Abstract
This research looks at circular economy innovation in athleisure garments, a hybrid of athletic and leisure clothing. The increasing uptake of athleisure garments as everyday clothing contributes to the environmental crisis at a scale that perpetuates the unsustainability of fast fashion due to their extensive use of plastic-based textiles. While the industry might claim to shift towards sustainability and circular economy in athleisure clothing, the approach is predominantly inclined towards perpetual growth and recycling, which promotes recurring cycles of consumption and production. The research is framed by Adversarial Design theory by Carl DiSalvo which proposes that critical designers use their practice as a generative frame to expose hegemony within the relationships between product, production, and consumption. For example, material design for disassembly and recycling might be popular industrial approaches for designing athleisure garments due to their plastic-based composition; however, adversarial design can provide alternate ways to navigate the concept of labour, waste, and materiality of athleisure garments within a circular economy by confronting users with the complexity and perplexities of these industrial processes. This research aims to investigate such conceptual applications of design for disassembly through the adversarial design framework by developing functional prototype garments to achieve experimental stretch, fit and moisture management capabilities for exercise and daily task performance in a designer’s studio. By manipulating natural, undyed calico and linen as ubiquitous and relatively sustainable but unconventional materials for athleisure garments, the prototyping experiments work towards the critical analyses of ‘disassembly’ systems that underlie the predominant use of synthetic textiles and their near impossibility for disassembly.
Keywords
Circular Fashion; Design for Disassembly; Adversarial Design, Athleisure Fashion
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/TI-2023/123
Citation
Pervez, W.(2023) Design for Disassembly – Exploring A Critical Designer’s Agency through Adversarial Design to Produce Athleisure Clothing within a Circular Economy, in Tincuta Heinzel, Delia Dumitrescu, Oscar Tomico, Sara Robertson (eds.), Proceedings of Textile Intersections Conference 2023, 20 - 23 September, London, United Kingdom. https://doi.org/10.21606/TI-2023/123
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Conference Track
Critical textiles
Included in
Design for Disassembly – Exploring A Critical Designer’s Agency through Adversarial Design to Produce Athleisure Clothing within a Circular Economy
This research looks at circular economy innovation in athleisure garments, a hybrid of athletic and leisure clothing. The increasing uptake of athleisure garments as everyday clothing contributes to the environmental crisis at a scale that perpetuates the unsustainability of fast fashion due to their extensive use of plastic-based textiles. While the industry might claim to shift towards sustainability and circular economy in athleisure clothing, the approach is predominantly inclined towards perpetual growth and recycling, which promotes recurring cycles of consumption and production. The research is framed by Adversarial Design theory by Carl DiSalvo which proposes that critical designers use their practice as a generative frame to expose hegemony within the relationships between product, production, and consumption. For example, material design for disassembly and recycling might be popular industrial approaches for designing athleisure garments due to their plastic-based composition; however, adversarial design can provide alternate ways to navigate the concept of labour, waste, and materiality of athleisure garments within a circular economy by confronting users with the complexity and perplexities of these industrial processes. This research aims to investigate such conceptual applications of design for disassembly through the adversarial design framework by developing functional prototype garments to achieve experimental stretch, fit and moisture management capabilities for exercise and daily task performance in a designer’s studio. By manipulating natural, undyed calico and linen as ubiquitous and relatively sustainable but unconventional materials for athleisure garments, the prototyping experiments work towards the critical analyses of ‘disassembly’ systems that underlie the predominant use of synthetic textiles and their near impossibility for disassembly.