A Study on Fashion Design for Up-cycled Waste Resources

Abstract

1)The purpose of this study was to propose up-cycling fashion designs, based on guidelines derived from up-cycling fashion brand products and their required elements of the design. The study thus categorized required elements into environment, significance, economy, function, design, and material, then extracted a set of design guidelines. The guidelines for waste resource-based up-cycling fashion design include the followings: First, authenticity, taking mutual environmental relations into account. Second, rarity of products beyond the domain of standardized ready-made goods thanks to manual operation. Third, storytelling, reflecting the consumer history. Fourth, sustainability to signify the circulation of matters. Fifth, experimental characteristic to fulfill creative innovation. Sixth, changeability through interactions with wearers. The investigator decided design concepts based on them and created up-cycling design works with waste plastic bags, shirts, stockings, neckties, outdoor mats, and backpacks in a variety of formative expressive techniques.

Factors Influencing Upcycling for UK Makers

“…Academic research undertaken on upcycling has focused on fashion and textiles [33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40] or plastic recycling [31,[41][42][43]. For example, Fletcher [34] described the concept and process of fashion and textile upcycling.…”

“…Busch [33] used upcycling as a way of reverse engineering, hacking, tuning, and sharing of fashion as a form of social activism. Park and Kim [36] provided a set of design guidelines for fashion upcycling. Zhuo and Levendis [31] reviewed prior work on the particular chemical recycling route that converts polymers into carbon-based nanomaterials.…”

“…La Mantia [43] reviewed different strategies for upgrading recycled plastics. In general, upcycling has been mainly understood as a sustainable practice or approach in engineering and technology [31,[41][42][43][44], design [34,36,40,[45][46][47][48][49] or business [48,[50][51][52]. Despite the rising interest in upcycling manifested by industrial interest along with increased publication levels, previous research has not paid sufficient attention to public interest, such as upcycling craft, hobbies, and home DIY (do it yourself) for housewares, furniture, and accessories.…”

Developing Interventions for Scaling Up UK Upcycling

“…With increased interest in upcycling, the past decade has seen a surge of publications on upcycling, in disciplines ranging from design, engineering or management to consumer studies, and the body of literature is growing [53]. In general, upcycling has been understood chiefly as a sustainable approach or practice in engineering and technology [38,[54][55][56], design [40,[57][58][59][60][61][62] or business [40,[63][64][65]. Upcycling research to date has focused on fashion and textiles [57,58,[66][67][68][69], plastic [38,54,55,70] or wood [71][72][73].…”

“…Busch [66] promoted fashion upcycling as a form of social activism. Park and Kim [58] delivered design guidelines for fashion upcycling. La Mantia [70] provided a review of different strategies for upgrading recycled plastics.…”