Fashion overconsumerism and overproduction have placed the fashion industry one of the world's most polluting industries. In addition to its environmental impact, research has shown that materialism leads to lower life satisfaction and decision fatigue. Recently, studies have highlighted an increased interest in sustainable fashion consumption and ethical lifestyle. The capsule wardrobe phenomenon, that is, defined by limited clothing pieces that focus on quality, longevity, and minimal or classic design, has gained exposure as a road map for consumers to remain fashionable while consuming less. Until today, no research has evaluated the impact of minimalist wardrobe on consumers. Using a phenomenological approach, the present study method to understand 10 female participants' lived experiences with a capsule wardrobe. Our results showed a positive impact of a 3-week capsule wardrobe on our participants who felt less stressed, detached from fashion trends, have found joy in their fashion style, and enhanced their awareness of conscious consumption. Our findings highlight the richness of minimalism, sustainable consumption, and self-expression through an innovative and relevant phenomenon.

Fashion-tech is an interdisciplinary field that intersects design, natural sciences, engineering, economics and management and defined as ‘technology that enables a fashion experience for the user wearing it or interacting with it’. Benchmarking research, conducted as part of the Education for Fashion-Tech (E4FT) project funded by Erasmus+, revealed that training at Master’s Level within this field is fragmented in terms of skills and knowledge required for business and product innovation. The aim of E4FT is to enhance the knowledge and skills of learners in the novel field of fashion-tech. This study draws upon a hackathon model as a framework to assess master’s student competences in research, conceptual ideation, technical realisation and entrepreneurship in fashion tech design and product development. This paper evaluates the findings from the hackathon event to underpin the development of a bespoke MA level programme in fashion-tech design within the project. A three day hackathon, designed to test the limits of participant knowledge in the design and development process of fashion-tech products, was carried out with a participant group of 23 MA level design and management students from University of Borås, University of the Arts London and Politecnico di Milano. Data on participant experience and perception of own knowledge and skills was collated via pre- and post-event surveys and analysed using statistical analysis. Findings revealed that perceived levels of competence in research, conceptual ideation, technical realisation and entrepreneurship increased by an average of 12,6% as a result of the hackathon. Furthermore, the participants found the hackathon approach a valuable and engaging learning method.

Despite the increasing need of remanufacturing in fashion industry for leading towards dematerialization, higher revalue addition, possibility to generate highest profit margin, along with create more employment in the industry, it is still practiced on a very small scale. A net-positive environmental impact however, can only be made through remanufacturing with higher scale. However research investigations on this matter are insufficient and knowledge of the practices on new value chain models, associated processes, and designers’ approach to the product development process is still limited.

The general aim of this study is to investigate how remanufacturing can be made feasible industrially for sustainable competitiveness in the fashion industry.

This feasibility study was conducted by Re:Textile group in collaboration with several Swedish players, e.g. fashion branded retailers, local textile and apparel manufacturers, and charities. 3 participatory action projects were developed between 2017-2018 in order to elucidate the different possibilities of organizing remanufacturing in fashion industry context, and check the viability of these options. 3 different fashion remanufacturing models were considered to be interesting via literature review, and were planned for further exploration. These were: scaled remanufacturing, distributed redesign and PSS redesign-as-a-service.

The study identifies the key decision making variables in each of these models, the critical success factors and also in connection assessing the feasibility of each model by constructing various scenarios.

Existing knowledge of reshoring, enabled largely by competitive manufacturing (CM) strategies in high-cost locations, is limited particularly in context to labour-intensive industries, like textile and clothing (T&C). The purpose of the paper is to identify and prioritize various CM-related supply chain factors that can enable reshoring of T&C to high-cost area. Following a systematic literature review, a multiple round Delphi study is conducted with T&C manufacturers in Sweden to seek practitioners’ perspective. While there is high consensus on the success factors, flexibility to meet short lead times, high product/service quality, and product/service customization; low degree of agreement is reached for the perceived challenges. Some out of literature debates emerged in terms of challenges related to CM in high-cost area, regarding increased fixed costs of production, rise in inventory level due to high product variety requirement, and low skill level against access to skills. Along with the decisive knowledge on the CM-related success factors for reshored supply chains, the Delphi study offers an interesting practitioners’ perspective from a labour-intensive sector like T&C.

This is the final product construction report for the From Roll to Bag project. The purpose of this report is to present the implementation of the new pattern technology to selected products and to present the modularity for consumer selection. For fulfilling the tasks (5.1 and 5.2) two garments where chosen, one jacket and one shirt, and customization options regarding fit, model, colour and function were developed for each of them. This includes implementation of novel pattern technology to products, graphics, a product architecture with customisation options and initial production tests to verify perfect fit in production and later in use. The more challenging part was to guarantee manufacturability as the patterns require automated manufacturing equipment due to their detailed construction and the pattern matching. Such equipment includes a cutter with a scanner that identifies the outline of the printed pattern and cuts accoringly. If garments with less detailed graphics are considered for production, pre-dyed fabrics can be used and that requires less investments in manufacturing equipment. Such set up would miss one point of the project but in the tradeoff between investment cost and product price point it may be a viable solution. The garments and customization modules are also fit for production but in order to achieve a detailed production evaluation with exact production times and material consumption a long run of products is needed. Considerations about customer’s experiences in this type value chains are also discussed.

Globalization had forced fashion companies to move their manufacturing to low cost bases. However, in the recent times several challenges like poor transparency, ethical issues, high transportation costs, long lead times, etc. have motivated major reshoring initiatives. Steadily the fashion companies in the west are relocating back their production and are motivated by trends of greater product customization, supply chain transparency and digital technologies. In addition, several initiatives have been launched to support this development, for example the US initiatives: [TC]2 “Reshoring Fashion Initiative” and “Apparel Made for You”. However detailed scholarly discussion on what enables success of such local fashion value chain models are limited. This paper explores the drivers, critical success factors and competitive advantages in designing such local fashion value chains by drawing inferences from a European initiative called “fromRolltoBag”. An action research is employed to collect empirical data through observations and interviews with the project stakeholders. Results show that the competitive success lies in designing a consumer-driven, digitally-enabled fashion value chain, enabled by the strategy of differentiation through: (i) advanced digitalization of design and manufacturing operations, (ii) flexible, integrated and agile operations, and (iii) enhanced customer experience/interaction with the extended product-service system.

Resurser och hållbarhet är nära förknippade. Hållbarhet innebär att hushålla med resurser - materiella, miljömässiga och mänskliga. Och hushållning är per definition kärnan i ekonomi. Man börjar alltmer se framväxten av en hel arsenal av verktyg och förhållnings- och angreppssätt för att bygga hållbarhet. Detta förenas av ett synsätt att det som hitintills setts  om avfall och värdelöst, och rent utav besvärligt att ta hand om, nu blir en värdefull resurs. Det glömda och gömda kommer åter. Faktum är att många ord och begrepp kring detta börjar på just åter- eller re- . Internationellt talar man om Redesign, Recycling, Remake, Recycle, Recraft, Reuse, Recreate, Reclaim, Reduce, Repair, Refashion.

Vad är då allt detta? Ja, vill man dra det långt, är det inte mindre än framväxten av ett nyvunnet sätt att tänka, ja av en ny samhällssektor, en bransch och en industri,  sammanbundet av filosofin att återanvändningen, spillminskningen, vidarebruket, efterlivet anses som viktiga faktorer för ett miljömedvetet samhälle. Re: blir paraplytermen för detta. I denna antologi av forskare från skilda discipliner vid Högskolan i Borås lyfts ett antal av dessa begrepp inom Re: fram.