Sustainable Clothing Designs for Fashion: Design Strategies and Its Implementation Possibilities

Abstract

Sustainability is the keyword among the researchers, irrespective of their research area. Textile and fashion sector is being well known among the researchers for its higher polluting nature. Many research studies were focused on the sustainable manufacturing process in different aspects. However, many researchers pointed that the steps that are taken for improving the sustainable aspects of clothing still have a huge gap in commercial implementation. With respect to clothing and fashion industries, several steps like organic and natural raw material usage, sustainable manufacturing steps, eco-or green processing, etc. were adopted to reduce the environmental impact of the clothing. But, the prevailing fast fashion concept and more frequent trend change in the market act as a barrier in implementing those concepts. Sustainable designing is yet another concept which is meagerly addressed by the researchers due to its depending nature on customer preferences. This chapter details the importance of implementing the sustainable strategies in design stage along with the role of designers. Further various sustainable design strategies, namely, design for disassembly (DfD), design for zero waste, design for longevity, design for co-design, design for end of life (EoL), etc., were discussed with respect to the fashion applications. The chapter also details existing and most popular sustainable business model and their progress as a summary.