Initial Idea

Encouraging an Awareness of Ethical and Sustainable Fashion through an Interactive Fashion Display 

Key Words:

Fashion Display, Interactive Experience, Sustainable Design

It is important to protect the Earth’s future, from a world full of wasteful materials that are lost in landfills, unable to be used. The fashion industry is rapidly becoming the world’s most wasteful industry and people are not educating themselves on how this is affecting not just them, but also affecting everyone else in the world (Mistra, 2012). I want to encourage people to take a good look at what they own and what they continue to buy. I want them to make a conscious decision to only buy clothing they need, and when they do buy, to make sure it is a sustainable and ethical choice. Consumers choices can and will change people lives, even just by choosing to buy a different type of shirt.

It is important that clothing is made in higher quality so that it can last. But most of clothing prices should also rise so that people are more likely to take good care of them and make them last longer. There are many tools that can be used to enable positive behaviour towards sustainable design and consumption, one of these being creating an emotional connection between the proposed consumer and the design. This is so the product and user create a more meaningful bond together, hense it will be more likely to be looked after well. Designers need to show consumers that they should slow down the need for self-improvement and that less can be more if they learn to let it.

FINAL OUTCOME: I aim to create a game app for mobiles which will make people curious and guide them into caring about sustainable and ethical fashion. The game will have resource management elements, similar to a game like Farmville, where the user takes on the role of managing all processes. They will be able to design an item of clothing before going through each process of the manufacturing stage including growing/making cotton/sheep/plastic, running a fabric mill and hosting factories for garment workers. As well as this, they will need to ensure they pay the workers well and ensure the brand is kept sustainable to keep a good sustainability rating. The user will also need to keep within their seasoned budget and make a profit to keep going for next seasons collection. This will lead to self-education and therefore change within the industry. Once people know about this issue, only then will they start to care. And once they care, then the fashion industry can start to change, like it so desperately needs to.