The Fashion Collection recalibrated: - a Design Tool furthering Sustainable Strategies

At present the fashion and textile industries are under political and environmental pressure to make their business models more sustainable. In response, transformative thinking within the industry is pushing forward a sustainable paradigm shift. One consequence is that traditional design tools are challenged to incorporate and contribute to the solutions. In this paper, we focus on the fashion collection, which is traditionally understood as a range of garment designs, that are seasonally determined. As the notion of the fashion collection is under-researched, the aim of the paper is to investigate ways in which the fashion collection may be recalibrated as a design tool furthering sustainable strategies. Therefore, we studied collection building practices at three companies, representing different sustainable business and design strategies. The main contribution of the study is insights on how the collection as a design framework is applied by the companies. The collection transpires as a transformative design tool that aids designers and companies in different ways to fulfil their strategy and maintain their business.