Sustainable Clothes Development : The Development of a Model for Production of Sustainably Produced Clothing

Abstract: If you are living in Sweden, you´re likely to consume around 15 kg textile every year (Palm, 2011). Of those 15 kg, 10.5 kg are most likely produced in Asia (IPCC, 2014). When producing textile, greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane are emitted. These greenhouse gases are a big cause for the global warming and are having a direct effect on people. 17% of all deaths in China 2015 could be correlated to polluted air (Rohde & Muller, 2015). If people knew the consequences of their consumption it´s in our opinion that they would consume less. More awareness leads to less consumption and ultimately less destruction. Organizations/corporations try to get people to understand but the message doesn’t seem to reach out quite strong enough. In this thesis another approach is investigated. The approach is about spreading a message through sustainable produced clothes with an appealing design, and encouraging consumption. By choosing our sustainable clothes instead of other non-sustainable options the consumer helps solving a social problem, which the (appealing) design is inspired of. The design is not only appealing but also designed to educate the consumer which leads to a more aware person who consumes less. We have worked with and Agile Iterative process which enable us to quickly see results and make changes. The project started with a goal to produce fictive clothes with our approach in mind. This goal was changed along the process and the final result ended up as a model. The model guides the user through two major parts. Part One is to enable a sustainable base for the production of the product where one step is to find a social problem. Part Two is an iterative process which uses the social problem established in Step One as a source of inspiration when designing the product itself. The model encourages the user to iterate the product design process around different aspects of the product. The model can be used by itself as well as a part of a developing process. Our recommendations for further work is to develop the model so it can be used for other types of products.