One of the most salient challenges facing designers today is the global impact of the linear take, make, use and dispose model of production and consumption. The dominant model in the fashion industry extracts raw materials, energy intensive processes transport and then manipulate them into products, and consumers use products in use before throwing them away when they no longer have a useful life. Within the UK alone, we dispose of approximately 10,000 garments every ten minutes. An unsustainable model for a future that has disappearing material resources, energy scarcity and a society more aware of the human impact on our environments. This study focused specifically on the practice of textile and fashion design in the UK to consider a more holistic approach for designing and manufacturing within these sectors, and explore the role maker spaces could play in a future landscape of sustainable production.

This output provides the report of a six-month feasibility study titled ‘Re-Mantle and Make’ led by the Glasgow School of Art. This research is funded by a larger project titled ‘Future Makespaces in Redistributed Manufacturing’, a two-year research project funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). The project explores the role of maker spaces in redistributed manufacturing (RdM). Our study is undertaken in partnership with a micro-manufacturing unit based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Together we conducted practice-led research to produce a small collection of fashion accessories within a circular economy model. In addition to the collection we prototyped a potential future maker space for circular textile design to scope what tools, techniques, equipment and materials might be required. Currently there are limited practical examples and it is unknown if it is truly possible to implement close loop innovation within the textile sector and on what scale. Our study aims to explore the barriers and opportunities to this closed loop scenario. The questions we address are; what role can Makespaces play in the circular economy?; can approaches to circular design in fashion be scaled laterally to other industries?