Fostering Sustainable Prosperity in the Fashion Sector and Beyond: a four-fold approach to value and wellbeing

The imperative of learning to live well together, as humans in a more than human world is the meta concern of our times. Fashion connects the personal, societal, and biosphere elements of our existential crisis in starkly visible and unseen ways. We would like to share insights from an extended research and knowledge exchange enquiry with fashion design entrepreneurs and invite discussion of the role of the creative sector in the wellbeing economy. We draw on findings from Rethinking Fashion Design Entrepreneurship: Fostering Sustainable Practices (FSP), funded by AHRC (2018- 2021). This research explores a framework for design that recognises four dimensions of prosperity: social, environmental, cultural, and economic contributions.1 This framework has been developed through insights from working with designers in large and small fashion businesses, students, researchers and with representatives of governments and NGOs. We explicitly draw attention to an evidence-led guidebook, Fashion as Sustainability in Action, which has been created to recognise an expanded role for design entrepreneurship in the context of our times. It draws on evidence from over 400 contributors and recognises the tension that exists across these four agendas for those working in the creative sector. Critically, it foregrounds the importance of culture as the fourth pillar of sustainability. The research identified the vital and distinctive role of business support organisations, and others who mentor, showcase and invest in fashion design entrepreneurs. The role of these intermediaries as levers for change in the fashion and wider creative industries’ ecosystem is recognised as enabling and supporting best practice of micro and small sized businesses (MSEs.) The research and this discussion, seeks to recognise and exemplify a wellbeing economy approach to fashion and the wider creative sector.