In relation to waste hierarchies, activities such as redesign, reuse, and remanufacturing are often promoted because they can recover more resources than other activities. For example, studies have repeatedly shown that reuse and remanufacturing have more beneficial effects for the environment than recycling on the fibre level. In the clothing and fashion industry there is a growing interest in the design and business possibilities of redesign. However, despite the many examples of redesign practices and research projects being carried out to broaden theoretical understanding, a relatively underexplored area is redesign methodologies and approaches that provide the foundations for redesign as both an artistic field and business model.

This thesis explores challenges for conventional design methods and design thinking in redesign processes and introduces an alternative methodological foundation for redesign. The research was carried out through experimental design research. Design exploration and developments were conducted by design students and the author, who investigated various design methods and redesign processes; the results of these were analysed, as were accounts of and reflections on these, to identify central concepts in design thinking that present challenges and future possibilities with regard to redesign methods.

The results suggest that traditional fashion design processes, methods, and terminology are problematic when designing with garment as materials. Existing methods are based on using garment-materials as sketches, in mood-board-type processes, and as templates for creating garments using other, virgin materials. This research proposes novel ways of understanding the expressive properties of raw materials for redesign, on the basis that things that have already been designed are often then not considered further by designers. On the basis of the theoretical findings, examples of alternative design techniques and tools for redesign are discussed, and fashion as a practice is discussed from a redesign perspective.