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

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

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

All YIN No YANG: Geometric Abstraction of Oil Paintings with Trained Models, Noise and Self-reference

The rapid development of Diffusion models and the declarative nature of interfaces developed for the public require automation methods, where media production can harness natural language as a mode of representation but not necessarily of interaction with humans. This article describes an image-to-video Diffusion system which removes practitioners from the process of defining prompts when producing images with conditional reference, documenting a set of results with a custom dataset of oil paintings. Our research focuses on the appropriation of trained model ensembles that are coordinated to produce indefinite sets of frames with occasional human intervention utilising timeline-based architectures. The proposed system automates a CLIP-guided DDPM with a supplementary depth estimation model and through a set of compositing techniques we found that results with coincidental and diverging descriptions can be useful for moving-image element composition. Our experiments focus on the representation of human figure and its morphological transformation

Arts and Health for Older Adults

The numbers of older people are growing rapidly across the globe. There is increasing interest in creative ways to support older people to live well and to maximise their wellbeing, including those with conditions such as dementia. This chapter considers the evidence on arts and creativity to improve the wellbeing of older people with a focus on creative projects developed for those with dementia. Research across multiple art forms and outcomes in a number of key areas is presented, with ideas for future research suggested

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

From Laughter to Lament: Mapping the Rise and Fall of Humour in Hong Kong Activism 2019–2020

This article examines the emergence, transformation, and eventual decline of humour in the 2019–2020 Hong Kong protest movement through discourse analysis, supported by first-hand participation and semi-structured interviews. It argues that humour initially offered temporary superiority over authority, fostered solidarity, and shaped lived experiences of collective resistance. However, the classist and meritocratic implications embedded in protest humour fractured the movement. The deliberate overlook within the jokes further undermines the validity of the humour. The nationhood invoked through humour also became a tacit test of allegiance. Externally, escalating state violence and the imposition of the National Security Law rendered humour increasingly untenable, shifting affective registers from laughter to grief, trauma, and self-censorship. By mapping this transition, the article demonstrates how humour can move from an empowering practice to a divisive and even detrimental force, contributing to broader debates on affect, censorship, and the politics of expression under authoritarianism

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