The current fashion textiles industry is based on an outdated, exploitative system that encourages fast consumption, generates huge amounts of textile waste, creates toxic impacts to ecosystems and causes significant social impacts to production workers. The move towards a more sustainable industry is a complex challenge and will be based on circular and social systems that prioritise values, collaboration and empathy for the environment and all stakeholders. This research defines the move towards a more sustainable fashion textiles industry as a transition that operates across environmental, social, and human domains. At the human level, the transition is an emergent process that involves both ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ dimensions (Maiteny & Reed 1988). For fashion textile designers, this process will demand new ways to practice and engage with the sustainability agenda, including the ‘outer’ dimensions of better materials or more ethical production models; and the ‘inner’, reflective dimensions of values and the self. This research proposes new roles for designers in these transitionary contexts, through craft-based fashion textile design practice. The practice projects presented in the thesis demonstrate three new roles that evolve through the sustainable design continuum to the highest level of Design for Social Equity (Manzini & Vezzoli 2008), where designers will support all stakeholders towards systemic, sustainable change. The practice projects reveal a collaborative and inter-disciplinary approach to fashion textile design practice in industry, local communities and the global supply chain. The research draws on a range of literature from sustainability theory, design/craft thinking, and psychology. The mixed methodology includes an action–research phase of collaborative practice projects, facilitation of workshops with designers in industry, and a reflective phase of textile making and writing. A model for the Transitionary Textile Designer is presented as a final outcome. In order for fashion textile designers to practice in transitionary contexts ‘beyond the swatch’, the research presents new methods and tools to connect individual values to social values inherent in the transition towards sustainability.

This doctoral enquiry develops practice-orientated approaches to design for sustainability. It focuses on the relationship between garment design, laundry practices and sustainability, and responds to research that evidences domestic laundering as one of the most environmentally damaging stages in a garment’s lifecycle (Allwood, et al.,2006; Hansen, et al., 2007). A one-year laundry study surveyed the use and laundry of sixteen garments to ascertain the relationship between garment design and laundry behaviour. The research findings revealed that laundry behaviours are complex and unpredictable, and often not directly linked to producing cleaner clothes. Laundry routines are underpinned by factors beyond cleanliness including: garment use, social auditing, garment aesthetics,life stage, cultural norms, and spatial arrangements within the household. Through re-examining laundry as a social practice the research develops a series of design provocations to challenge the organisation of laundry practices, and by extension the frequencies and processes in which laundry is carried out. The findings highlight that understanding laundry as a social practice opens a space to reconceptualise design, laundry behaviour and sustainability. It decentres material products and attends to the embedded social dynamics that are set within a nexus of spaces, materials, thoughts, actions and emotions. This provides an alternative lens from which to view and develop design theories and practice for sustainability in fashion. The central insight from the research shows there are multiple benefits from incorporating social theory into methodologies for design for sustainability.

A partir de 2004, no Brasil, com autorização do Ministério da Educação, cursos de nível superior voltados para formação do profissional da área de criação em moda passaram a ser amparados nas diretrizes curriculares do campo do design. Desta forma, a recente integração entre elementos do campo do design e elementos do campo da moda proporcionou o surgimento e compartilhamento desta nova subárea, o design de moda, e uma nova categoria profissional foi estabelecida, o designer de moda. A presente pesquisa analisa possíveis relações entre referenciais teóricos do campo do design e do campo da moda a partir da perspectiva do design de moda. Investiga, também, como tais referenciais interagem e são articulados na consolidação de um repertório teórico próprio do design de moda e que outras possíveis relações emergem deste momento de transição e integração de conteúdos, sobretudo no âmbito nacional. Tem como propósito norteador promover o aprofundamento da discussão sobre as confluências e dissonâncias entre os campos de design e de moda intrínsecas ao design de moda, na tentativa de contribuir para a integração entre os campos por meio da articulação de conceitos e conteúdos teóricos. E compreende, por fim, os campos de design e de moda como equivalentes na possibilidade de gerar, reciprocamente, críticas construtivas. / Since 2004, with authorization from the Ministry of Education, higher education courses for training the professional creative field in fashion are now supported in the curriculum guidelines of the design field. Thus, the recent integration between the elements of the design field and elements of the fashion field provided the emergence and sharing of this new sub-area, fashion design, and a new category was established, the fashion designer. This research analyzes possible relations between theoretical frameworks of the design field and the fashion field from the fashion design perspective. It also investigates, as such references interact and are articulated in the consolidation of its own theoretical repertoire of fashion design and other possible relationships emerge from this time of transition and integration of content, especially at the national level. Its purpose is to promote further discussion of the consensus and dissent between design and fashion fields, intrinsic to fashion design in an attempt to contribute to the integration between the fields through the articulation of concepts and theoretical contents. And understand, finally, the design and fashion fields as equivalent in the possibility of generating, conversely, constructive criticism.

A partir de 2004, no Brasil, com autorização do Ministério da Educação, cursos de nível superior voltados para formação do profissional da área de criação em moda passaram a ser amparados nas diretrizes curriculares do campo do design. Desta forma, a recente integração entre elementos do campo do design e elementos do campo da moda proporcionou o surgimento e compartilhamento desta nova subárea, o design de moda, e uma nova categoria profissional foi estabelecida, o designer de moda. A presente pesquisa analisa possíveis relações entre referenciais teóricos do campo do design e do campo da moda a partir da perspectiva do design de moda. Investiga, também, como tais referenciais interagem e são articulados na consolidação de um repertório teórico próprio do design de moda e que outras possíveis relações emergem deste momento de transição e integração de conteúdos, sobretudo no âmbito nacional. Tem como propósito norteador promover o aprofundamento da discussão sobre as confluências e dissonâncias entre os campos de design e de moda intrínsecas ao design de moda, na tentativa de contribuir para a integração entre os campos por meio da articulação de conceitos e conteúdos teóricos. E compreende, por fim, os campos de design e de moda como equivalentes na possibilidade de gerar, reciprocamente, críticas construtivas. / Since 2004, with authorization from the Ministry of Education, higher education courses for training the professional creative field in fashion are now supported in the curriculum guidelines of the design field. Thus, the recent integration between the elements of the design field and elements of the fashion field provided the emergence and sharing of this new sub-area, fashion design, and a new category was established, the fashion designer. This research analyzes possible relations between theoretical frameworks of the design field and the fashion field from the fashion design perspective. It also investigates, as such references interact and are articulated in the consolidation of its own theoretical repertoire of fashion design and other possible relationships emerge from this time of transition and integration of content, especially at the national level. Its purpose is to promote further discussion of the consensus and dissent between design and fashion fields, intrinsic to fashion design in an attempt to contribute to the integration between the fields through the articulation of concepts and theoretical contents. And understand, finally, the design and fashion fields as equivalent in the possibility of generating, conversely, constructive criticism.