Resilient Fashion:
Keeping Fashion in the Loop

Design methods help us look at problems innovatively – e.g., by working interdisciplinary and questioning the status quo. It is not necessarily about creating something new but seeing, thinking, and acting differently than we have done.

That is exactly what our project Resilient Fashion is all about. The project will bring together key players across the textile value chain to develop joint practical solutions for a circular transformation of the textile value chain – solutions we can implement today.

The Challenge: Mobilizing value chains you don’t own

According to an estimate from the European Parliament, 10 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions are related to the production of clothes and shoes.

The global fashion and textile industry significantly impacts the environment due to its high consumption of energy and water, chemical and microfibre pollution, and challenges in disposing of used clothing in an environmentally responsible manner.

The textile industry is highly progressive and competitive and has been an early adapter with full outsourcing of the entire value chain. That means that very few brands own the production of their products, and even fewer own their suppliers’ sub-suppliers.

Also, the dominating business model within fashion relies on large quantities of products, low prices, and fast delivery. This model can make solving the value chain’s circular challenges extra tricky. But that doesn’t make it any less critical.

The Danish players must be at the forefront of innovation throughout the entire global value chain if we are to deliver responsible circular products, including sustainable textiles, production methods, and transport solutions.

The How: Designing a circular fashion ecosystem

The challenge is systemic and deeply rooted in the fragile value chain of the fashion industry. Solutions, therefore, must be systemic, aiming to demonstrate a sustainable ecosystem of new business models, excellent knowledge, and new partnerships.

Resilient Fashion proposes a fundamental reconfiguration of the existing linear ‘produce-to-waste’ system by exploring the possibilities for establishing a regional circular fashion ecosystem.

If such a system existed, every step in the value chain would work together to ensure that quality fashion products are designed, produced, sold, used, resold, redesigned, recycled, and recreated to extract the product’s maximum financial, material and environmental value.

The project will bring together industry actors across the value chain, from material sourcing, manufacturers, fashion brands, redistributors, and resource management, and reconnect them through dialog and co-creation of new prototypes that can visualize how the future circular solutions, processes, materials, and products can manifest itself.