Bittersweet Shirts: Combining AI, digital printing & hand-making approaches to inform guidelines for circular, local & urban textile/clothing design processes

How can designers use AI, in combination with digital and handmaking processes, to create upcycled clothing for local, circular and urban contexts? This research builds on previous work which proposed early in the field of study, that designers needed to use technology as a supporting tool when making redesigned and remanufactured textiles and clothing (Earley 2010). This latest research for the Herewear Project, considers how new open-access artificial intelligence platforms (such as DALL-E) can support the design/redesign of processes and products for circular fashion, making the processes more time efficient, whilst retaining the aesthetic finish and connection that only hand-crafted techniques can deliver (Giri et al 2019). The research also considered how a sense of local identity and connection between users and waste clothing can be supported via the use of AI tools.

The author has been making ‘upcycled’ polyester shirts since 1999, with each shirt collection exploring different ideas about how designers can create a more sustainable, circular and equitable industry. Bittersweet Shirt (2023) has been re-crafted from a secondhand item to help people connect with nature in their region, and at the same time appreciate how our changing tastes make us waste clothes which can be transformed into something new and culturally relevant.

Bittersweet Shirt Concept. This research enabled the author to act as a fashion microbusiness and test the Herewear Project’s Bio TEN guidelines (Earley & Forst 2023) and the approaches to extending life of biobased products (Earley et al 2023). For this design brief, a local connection was sought to users based in Iasi, Romania, which is where project partner Maibine is based. Wormwood grows in abundance in Romania and has long been used as a medicinal herb for cuts and bruises, to treat indigestion, help with fever and infections, and as a type of insect repellent. It is also used in the liquor absinthe and to flavour other drinks like Vermouth.

Research shows that the fashion and textile industry has already produced enough polyester to clothe the world population, if it were to be reused and recycled. Oil is mined for transportation fuel, and polyester and plastic are made from the cheap waste parts of crude oil, which are not of the quality required to make petroleum. As global economies transition away from fossil-based fuels, we need new bio-based textiles for fashion, that can replace synthetics in our wardrobe. However, we must also reuse what we have already made. In this research design guidelines that were being created for biobased clothing were further tested with used polyester shirts.

Bittersweet Shirt was made with multiple bittersweet elements in the brief: the paradox of polyester and waste; the health and alcohol drinking habits associated with the plant used as decoration on it; the impact of AI on design and cultural economies and practices; and the local and global dynamics of fashion in a time of great political, social and economic unrest.