ReModelling Fashion: future scenarios for systemic change in fashion

Poster

Poster

ReModelling Fashion: future scenarios for systemic change in fashion

This poster will present interim insights from the BFTT Challenge 3 ReModelling Fashion project which brings together researchers from the Centre for Sustainable Fashion at London College of Fashion and from the Centre for Sustainable Manufacturing at Cambridge University in collaboration with postgraduate students, small and micro businesses and a large-scale retailer. ReModelling Fashion explores new design and business practices to support a transformative vision for regenerative fashion systems encompassing social, economic, environmental, and cultural dimensions. The work discusses key topics for the sustainable transition of the UK creative industries. It also addresses the theme of place in two ways:

First, the work questions the place in the creative process where radical innovation can occur, breaking away from a tradition of reactive and incremental change applied in product redesign strategies, and moving upstream into the inspiration phase, designing a desired context for fashion rather than designing inside existing context. Using scenario building methods and iteratively refining the tools to implement such an approach in a co-enquiry with the students and industry partners has led to the creation of a framework for generating future fashion contexts and product service systems. Four key themes defined through horizon scanning –Trust, Control, Local and Global, are combined to create divergent scenarios that can guide creative processes for a resilient and regenerative fashion industry. The work puts designers at the centre, aligning radical future thinking with known inspiration tools such as mood boards or product concepts.

Second, it spans over places of intervention in fashion systems, from students eager for change, to agile pioneering SMEs, to large business with strong sustainability targets. Working across these levels has distilled different takes on fashion challenges into the scenario building tools developed, and informs a reflection on how change can be effected for small and large businesses.

Laetitia Forst


University of the Arts London

Biography

Laetitia Forst is a textile designer and researcher, her practice explores the tension between technical challenges and creativity in sustainable design for textiles. She completed her masters from the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in 2015 with a degree collection exploring mono-materiality and blends in relation to textile recycling. Her PhD research project at the Centre for Circular Design at University of the Arts London, completed in 2020, explored design driven solutions for incorporating ease of recyclability into textiles. The project took a pro-active approach to developing alternatives to the unsustainable status-quo in the creation of blends through the use of design for disassembly. Now a postdoctoral research fellow at UAL, she splits her time between the BFTT Challenge 3 ReModelling Fashion project at the Centre for Sustainable Fashion, and the EU funded HEREWEAR project at the Centre for Circular Design.

ReModelling Fashion: future scenarios for systemic change in fashion

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