Designing Garments to Evolve Over Time

This paper proposes a REDO of the current fashion paradigm by investigating how garments might be designed to evolve over time. The purpose is to discuss ways of expanding the traditional role of the designer to include temporal dimensions of creating, producing and using clothes and to suggest a range of potential fashion futures that decouple from declining resources. In the first part literature on 'Past and Present' historical and current aspects of sustainability in fashion and textiles are presented. In the second part, three exploratory case studies are described: Two projects by students and one practice-based experiment by the authors. Finally, we reflect on the insights gathered and suggest a REDO of design education to accommodate a wider territory of emergent sustainability thinking. By providing knowledge about teaching sustainability and technical details the paper contributes to a REDO of design education, to further research and the future fashion and textile industry.