Benefits without value, value without benefits

Sustainable Fashion a perspective for people, places and cultures

Abstract

The impact on the environment caused by the consumption of non-renewable resources for the production of consumer goods prompts design to intervene with strategies that implement sustainable and inclusive processes to mitigate effects and evaluate alternatives. Human capital is at the centre of a revolution that presupposes shared and co-creative practices developed within the dynamics of social change to generate widespread value. Thanks to its ability to embrace social change, design for Fashion stimulates innovation along the entire value chain, from creation/design to production to distribution and consumption models. The University of Campania Luigi Vanvitelli 'sTexLAB, with its Fashion Design and Textile Design laboratories, collaborated on a social tailoring project called "S'ARTE Progetto Sartoria Remida Napoli." The partnership with Tessuti di Sondrio DiV. Marzotto collaborated on a fashion collection, "Sustainable Fashion Landscapes," demonstrating the feasibility of production and consumption models inspired by the goals of the UN 2030 Agenda, including points 4, 5, 11, and 12. The fashion collection is born from the recovery of surplus stock reintroduced into a creative recycling circuit, configuring a new life to materials otherwise destined for landfill, representing a co-creative ecosystem based on upcycling, sharing, and social and design innovation. A system of relationships based on the integration between university education, voluntary associations, and national stakeholders is established, joined to form a network in the multilevel perspective. The challenge is focused on strengthening the dialogue between academia and manufacturing realities, which collaborate in upcycling by rethinking the sustainable textile and clothing system. Thus, the change in the Fashion Industry towards more sustainable approaches is planned, defining a new value chain that is made explicit through the realization of co-benefits, i.e., from the transition of fashion as a mass-media phenomenon causing waste and pollution to a social phenomenon involving people, groups, communities, and institutions, in the definition of new business models.