Data, Fashion System and Systemic Design approach: an information flow strategy to enhance sustainability

Nowadays, the role played by the fashion industry in contributing to the degradation of natural systems is increasingly acknowledged. The impacts on the environment are mainly linked to the use of non-renewable raw materials, water pollution and waste generated. In addition to these socio-cultural implications deriving from the use of cheap labour and undignified working conditions resulted from ‘fast’ fashion business model, where economies of scale deliver standardised fashion at high volume and low price. According to Meadows (2008), the structure of information flows can be a useful leverage point in the fashion system, if the data is delivered where it was not before, causing people to change behaviour. Adding or restoring information, in a fashion system where the information circulating is sometimes not linked to ethical and social value, can, therefore, represent an effective intervention, usually more accessible and cheaper than reconstructing physical infrastructures. Data matched with a Systemic Innovation Design Methodology becomes a useful tool to analyse, organise and understand visually all the complexity of process, behaviour and pattern related to the fashion system. Mapping the entire lifecycle highlights that some data are not effectively harvested and appears the need of generating new asset of data collection able to bring the intangibility of shopping and consumption experience to the tangibility of dress and people, spreading the awareness of the entire process inside the system.