This inspirational design handbook presents a new vision of sustainability in the fashion and textile sector based on design thinking and practice. It brings together for the first time information about lifecycle environmental impacts, practical alternatives, design concepts and social innovation, and frames them in a sustainability context. It challenges existing ideas about the scope and potential of sustainable fashion and textiles, and sets out a broader, more inter-connected and forward-looking picture drawing on ideas of human needs, industrial ecology, speed and rhythms, and participatory actions, as well as knowledge of materials.
The book not only adds to the understanding of this subject area, it also presents practical information for textile and fashion practitioners. All eight chapters present a combination of long-term and short-term solutions. They deal with making changes to industry as it exists today and at the same time they articulate a new vision for the sector based on sustainability principles.
Arranged in two sections, the first four chapters represent key stages of the lifecycle: material cultivation/extraction, production, use and disposal. Each explores design opportunities to improve resourcefulness supported by case studies and data and brings new perspective to these issues by framing them in an ecological context. The remaining four chapters are more conceptual and far-reaching. They are concerned with altering the scale and nature of consumption and not just the quantities of resources expended, and address wide-ranging ideas including: fashion, human needs, localism, services, shared products, creative participation, and fast and slow clothes. While each of these chapters are complete in and of themselves, their real value comes from what they represent together: innovative ways of thinking about textiles and garments based on sustainability values and an interconnected approach to design.