The management of sustainable fashion design strategies: an analysis of the designer's role
- Submitting institution
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Nottingham Trent University
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 54 - 1331420
- Type
- D - Journal article
- DOI
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10.1016/j.jclepro.2020.122112
- Title of journal
- Journal of Cleaner Production
- Article number
- 122112
- First page
- -
- Volume
- 268
- Issue
- -
- ISSN
- 0959-6526
- Open access status
- Compliant
- Month of publication
- May
- Year of publication
- 2020
- URL
-
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- Supplementary information
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-
- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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1
- Research group(s)
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C - Fashion and Textiles Research Centre
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- The research for this article is founded on earlier work in design for fashion durability by Claxton and in Design Management through Kent’s AHRC funded MDMN network (2009-2013). Designers for fashion brands have a distinctively significant role in ‘fast’ fashion and the rapid turnover of new looks. With such influence on the brand, they are in an important position to respond to and direct sustainable design initiatives into their work. This research determines the extent to which they manage sustainability initiatives, by taking an organisational perspective. Its originality lies in extending our knowledge of the design stage of the Circular Economy model of sustainable fashion and textiles, demonstrated by Earley (2017) and Charter (2018), in mass-market fashion brands.
A Design Management framework was used to evaluate the strategies of fashion companies and the place of designers in initiating and promoting sustainable fashion design. The research was undertaken in two stages, through a survey and in-depth interviews with designers in seventeen fashion businesses. The businesses are classified by their strategies and operational activities towards sustainability and the findings demonstrate that designers are rarely engaged in the making and direction of a strategy for sustainability. It proposes a number of significant interventions including improved training and development for designers.
The research has a strong cross-disciplinary position. The findings were initially presented in a peer-reviewed paper delivered at the prestigious European Academy of Management (EURAM) conference in 2017; it was subsequently revised for the Journal of Cleaner Production (2020). The authors used the project to inform research into fashion waste in the developing world, with fieldwork in Accra, Ghana, that was disseminated in Fashion Practice (2019); a training initiative undertaken with KNUST, Ghana (2020) and an article on the management of sustainable fashion business in the Journal of Business Research (2019).
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -