Developing alternative materials and methods of production and recycling is crucial to achieving more sustainable, circular textile practices. In addition to these, a shift in how textiles are perceived may well be needed. Textile practice has long sought to create textiles that, regardless of their material or post-production treatments do not subsequently change in expression, eliminating the fading of colors and wearing out of materials. Questioning this in order to evaluate quality, durability, and aesthetics may open up for greater circularity through extending product lifetimes, and allowing change to be embraced rather than delaying the signs of aging. This paper presents work that challenges the notion of permanence as a sign of quality in textiles by shifting the focus towards creating textiles that are capable of developing different visual expressions over time.

By examining the natural changes in color of materials in plain and Jacquard-patterned woven textiles made of several materials, this paper explores the possibilities relating to designing textile patterns that can evolve in multiple different directions from one starting point. Textiles woven with a combination of different materials were used in various contexts, including outdoors, in order to explore how the materials reacted. The resulting color combinations varied depending on what conditions the material was exposed to, suggesting a more versatile view on the aesthetics of textiles.

The results indicate that various colors, patterns, and structures can be achieved from one starting point, indicating that an alternative definition for quality, based on the aesthetics of change, may be viable. The natural aging of materials could be used in design processes to embed evolving patterns, colors, or structures in textiles, reconnecting textile products with the inherent, changeable qualities of materials. 

This paper explores the relationship between potentially dynamic materials and textile structures for designing textiles with inherent changing qualities. Textiles are usually designed to retain their appearance for as long as possible. Yet all textiles wear out and change over time, both physically and aesthetically. This means the life spans of textile object and the material it is made from will not necessarily be equal. The dynamic changeable qualities in textiles could instead be enhanced by using the potentially dynamic, changing qualities inherent to materials and combining them with textile structures. Through contextualisation and design examples, this paper discusses the possibilities of embedding these qualities into textiles, and presents a series of woven and knitted designs that combine these materials into different textile structures. Two materials with differing dynamic qualities were chosen for the experiments. These are polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) yarn—a material that melts in water and uncoated copper wire—which creates a patina when it reacts with air. These materials are combined into woven and knitted structures and then exposed to two types of stimuli to explore how different stimuli affect the way in which the materials change: passive exposure to weather, and an active workshop with fashion design students. The results are initial explorations into the basic principles of combining potentially dynamic materials into textile structures to create textiles that take advantage of how different materials change over their life span, and how this might look. Through embedding different time spans into textiles instead of designing static expressions, the life span of materials and textile objects could be better matched, enabling the designer to tailor a more appropriate life span for textiles.

Artistic research in design is relatively new compared to experimental research in the natural sciences but it has matured a great deal over the last decade. Its extensive development has brought new challenges to professional practice, and also raised questions regarding how knowledge should be imparted in academia. By examining the field of textile design, which has traditionally been taught in close synergy with professional practice, we can discern the emergence of doctoral theses that have brought not only new perspectives to textile practice but also a new role to the design educator as a researcher within the academia. One of the challenges that design education program are facing, however, relates to creating a better connection between research and education in order to continually enrich curricula with new developments in the field, so that basic knowledge and novelty can interact. By looking closely at the development of the research environment at The Swedish School of Textiles and the interaction with undergraduate and postgraduate education, this chapter describes how research has informed the development of textile design education.