Exploring the Aesthetics of Sustainable Fashion

This working paper is a discussion of different notions and conceptions of aesthetics that may be at play when developing new design. The empirical case of the paper derives from the context of design education in a module aimed at the development of a new design expression for contemporary, sustainable fashion. In programming the didactical setting for the students’ projects, several aesthetics must be considered: the aesthetic codes of the textile and fashion design discipline, both in terms of materials and expression, deriving from within the design practice itself and the aesthetic codes of mediated expressions seen in e.g. fashion magazines which create a frame of aestheticization influencing how fashion expressions are valued. In this tension between internal aesthetics and external aestheticization, the students are set out to create a new design expression for sustainable design which brings them close to a third aesthetic mode: an avant-gardist aesthetics in search for the new.