ABSTRACT Adopting a Design-Based Research approach, this paper examines how Education for Sustainable Development can be integrated into fashion design higher education in Germany and Iran. It reports on the third iteration of the Sustainable Fashion Design Strategies course at Hochschule Hannover University of Applied Sciences and Arts, involving undergraduate students from Fashion, Product, and 3D Design. The course incorporated lectures, discussions, workshops, and structured reflection, with the USE-LESS Product Lifecycle as the central didactic tool. Data were collected through e-portfolios, a group interview, and structured observations. Findings indicate that experiential and multimodal learning supports conceptual understanding of sustainability, facilitates engagement with sustainable fashion design strategies, and provides indications of shifts towards sustainability as a professional mindset. Iterative refinement enhanced knowledge integration and pedagogical coherence, while highlighting the need for improved scaffolding of complex techniques. The study offers contextually grounded design principles to inform sustainability-oriented fashion design education in comparable settings.

Review of: Latin American and Latinx Fashion Design Today: ¡Moda Hoy! , Tanya Meléndez-Escalante and Melissa Marra-Alvarez (2024) New York: Bloomsbury, 272 pp., ISBN 978-1-35034-395-5, h/bk, $42.40

The intersection of gaming and fashion opens a novel avenue for personal expression through symbol-based clothing assembly, akin to puzzle games. This study delves into the transformative potential of integrating the mechanics of puzzles into creating personal outfits, fostering a platform for individuals to manifest their distinctive style and creativity. The research scrutinizes the design process, highlighting the symbiotic relationship between self-expression and individuality, and the cognitive stimulation provided by the puzzle-solving aspect that enhances the wearer’s brainstorming capabilities. Implementing this concept poses a unique set of challenges and opportunities, aiming to redefine the paradigms of fashion design. Ultimately, this innovative approach seeks to revolutionize personal style, creating a dynamic and interactive experience that resonates with the wearer’s identity and ingenuity.

ABSTRACT In recent years, artificial intelligence (AI) has been increasingly adopted across the textile value chain. Within textile characterisation, AI is now being used to augment both objective instrumentation (e.g. mechanical, spectroscopic, imaging, and thermal methods) and subjective assessments of fabric handle and comfort. This review focuses on (i) characterisation modalities commonly used for fibres, yarns, fabrics (woven/knit/nonwoven), and post-consumer garments; (ii) AI task families relevant to characterisation; and (iii) how AI can support interpretation, automation, and decision-making for FAST/KES-type mechanical tests, FTIR, SEM, and thermal analysis (DSC/TGA/DMA). AI for fashion design, trend forecasting, and purely creative generative applications is outside the scope unless directly linked to characterisation outcomes. Beyond a broad overview, the review contributes a unified taxonomy that maps characterisation modalities to AI tasks and data types, synthesises cross-cutting limitations, and proposes practical reporting and benchmarking recommendations to improve reproducibility and comparability. Finally, implications for textile recycling are discussed, where robust material identification and contamination detection can enable higher-quality sorting and recovery in circular systems.

The development of contemporary fashion has transformed clothing from a functional necessity into a medium of visual expression that embodies both aesthetic and symbolic values. This study aims to analyze the design characteristics of Jacob Wil as reflected in the evening gown “Viraadhya” through the visualization of corset transparency techniques and velvet fabric texture as key elements in shaping the garment’s aesthetic value. The research employs a qualitative approach using a descriptive-analytical method. Data were collected through visual observation, documentation studies, and literature reviews. The analysis focuses on design aesthetics, garment construction, material texture, and fashion semiotics. The findings indicate that “Viraadhya” successfully represents Jacob Wil’s distinctive design characteristics through the application of a structured mermaid silhouette, the exploration of transparent corset construction, and the combination of velvet and transparent materials that create a visual contrast between strength and softness. The corset transparency technique functions not only as a constructive element but also as an aesthetic strategy that reinforces the garment’s visual identity. Meanwhile, the use of velvet fabric contributes a sense of luxury, drama, and visual depth that supports the overall design narrative. This study demonstrates that the exploration of garment construction and material innovation can serve as an important strategy in establishing visual identity within contemporary evening gown design. Keywords: Corset transparency, velvet fabric, evening gown, Jacob Wil, fashion Design.

ABSTRACT Nowadays, there is increasing recognition of the importance of incorporating Taoist philosophy into interaction design. This paper proposes a Taoist approach to HCI and wearable technologies, aiming to enhance embodied and relational interactions by harmonising humans, technology, and the environment. The research is presented through three case studies to enhance our understanding of material shape change in interactive artefacts: Flowing Out of the Body, illustrating mindful heart rate physicalisation through shape-changing garments; E-coral, featuring pneumatic tactile interaction; and Skeleton-Wear, a haptic wearable enhancing soma awareness. By integrating Taoist principles like flow, Wu-Wei, Qi, and Yin-Yang into material design, these design cases reveal innovative interaction modes and user experiences. These features nurture an elevated sense of flow, foster mindful awareness, and harmonise user input with material movement. This study contributes to a humanistic approach to technology, exploring practical actuation techniques that enable dynamic materials, enhance well-being, and improve the human-technology relationship.

ABSTRACT The fashion design process is a complex system of interconnected exploratory research steps, including concept development, design ideation, sketching, fabric selection, patternmaking, and construction, which lead to a final product design. This study analyses the effectiveness of a fashion design project brief that uses insects as the conceptual starting point to enhance students’ understanding of this design process. A literature review establishes a contextual framework for the fashion design process and explores the relationship between insects and dress from a historical and contemporary perspective. Qualitative and quantitative research methods are applied to assess a series of structured assignments developed in a sketchbook, aimed at generating ideas toward an experimental garment design. The project, implemented with second-year undergraduate fashion and textile design students, highlights nature as a useful conceptual catalyst in fashion design, and underlines the importance of sketchbooks as a tool in the design process.

ABSTRACT Given the importance of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD), this study aims to contribute to the teaching of fashion and textile design, both for students and for the lifelong learning of professionals. The study presents the development process of the Sustainable Color Teaching Toolkit (SCTT), an original active teaching-learning material created to develop critical thinking, new knowledge, skills and quality teaching experiences on sustainable colors. The tools were strategically designed to dynamise and innovate the teaching of concepts that integrate sustainability and dyeing processes in fashion and textile design, associated with active teaching methodologies techniques, such as gamification and flipped classrooms. The SCTT was tested in three training sessions, totalling 35 participants, including students and fashion and textile professionals. The results demonstrate that SCTT contributes to the gap in sustainable color education, encouraging communication, interaction, discussion, experimentation, curiosity and engagement among fashion and textile designers.

Revisiting kernel complexity in Gaussian process regression: An empirical study on text-to-visual embedding mapping in fashion design

Design and application of garment art patterns based on visual sample generation

Productive negative emotions in creative studio-practice in higher education fashion design programmes

VogFashion: an AI-driven intelligent system for fashion design

Purpose How do consumers evaluate fashion information from artificial intelligence versus a human expert, and under what conditions is one more persuasive? This research examines evaluations of fashion information based on its source – human or AI – and how these evaluations, reflected in attitude and electronic word-of-mouth (e-WOM) (Study 1), are moderated by information type (Study 2; creative vs. analytical) and temporal focus (Study 3; past vs. future). Design/methodology/approach Three between-subjects experiments manipulated the source, information type and temporal focus of fashion information. Respondents were US residents aged 18 or older. Analyses were conducted via analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) and moderated mediation models. Findings Across studies, consumers consistently preferred human sources. Study 1 showed that human-generated fashion design trend information produced significantly more favourable attitudes and e-WOM. Study 2 found the human preference was significant in creative domains but not in analytical ones, consistent with humans' strength in aesthetic judgement. Study 3 demonstrated that the human advantage was significant in past-focused but not in future-focused content, underscoring humans' strength in interpreting past events. Practical implications Fashion retailers should align source types with content characteristics, emphasising human expertise in creative and retrospective contexts. Originality/value Integrating source credibility, algorithm aversion, mind perception and certainty–uncertainty framework, this research develops a unified explanation of when source effectiveness varies in fashion contexts and identifies boundary conditions where content characteristics (information type and temporal focus) align with the source to shape persuasive outcomes.

ABSTRACT Sustainability in fashion design has become a central concern in higher education, driven by the industry’s environmental and social impacts. This comparative study examines how sustainability is taught and perceived in the fashion design departments of Azerbaijan and Turkey. Employing a two-phase case study design, the research analysed responses from 38 academics and 273 students through thematic analysis of interviews and questionnaires. The findings reveal a notable divergence: Turkish programmes integrate sustainability into their curricula, with a strong emphasis on eco-friendly materials and production processes. In contrast, in Azerbaijan, sustainability is not formally embedded within the fashion design curriculum, representing a nascent area of focus for students and educators alike. The study underscores distinct educational approaches and proposes that enhanced practical training and cross-border collaboration could strengthen sustainability education. These insights offer guidance for curriculum developers and policymakers to advance sustainability-driven fashion education in emerging and transitional higher education contexts.

This paper investigates the Habaspuri handloom fabric of Kalahandi District, Odisha, not merely as a fabric but as a ‘sign’ embedded with layered meanings of culture, identity, and gendered labor. Weaved initially as tribal kapta, by the indigenous Kondh 1 tribe, to its evolution as ‘the Habaspuri handloom’ in the Junagarh region by Ugrasen Meher 2 in the intermediate phase, its decline in demand in the aftermath of Meher’s death, and finally its contemporary resurrection, institutionalization, and internationalization by Sujit Meher 3 the international fashion designer, the Habaspuri saree design, its production, circulation, and consumption has undergone tremendous changes. Drawing on Roland Barthes’ “Second order of signification” (1957/1972); Clifford Geertz’s symbolic anthropology (1973) and Raymond Williams’ theory of “Cultural Materialism” (1958); this paper therefore analyses the motifs, weaving practices, and the changing materiality of conditions, and engages in reimagining the Habaspuri saree as a gendered cultural text; cultural because it communicates a distinctive collective memory as reflected in the tribal mythologies of ancient time, and lived experience of the contemporary period, and gendered because here marginalized voices, especially those of women weavers, articulate resilience against the backdrop of cultural commodification and economic precarity.

This article examines how generative artificial intelligence (AI) design platforms are reshaping fashion and textile design by mediating creative processes, reconfiguring design roles and influencing aesthetic outcomes. While these design practices have traditionally relied on embodied techniques such as sketching or draping, AI platforms shift the creative process towards prompt-writing, thus transforming the designer’s role into one of linguistic precision. These systems not only facilitate design but also condition imaginaries, authorship and aesthetic norms. Drawing on an AI-augmented walkthrough methodology, we analyse four platforms through two themes: what we term the ‘limits of democratization’ and the ‘myth of the muse’. We show how platforms position themselves as accessible and inspirational while at the same time depending on opaque infrastructures, embedding aesthetic biases and upholding technical gatekeeping. Claims to democratization often obscure the need for professional knowledge and prompt fluency and overlook how defaults marginalize certain bodies, identities and styles. At the same time, the framing of AI as a muse conceals the constrained, algorithmically structured nature of digital creativity. Drawing on theories of ‘cultural infrastructure’, ‘distributed agency’ and ‘market agencements’, we examine how interface design, algorithmic suggestions and user scripts configure what can be created, who is positioned as a designer, and how creative practice is recognized and valued within fashion design culture. These dynamics show that AI design platforms do not simply mediate creativity; they reconfigure design practices and redistribute creative agency. Rather than serving as neutral tools, they function as socio-technical systems embedded in cultural and commercial infrastructures. By offering a critical, design-led perspective, this article contributes to understanding how generative AI reshapes the conditions under which fashion is imagined, produced and valued, thereby advancing emerging debates on AI and creativity in fashion.

A hybrid knowledge-based recommendation system driven by modeling fashion design semantics

This study aims to examine the relationship between the use of the Ibis Paint X application and the motivation to learn to design fashion at SMK Negeri 1 Salatiga. This research is a quantitative approach research with a correlational design. The population in this study is all students of class XI fashion at SMK Negeri 1 Salatiga which totals 71 students, and the sample in this study uses total sampling, The sampling technique uses total sampling, namely making the population as a sample, there is a total sampling because the population is less than 100. The data collection technique used a Likert scale questionnaire. The data in this study were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics. Hypothesis test using Pearson correlation. The results of the study obtained that there was a significant relationship between the use of the Ibis Paint X application and the motivation to learn to design the fashion of grade XI students, the fashion show had a pearson correlation coefficient value of 0.559 and a significance value (sig. 2-tailed) of 0.000. This shows that there is a relationship between the use of the Ibis Paint X application and the motivation to learn to design fashion in grade XI students of fashion at SMK Negeri 1 Salatiga with the correlation category being.

In order to solve the problems of scattered relationships between elements in fashion design, the difficulty of structured expression of user preferences, and the lack of interpretation of recommendation results, this paper proposes a knowledge graph based method for the construction of clothing design element association network and intelligent recommendation. The design, color, material, process and scene semantics are integrated into the unified computing framework. Through multi-source data collection, label generation, relationship extraction, user preference clustering and scheme combination optimization, a complete technology chain is formed from knowledge organization, association reasoning to recommendation output. Based on 2680 clothing samples and 18642 user interaction records, the experiment constructs a clothing design knowledge graph, and uses the rule response space to depict the differences between user groups. The results show that the F1 value of the proposed method in the construction of the element association network reaches 0.857, the contour coefficient of user clustering is 0.64 when K=5, the average acceptance rate of the recommendation scheme is 0.794, and the rule overlap rate and output consistency in the cross-task test remain above 0.79. The results show that the knowledge graph can effectively enhance the integrity of the relationship expression of clothing design elements, the stability and interpretability of the recommendation results, and provide a feasible path for the implementation of intelligent clothing design assistant systems.

The fashion industry, driven by fast fashion practices, significantly contributes to textile waste, highlighting the need for sustainable approaches within fashion education. This study examines the feasibility of the KONKA sustainable ready-to-wear collection as a design-based learning medium for embedding sustainability values in fashion education. The KONKA collection applies upcycling techniques by transforming two discarded shirts into a single skirt design, with the traditional game of congklak serving as the primary source of design inspiration. A descriptive, quantitative method was employed, utilizing a percentage-based feasibility assessment. Data were collected through a design feasibility instrument and evaluated by three fashion design experts, focusing on color, design lines, silhouette, proportional balance, and center of interest. The results show that the KONKA design achieved a feasibility score of 95.6%, categorized as highly feasible. These findings suggest that upcycling-based ready-to-wear design can serve as an effective pedagogical medium for embedding sustainability values, resulting in designs that are both aesthetically pleasing and functionally practical, as well as culturally meaningful. This study supports Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) in fashion education, offering insights for curriculum development and sustainable fashion practices.