Beyond Western fashion sustainability: A case study of the Bahraini, Arab Gulf context

As the countries of the Arab Gulf aspire to construct viable post-oil economies, sustainability is becoming a strategic priority for governments in the region. This study explores Design for Sustainability (DfS) within the Bahraini fashion context, addressing existing frameworks within DfS in relation to the country’s cultural and socio-political specificities. Despite Bahrain’s distinct economic and social dynamics compared to its Gulf neighbours, its deep cultural and political commonalities with them render much of the work applicable to the wider region. This research aims to explore how Bahrain’s culture influences approaches to fashion sustainability. It has two key objectives: first, to assess the Bahraini fashion industry against key DfS frameworks, including the limitations of fashion’s transformative potential in Bahrain; and second, to examine how Bahrain’s context, as a post-colonial and neo-colonial society, can contribute insights to the field of DfS. Since the research focuses on the social, material and behavioural transitions required to move towards fashion sustainability it uses a methodology that engages numerous stakeholders in the Arab country, including government representatives, social activists, consultants, designers, craft communities, and consumers. This study’s multi-method approach consists of three methods: (1) a Delphi study with 16 researchers, businesspeople, civil servants and activists (2) a series of 19 qualitative semi-structured interviews with local designers, tailors, social and environmental activists, weavers and my grandmothers and (3) participant observation, which included field notes of a workshop with 22 local designers. The research explores fashion ontologies in Bahrain derived from local epistemes. It does so by looking at language, space, relationships, and lived experiences as components of fashion ontology, and reflecting on how these impact DfS in fashion. Key findings of this research include three essential factors for fashion sustainability in Bahrain. The first is transitioning culturally towards fashion sustainability, in a way beyond individual consumer choice and decision-making (e.g., such as sustainable fashion purchases) and towards socially transformative practices. The second is growing local production through an empowered labour force; one that can creatively respond to local needs. The third is the need for public infrastructure for the end-of-life stage of garments. Key findings of this research include a blurred cycle model, where I put forward that the categories of source, make, use and last – traditionally used in fashion sustainability research – are blurred in the Gulf context. I supplement this idea of a blurred lifecycle with a discussion of use in the fashion Gulf context. The Gulf experience of fashion reveals blurring of use and make in the practice of tailoring, for instance, and a blurring of source and use in the social practice of indoore or nitmasha (go around, walk around) in the mall, to window-shop, shop and socialise. The chapters of this thesis comprise an introduction, followed by a critical literature review, a discussion of its methodology and three results chapters. The last chapter concludes with a discussion of key contributions to the fields of fashion sustainability, DfS, transnational fashion and Gulf cultural studies

The Space of Thirdness: Intermediating performative treatments in artists’ moving image

In this chapter, I focus on how the screen in contemporary artists’ moving image might function as an intermediate space that performatively treats divisive social issues such as sexism, racism and ecological damage. Focusing on Rehana Zaman’s Sharla Shabana Sojourner Selena, 2016, and Jeamin Cha’s Sound Garden, 2019, I explore how both films differently engender such an intermediate space in which the oppositional conflicts that arise from said social issues can be played with rather than reactively defended against. I argue that such performativity has the potential to unhinge psychic life from what feminist relational psychoanalyst Jessica Benjamin calls ‘the dangers of complementarity’ which involve the either/or positionalities of asserting power over another or succumbing to the power of the other. To bypass this double bind, Benjamin developed the concept of ‘thirdness’, which I use as a metaphor to think through the performative treatments proffered in my two case studies

Forming Digital Futures: 3D CAD Technology Adoption Among Small Fashion Designers

3D Computer-Aided Design (CAD) software is reshaping fashion design and manufacturing, yet its implementation among small designer brands still needs to be studied. This study addresses this research gap by examining how small fashion designers adopt and utilize 3D CAD technology, focusing on implementation strategies and barriers to adoption. Eight semi-structured interviews were conducted with London fashion designers and digital innovation experts to investigate the technological capabilities, limitations, and future potential of 3D design tools. The findings reveal significant benefits of 3D CAD adoption, including enhanced design iteration speed, reduced physical sampling costs, and increased ability to respond to market changes. However, small designers face distinct technological challenges, such as high hardware requirements (minimum £2,000 investment in computing equipment), steep software learning curves (averaging 6-12 months for proficiency), and limited access to technical support. Despite these barriers, their organizational agility enables innovative applications of these digital tools, such as hybrid physical-digital workflows and collaborative technology sharing. These insights suggest that while 3D CAD technology can significantly enhance small-scale fashion design operations, broader industry adoption requires addressing accessibility barriers. The study recommends developing targeted training programs, establishing technology resource-sharing networks, and creating collaborative platforms to democratize access to 3D design capabilities. This research contributes to understanding how digital tools can transform small-scale fashion design while providing practical pathways for technology adoption across the industry

A Collaborative Imperative: Embodied Design Pedagogies for Democracy

As four design educators from different countries in the global north, and with varied lived experiences, we are alarmed by the global rise of the far right and the weakening of democratic initiatives for social, climate and educational justice. Inequality is rising and human rights are at risk; from the Supreme Court Ruling Act in the UK that means trans women are no longer legally recognised as women, to ongoing rulings against academic freedom on higher education campuses. What does this erosion of fundamental democratic values, including DEI initiatives, gender equality, indigenous sovereignty, and trans people’s rights, and the rise of the far right across the globe mean for us as design educators – personally and professionally, for our students, our communities, and our institutions? How might design education be used to promote democracy? We believe there is an urgent need to come together as a community across disciplines to create a critical mass of activist-scholar-educators that embody and enable values of democracy. We are proposing a workshop to explore the question: how can design educators and students across different disciplines collaborate to face threats to democracy? What would that community of leading learners and learners teach and learn? How would that community (have to) act? What are their responsibilities and possibilities? How can we leverage agency into actions? This workshop takes inspiration from the kitchen table which has been used as a site of resistance for feminist praxis to develop initiatives, practices, teaching strategies, action plans, ideologies, methods & formats to create transformative ways of engaging our students with the urgent need to recontextualize our current systems of design learning. In multidisciplinary groups, we will work through a series of provocations to facilitate rich exchanges of experiences and development of design pedagogies for democracy

In the Garden: Listening, Learning, and Animating the More-than-Human

This presentation explores the intersection of expanded animation, ecological consciousness, and interspecies communication through In the Garden: Giggles in the Greenery, a collaborative multimedia project within the graphic anthology Anima Mundi. Bringing together 12 artists across disciplines, the project engages with the sensory and symbolic dimensions of entheogenic plants through animation, sound, and visual storytelling, evoking more-than-human ways of knowing. Drawing on historical, mythological, and spiritual research, the project engages with animation as both an artistic and epistemological tool—one that enables us to listen, translate, and speculate on knowledge beyond the human (Schultes, Hofmann & Rätsch, 1998; Lehner & Lehner, 1960). Inspired by Jane Bennett’s (2010) concept of vibrant matter, which emphasizes the agency of non-human entities, In the Garden considers how materials themselves participate in shaping knowledge. This idea resonates with animation’s capacity to render the unseen visible, offering a speculative means to explore the communicative and epistemological capacities of the more-than-human world. The project also reflects Ursula K. Le Guin’s (2017) assertion that speculative storytelling allows us to question dominant anthropocentric narratives while fostering a deeper attunement to the ecological systems we inhabit. At its core, Anima Mundi is rooted in the recognition that intelligence and communication exist in forms entirely different from our own (Bridle, 2022; Kohn, 2013). By embracing both publication and animation, the project creates artefacts that invite audiences to engage with the ways plants, fungi, and minerals communicate across time, space, and symbiotic relationships. The first installment, In the Garden, specifically explores entheogenic plants and their historical role as guides and mediators of consciousness, offering an alternative framework for understanding interspecies interactions (Tsing, 2015). This presentation will showcase both the publication and the animated film, examining how animation—through its ability to visualize the unseen—can function as a conduit for interspecies storytelling. How can artistic research, through embodied and sensory practices, expand our capacity to know beyond the limits of human language (Ingold, 2011)? How might collaborative processes with other artists, materials, and living beings open new ways of perceiving truth and interconnectedness? Through speculative storytelling and artistic research, In the Garden investigates how deep listening, embodied knowledge, and animation’s unique capacity for metamorphosis can reshape our understanding of truth, interconnectivity, and ecological awareness. By attending to the voices of the more-than-human world, this project aligns with the symposium’s broader questions about how knowledge is shaped through media and how artistic practice can offer forms of resistance to dominant, anthropocentric frameworks

Responsible and Sustainable Beauty Consumption for Wellbeing of Older Adults

Research on ageing explains the coping patterns adopted by adults once they face a decline in their physical, financial, and social status with contemplation of life expectancy. In response to the changing global trends about longevity, healthy ageing, and wellbeing, the United Nations (UN) initiated this debate. They referred to it as the debate about the 2021-2030 decade of healthy ageing. Different from traditional disease-focused research, the field of healthy ageing has emerged as a significant area of therapeutic inquiry, offering science-based strategies for better management of wellbeing. Considering the gap highlighted from review of literature about the impact of healthy ageing trends in the era of social media and its impact on the consumption of beauty for subjective personal wellbeing by older consumers, a research model to be tested by future researchers is conceptualised. The overarching goal of this study was to study the influence of scientifically responsible and sustainable beauty products when offered to older consumers with perspective of socially responsible communications

Restorative Retail Experiences in UK Fashion Retail Servicescapes

The chapter explores restorative retail experiences within the context of fashion servicescapes within the UK, considering the growing opportunities appearing in the wellness and fashion retail’s experience economies. The study considers the effects of a variety of restorative experience forms on consumer well-being, uncovering the successful characteristics of such experiences, and exploring what influences them. It aims to elicit the future potential of implementing restorative customer experiences within physical fashion retail

The Thermal and Mechanical Performance of Leather Waste-Filled Bio-Based Thermoplastic Polyurethane Composites

The leather tanning industry generates a substantial quantity of solid waste, which, in part, is discarded in the environment in landfills or incinerated. One alternative end-of-life solution is to manufacture engineered materials by forming composites with a thermoplastic polymer/binder. In this work, leather fibres (LFs) were melt-compounded into partially bio-based thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU), at leather fibre contents between 10 and 30% (TPU/LF), followed by compression moulding or 3D printing. The results showed that the incorporation of LF into the polymer matrix produced materials with a Young’s modulus comparable to that of leather. The melt extrusion processing influenced the polymer chain orientation and the resulting mechanical performance. The cyclic stress softening and abrasion resistance of the TPU/LF materials were evaluated to understand the potential of this material to be used in the footwear industry. The level of LF incorporation could be tailored to produce the specific targeted mechanical properties. This work demonstrates that LF could be used to produce materials with a high potential to be used in the fashion industry

Design and Other Ways of Knowing the Future

Many disciplines are turning toward design today, in what some scholars are calling a ‘design turn’ within society and academia. A field is emerging, for example, in between the Futures Studies and design disciplines. An emergent field such as ‘design futures’ may seem contradictory, however, given that design has historically been preoccupied with objects, materials and space, rather than with time and the future. While many will be familiar with spatial design fields such as interior, furniture and industrial design, however, temporality is central to a number of more recently emerging fields such as communication, experience and interaction design. Through outlining some of the concerns and practices in such fields and by pointing at several practical design examples, I explore in this paper some of the ways in which temporality and futurity have entered more substantially and explicitly into design. Futurity, I argue, is one of many ways through which to expose and explore the heterogeneous nature of design, to inquire about which knowledges as well as whose are at stake both within design and within the wider ‘design turn’. With reference to Futures Studies and, more explicitly, a typology that makes explicit the different knowledge paradigms underpinning different futures approaches, I argue that design scholarship should become similarly explicit and reflexive. Ultimately, by recognizing the multiple and different knowledge foundations in design, new possibilities are revealed for broadening and deepening the emergent field in between Futures Studies and design

The Prints of Banksy: An Introduction

Introduction to catalogue raisonné of Banksy's paintwork'