could Design that we might get to in more detail later. It is in this sense aspirational but with some conceptual tools for making change. While radical change may be required, I want to be clear that this does not put all the efforts within human-centered design in opposition. For example, a common point of departure in efforts related to decoloniality, race, or gender in design and more-than-human is a critique of the modernist position of oppression, the privileging of white European male as the idealized and universalized human that determines all others to be less-than or “inhuman” as Kathryn Yusoff refers to the historically oppressed of European colonization (Yusoff 2018). This understanding of the historical and ongoing work necessary when invoking the notion of humans is part of my understanding and others in more-than-human concerns. Building on feminist thinkers and indigenous ways of knowing grounded in interdependencies, this position is expanded upon, made more generous to include other species but also seeing technologies in cyber-feminist terms and so a part of more-than-humans. The shared needs and urgencies in this relational and expansive sense are seen to be matters of concern of designing. In the end, more-than-human is inclusive of humans with all the inherent power relations and new ones as well. To move to the other end of the continuum, the most minimal change, is to affect a realization of the human exceptionalist enterprise of traditional design. And framing practice this way may instill a degree of humility or caution that leads to limiting some actions and engaging the most general level of ethics–just because we can doesn’t mean we should. Whereas concepts like more-than-human biographies that speak to the fullness of the life of things we make can be made part of current design practices, extending sustainability efforts. Lastly, designing-with has pedagogical value. It and other approaches can be integrated into design education as change is typically generational. Again, there are varying degrees of integration but one emphasis I would make is to shift the focus of the designer from an individual autonomous actor to a collective more-than-human assemblages, a form of infrastructuring (Ehn 2008) as it’s called in participatory design (and what I call constituency). This translates to ongoing collective structures to support designing before designing occurs but inclusive of more-than-humans. In your work you talk about ‘posthuman subjectivity’. Can you explain how this idea redefines the role and responsibility of the designer? How does the creative and decision-making process of a designer who adopts this perspective change? I think this is the central challenge. How we move past human subjectivity as cultivated by human exceptionalism from the enlightenment to modernism. A form of subjectivity that fosters the idea of the autonomous self. A sense of self that creates separation between us and the world around us. A self that is individual and leads to the pursuit of mastery and control. In many respects that is the humanist or modern subjectivity we reproduce in and ask of designers. By contrast, a posthuman subjectivity is not conceptualized as autonomous but relational or interdependent with the world. To the point that mastery and control are not available but also not desirable. Rather the pursuit is humble and seeks kinship and shares agency with other matters and beings. In philosophical terms it is a subjectivity that is decentered and relational, meaning we are one of many actors working in relation to each other in shaping and cohabiting the world and achieving subjectivity through our interdependencies in the world. And further, subjectivity is an ongoing process, even pluralistic, that is both dynamic and requires attentiveness in its constant formation and reformation (Foucault 2005). In the most general terms, designing as a posthuman subject requires a shift toward listening and working alongside. Metaphorically, it is to embody a position of horizontality to increase contact points with others and sense degrees of difference across the body as opposed to verticality that privileges vision from a single viewpoint above and minimizes points of contact. To be horizontal to work alongside is to embrace the relationality (and humility) of the subject, how as a designer one responds and changes in relation to the situation we are embodied within and with those we cohabit. The metaphoric framing of this points to the need for exploration to meet what is quite a challenge to reorient and re-embody from human to posthuman subjectivities. Having said that, we discussed earlier methods or repertoires which are there to support the posthuman subjectivity in designing. The concept of ‘more-than-human worlds’ implies a vision of design that takes into account non-human agents. What do you think are the main challenges in integrating this perspective into design practice? How can we translate these concepts into concrete tools for designers working in industrial or technological contexts, where a functionalist approach often prevails? I prefer to turn the question upside down. Since the prevailing functionalist approach will exhaust and destroy the earth’s current habitat, especially the critical zone (the biomes just above and below the surface of the earth we cohabit), the question is what concepts and tools can support radical change in how we design? The point is that privileging functionality, efficiency, and commerce is not a viable choice going forward. Equally important and relevant, is that designing in more-than-human worlds is also not a choice. Regardless of what approach one takes, one is always designing in more-than-human worlds. Worlds that contest much of what we do but also suffer great harm through the way we currently design. On the one hand the challenge is great in that the change required is significant and complex. Of course, human-centered design similarly called for radical change from technocentric practices of the 1960s and took some thirty years or more to become a firmly established practice. Creative practices like in textiles for centuries were guild practice for elite classes. It was not until the early 20th century that creative practices were more broadly practiced for wider, less economically privileged classes. In this sense, the challenge is eased when seen as a generational change of integrating more-than-human thinking into design practices. Of course, the patience for change is challenged by the urgencies of our climate, biodiversity, and injustice crises. Over time you have talked about concepts such as ‘speaking subject’, ‘biography’ and ‘constituency’ in design. Can you elaborate on how these elements redefine the relationships between designed objects and their users (human and otherwise)? How do these concepts help us see objects not just as tools, but as subjects with which we enter into a relationship? I’m happy to go over these concepts in turn. They also help to address your previous question in more detail. But first I would like to address the last part of your question. I see things or objects, as you refer to them, as lively, meaning they can have agentic effects independent of us, and are dynamic. This liveliness contests the narrow definition of tools, things in stasis but more importantly, as you suggest, we are in dialogue, in an active relationship with things. This is readily obvious with living matter and species (think viruses and animals) but ideas like Haraway’s cyborg or Ihde’s co-shaping includes technologies (Haraway 1985; Ihde 1990). Things and us are co-constituted, we create meaning and actions in relation to each other. We form in relation to each other. I use the example of mountaineering to illustrate this point in Things We Could Design. Technological clothing shapes humans into mountain climbers and extends to shape mountains into climbable terrain. Of course, the challenge is to design to c-shape in ways that aspire to cohabitation rather than human mastery. This shared agency, as commonly referred to in posthumanism, adds to what I referred earlier to the need for designers to listen and work alongside. I distill this into the idea of participation. The need to accept and invite the participation of nonhumans in designing, whether its matter as materials, technologies, or other living beings. This idea of participation is what each of the concepts you asked me to elaborate on are in response to. For example, the speaking subject is about our human role in fostering nonhuman participation; biographies speak to the participation of things in their meaning and effects on the world; and constituencies are about the gathering of humans and nonhumans to participate in the infrastructuring or structures by which we design before designing. To elaborate, let me begin with the constituency. It refers to a gathering of humans and nonhumans from which designers of things come together to go on to design things. Constituencies are an ongoing concern that are continually configured and reconfigured. A kitchen is a good analogy for a constituency. It is where humans are gathered with nonhumans like food ingredients, cooking utensils, pots and pans, ovens, stoves, and recipes. Cultural and political commitments are made such as veganism, non-GMO, halal, ethnicity, history, and place. This metaphor easily extends to the design studio or other forms of collective structures for designing. Relatedly, the speaking subject describes the unique role of the human designer in amongst the more-than-human constituency that designs. The speaking subject is accountable for speaking on behalf of, maintaining, caring for, and refining the gathering of humans and nonhumans. There is an inherent ethical dimension to the speaking subject, the ongoing need to address the challenges of representing, caring with, and seeking participation from more-than-human others in ways that do not misrepresent or instrumentalize. For example, Latour talks about a “parliament of things” in which we politically represent humans and nonhumans to other humans (Latour 1993). This inspired the Embassy of the North Sea in the Hague, that seeks to give inhabitants of the North Sea across all species political representation. In this representation of others, the speaking subject acknowledges the inherent politics and inequalities in assuming such a role. It is important to say that it is impossible to fairly represent and maintain relations with all in a constituency and to speak on behalf others that cannot be fully known or seen. This underscores the need for accountability within the unresolvable ambivalence of the role. Hence, the speaking subject relies on repertoires that we discussed earlier to gather and engage more-than-humans to participate more fully and to make explicit actions to be held accountable. More-than-human biography is the human and nonhuman life force (agencies) that come together to design or form a thing. It signals that shared agencies are dynamic and continually inscribe themselves into the world through their lifetime. A more-than-human biography operates across human and nonhuman temporalities that can challenge our human-scale of time. The concept argues that the value of a thing can be assessed by its more-than-human biography that directly relates to cohabitation, namely its consequences beyond human use and what it leaves behind. For example, the Bag with handle of weldable plastic material or more commonly, the plastic bag, patented in 1965 by the industrial designer Sten Gustaf Thulin and the company Celloplast, became a global product of convenience but also one of ongoing colossal waste and toxicity, environmental injustices, and belated legislations to curb its use. All this together, form the shared biography of the plastic bag, Thulin, and Celloplast. We may be closing in on the end of the plastic bag biography—yet its last chapter has the resiliency to last for up to 1,000 years that result in microplastics that do not decompose. In my own research, an example is a project to explore relational technologies with local pollination ecologies of solo bees. It aims to situate the materials and technological choices within the specific locale in terms of ecological cohabitation. Part of that is designing the technological forms in terms of their biography, where do the materials come from to design-with, how do they exist within the ecologies, and how do they end, in terms of decomposition and removal, but also along the different ecological timelines such as long enough for the nesting cycle of mason bees or the foraging season after which parts decompose on site. How does the design and the narrative around objects change when we consider them as having a biography or as part of a wider constellation of agents? This is something we have been exploring recently. In part, the notion of more-than-human biographies like the example of the plastic bag enlists narrative to frame a thing anew. This reveals the necessity to discuss and engage things differently. For example, I’ve explored how biographies shift the focus of designing from creating something new to creating how something will end–what it will leave behind. I’ve written about this theoretically in how the endings of things construct futures. I’ve also encouraged students to design for the end of the thing they are making. And we’ve explored this in our design research. In any designed thing there are a plurality of endings we might consider: how will the thing or its parts disassemble, fragment, decompose, or become irreducible matter? The narrative framing makes explicit more-than-human temporalities that are not governed by human use or values and exist across different scales. In the pollination ecology project, I mentioned earlier there are different endings to consider along different temporal cycles of the ecology and its locale–which happens to be my backyard. Part of what we are designing allows for cavity nesting of the different solo bees in our area. The nesting cycles vary widely so this part is designed for year–round stability. While another part is made of bioplastics that house electronics that are removed in the Fall as they monitor foraging. The bioplastic housing begins to decompose late summer and is left in place to fall apart and decay through to late Fall. Here, we also consider the beginning of the biography. The bioplastic is mostly composed of ground spruce cones collected nearby and so as decaying matter it is not new to the site or ecology. The research surfaces the relations and effects that occur over different timelines that affect how what we design cohabits within the ecology. Much of the focus is in determining what we don’t know or cannot know and finding the humble path through.
Copyright (c) 2025 Margherita Tufarelli https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Towards a New Sustainable and Relational Paradigm for the Fashion System
The contemporary fashion system currently stands at a critical crossroads, caught between the legacy of a linear production model—often referred to as ‘disposable’—characterized by exponential growth and profit maximization, and the urgent need to redefine its objectives in light of the multiple environmental, social, and cultural crises of our time (Raworth, 2017). This scenario has reinforced the awareness of the need to transition from a linear economy to a circular one (Ellen MacArthur Foundation, 2013). This transition can be built on three pillars inspired by the ethical and relational archetype of ‘care’: care for living beings (both human and non-human), for the environment, and for objects. In this sense, design is called upon to play a transformative role rooted in an ethics of responsibility (Tronto, 1993; Puig de la Bellacasa, 2017). In recent years, the fashion sector has undertaken numerous efforts to reduce its environmental and social impact through a variety of strategies: the adoption of natural, organic, and recycled materials (Fletcher & Tham, 2019), zero-waste design, the promotion of the slow fashion movement, and product traceability via blockchain (Rogerson & Parry, 2020). Additionally, artificial intelligence has been employed to forecast demand and optimize production processes (Caniato et al., 2020); tools such as the digital product passport (European Commission, 2022) and the application of ecodesign principles (Bocken et al., 2016) have also emerged. However, these practices often remain confined to incremental and sector-specific approaches, without challenging the dominant paradigm of unlimited growth. This context is further complicated by greenwashing practices and ethical compromises that undermine the credibility of ongoing transformations (Delmas & Burbano, 2011). Within this framework, new epistemological and design horizons are emerging: from reparative design (Fuad-Luke, 2022) to regenerative marketing (Tavanti, 2020), from the economy of sufficiency (Schneidewind, 2014) to post-industrial design (Tonkinwise, 2015). These approaches revolve around a redefined concept of prosperity, understood not as the accumulation of resources, but as relational flourishing, harmonious coexistence, and shared well-being. The Prosperity Fashion conference emerges from the recognition that transformation must be not only technical but above all cultural. Alongside the digital and ecological transitions, a third and essential dimension must be addressed: the cultural transition. This involves a profound rethinking of lifestyles, values, and models of production and consumption (Vignoli et al., 2021). The conference thus positions itself as a critical space for imagining new relationships between fashion, economy, environment, and society. The challenge lies in overcoming fashion’s historical inclination toward the ephemeral and rapid consumption, and instead assigning it an active role in cultural and social transformation.
Copyright (c) 2025 Elisabetta Cianfanelli https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
The fashion system has been questioning for years how to decrease its negative impact on the environment and people, trying to improve individual elements: from natural, organic or recycled materials to zero-waste design methodologies, from slower production processes to socially responsible actions, from development of local supply chains to inclusive communication campaigns, from blockchain traceability of products to more reliable trend forecasts through artificial intelligence, from social engagement to large scale regulation. Thanks to the contribution of researchers, practitioners, and activists, a new awareness in civil society about the finite nature of materials and resources has been achieved, and the definition of standards and certifications regulating fashion processes and products towards circular and closed ecosystems has been refined and broadly disseminated. This awareness, however, often conflicts with the need for constant and exponential economic growth, on which fashion brands base their creative direction, communication, branding, and sales decisions. The last few decades, marked by climate, humanitarian and health crises, have prompted debate about the prevailing economic model centred on ‘GDP Fetishism’ (Stiglitz 2009), which consists of holding Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as definitive and universal, and thus pursuing it at the cost of dramatically burdening environmental, human, and social resources. Many researchers have gone back to the criticisms made by the Club of Rome in 1972 to verify and actualise them, fuelling the need not only for a new direction for economics and production, but also for new definitions and terminologies for this urgent change of pace: a-growth and post-development politics (Latouche 2012), post-growth fashion (Fletcher 2011), regenerative marketing (Kotler, Foglia, Sarkar 2023), restorative design (Antonelli 2019), sufficiency-based economy (Bocken et al. 2022) and post-industrial design (Cross 1981), expressions of a new approach to nature, seen as our ally and subject of an ethic of care (Gambardella et al. 2024). Underlying all these reflections is the ambitious goal of redefining the concept of prosperity, hitherto understood almost exclusively in its economic sense, but instead indicating etymologically what is in keeping with hope, what is preferable for the future. The concept of prosperity therefore requires a new interpretation consisting of ‘a fundamental revision of the relationship between the economic and the social’ (Moore 2023), in a non-mercantile but relational prosperity (Latouche 2012). The dimension of relationality is a fundamental component of a new conception of prosperity, conceived as a resource of both economic and human value, generated by a community within environmental and ethical constraints. This idea of prosperity has as its objective the ‘common good’ (Sandel 2021) not only of the community, understood as a group of people, but also of the trans-species, post-phenomnological (van Dongen 2019) and more-than-human (Wakkary 2021) relationships that coexist in it. With its complexity, can fashion move beyond its singular profit-driven vision in order to develop the ideas of multi-faceted shared well-being? Can research into materials, processes, and fashion products shape new social and cultural models oriented towards prosperity? Can fashion be an example of this change that is capable of redirecting other knowledge and disciplines? Can the legal framework for sustainable development and the relevant legislation for the textile and fashion industries help drive the transition? Can fashion redirect the relationship between human and non-human, individual and territory, nature and technology? Can we move from the current ‘Fashion Prosperity’, understood as fashion’s pursuit of its economic growth, to ‘Prosperity Fashion’, a broad vision of the future and a transversal and contemporary focus on people, planet, economy, and technologies? Based on these premises and questions, on 13 and 14 February 2025, Prosperity Fashion — the first international conference on fashion organised by Università degli Studi di Firenze — took place. The two days were enlivened by 94 contributions, selected through peer review, 147 speakers from 88 institutions around the world, 18 parallel sessions, and two keynote speakers—Kate Fletcher and Ron Wakkary—who spoke during the plenary session held in the Sala Bianca of Palazzo Pitti. This special issue of Fashion Highlight Journal brings together a selection of the contributions presented during the conference, offering further reflection and insight into the oral presentations. This volume demonstrates the vitality and diversity of the themes addressed during Prosperity Fashion, serving as a concrete extension of the dialogue initiated during the conference.