Design Challenge and Design Ideas

As pressure mounts on the fashion industry to untangle supply chains, reduce production, and discourage excessive consumption – how can it re-imagine its existence in a more sustainable world? Enterprises desperately need innovative, entrepreneurial thinking to envisage fashion’s future.
This project will collate stories from consumers and fashion thought-leaders through podcasting to inform the curation and reproduction of themed OERs (in written format on a dedicated website) that can be utilised across curricula including design, product, entrepreneurship, sustainability, and consumption studies.
• To curate a library of oral stories connecting the practice of fashion with wider social phenomenon, to include entrepreneurship, craftsmanship, sustainability, ethical consumption, social inequalities, diversity equality & inclusion and social change.
• To collect and mobilise these stories through Open Educational Resources (OERs)
•To digitally catalogue the audio collection on a podcast-hosting platform. A Q&A function will be activated to enable interactive communication with audience throughout each series.

How the brief was fulfilled

The key goal of this project was to raise awareness and understanding (mobilise) of the significance of fashion attire in everyday lives and consider new more entrepreneurial modes of ‘doing’ fashion. In an era of ultra-fast, disposable fashion, we aimed to curate stories that inform young learners of alternative modes of engagement with clothing and to ideate new, innovative ways of practising ‘fashion’ that change current consumeristic and wasteful practices.
Fashion and Sustainability garner much discussion, often and in many instances, negative connotations exist between the two themes. In considering the potential impact of the podcast series this was an opportunity to encourage a positive conversation around sustainable production, consumption and fashion. The podcast series aims to capture positive stories about our relationships with clothing, and therefore our relationship with sustainable consumption and experience.
The podcast guests are representative of a wide spectrum of society. Research suggests that particularly to engage younger learners in sustainable consumption, positive discussion and engagement may be more fruitful than that of pessimism and criticism. The implementation of outcomes of the podcast series at TU Dublin with a cross-disciplinary student cohort exploring sustainability and entrepreneurial approaches to fashion production and consumption will be a hugely valuable resource going forward. The podcast discussion encouraged an entrepreneurial response to product creativity and ideation, to explore a conscious product as well as encourage a conscious consumer.

Desert Island Discs is a radio programme broadcast on BBC Radio 4 since 1942, the programmes guests are invited to imagine themselves as castaways on a desert island and to choose eight tracks to take with them, the listener hears an explanation of their choices and a reflection of their life.
Inspired by Desert Island Discs, Desert Island Dress follows a similar arrangement and asks guests to choose four items of dress, items which likewise have shaped guests’ lives, that they could not bear to leave behind on the mainland. Items that cannot be replaced.
Much like the music choices these items are worthless from a utility perspective on the island and therefore should recount to items entwined with our most precious memories and people and to savour the emotional connections and nostalgia we make with the objects which have dressed and adorned us or those close to us for the big life occasions but also the small insignificant moments.
Borrowed, purchased, stolen, gifted.
From our first memories to our last memories and everything in between.

Project Outcomes
On a macro level, this project supports the concepts of People and Planet. At its core, this project encouraged learners to reimagine the future of an entire industry. Raising challenging questions and issues to engage creative entrepreneurial mindsets. Meanwhile, the project supports the second concept, Planet, through the interconnected nature of the fashion industry and the sustainability agenda.
The podcast offers discussion points for academics to use as in a lecture and tutorial setting, the audio resource in the format of a podcast will be available for academics to share as a discussion launchpad for learners, in the case for example of a flipped classroom exercise.
With fashion as its context, the learnings can be applied to modules, including design, product entrepreneurship, sustainability, product design, and consumption studies, to name a few.