Designing Textiles for a Circular Future

Textile designers and researchers have a unique and important role to play in the emerging circular economies. Their ability to make new materials, reuse old ones, and explore novel contexts through physical means, puts them in a key position to drive, support and enable change, at both product and systems level. Circular textile design differs from traditional textile design because it asks the designer of the textile to not only create a new material, but to prioritise the use and end-of-life of the product at the outset. This requires the designer to not only understand more about the processes of production, use and disposal, but much more about the people in these new systems too. The climate crisis is presenting us all with the challenge of preparing the next generation of designers and consumers to make appropriate decisions about actions, decisions, purchases and habits.