Kirsti Reitan Andersen has a background in cultural studies and conducted her PhD at Copenhagen Business School about how the textile and fashion industries can use design thinking as a tool for change, using practice theory and business models for sustainability theory as her theoretical frameworks.
— In my PhD, I was primarily working with brands operating in global supply chains, which amongst other things led me to do fieldwork in China, as well as taking part in workshops with brands. In hindsight, I think the most valuable thing I got from my PhD was that it made me turns towards exploring opportunities in place-based, local value chains. I’m not saying everything needs to be local — whatever that means — but I’m very interested in exploring alternatives and building more sustainable value chains in a local context. Also, research suggests that place-based businesses are more likely to operate in environmentally and socially sustainable ways too.
She’s now an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Architecture and Design at the Royal Danish Academy. In a new research project, initiated by Lifestyle and Design Cluster with money from the Ministry of Education and Science, she has joined forces with two colleagues at the academy — a lecturer and pattern maker and a PhD student working on resale business models — as well as KEA (Copenhagen School of Design and Technology) and Aalborg University. Together, they’ve gathered 15 Danish fashion industry players — ranging from startups to retailers and established brands and large sports companies — to study durability.
— Among the 15 companies, we have both workwear, fashion, and children’s wear. With these kinds of projects, our experience is that just bringing people into the same room is very valuable because, once they feel comfortable and start sharing knowledge, they learn a lot from each other when working in different sectors.
— Also, with these projects, it can sometimes be hard to onboard companies — they’re so busy. And they have a lot of offers of different projects right now because Denmark has finally realised that the industry is a bit challenged. And also that it’s quite large — I think it’s our fourth largest industry. So now, finally, there’s been support for research like this.
— We’re trying to understand how companies are already working with durability both within their design and making, but also as a part of their business model. The whole focus on durability can of course be a little difficult when a lot of businesses have a business model that’s basically based on growth through more sales. Together with these companies, we’ll explore different aspects of durability; technical and functional durability, but also emotional durability.
Emotional?
— Yes. What most companies will measure durability on today is technical durability such as strength — how many rubs can this piece of textile take? Or how many washes? In countries with a culture of biking, if you make trousers, bicycles are also an issue since it really challenges your trousers in certain places. But if you take a fabric like polyester, it can take a lot of rubs and is very durable in that sense. But if you put it into a business model that is all about fast fashion, it’s not really durable in the end, because you keep it for a short time and then throw it out because it’s not in fashion anymore, Reitan Andersen shares. She continues:
— In the project, as I mentioned, we work with physical, technical, and emotional durability. The latter deals with the consumer’s attachment to a product, which has an impact on use and how and for how long we take care of a product. In essence, it’s quite simple really. Things we love and love to wear, for one reason or another, we tend to take better care of. The hard thing about emotional durability is that it can take so many forms and is hard to ’quantify’. As a brand, how do you design for emotional durability? Something I love and take care of, might be very different from what you love and take care of. Knowing your customers and who you design for, and getting an insight into how people actually use the clothing you make can feed into your design process, so you can start making choices directed towards emotional, as well as physical and technical, durability. However, most brands today know very little about who they design for and what happens to their products after sales.
— We’re now in the phase of visiting all our partners and interviewing them to understand how they understand durability as of now. Where do they see the strength? Where do they see the weaknesses? How do they work with it in relation to their business model? Then, in parallel, we’re going to look into what we already know; What does research say in the area?
— When you take this more holistic approach to durability, there’s not that much knowledge because people and clothing use has been so under-researched. And a few of the brands have a very good connection to their users, but, in general, they have very little understanding about the people they design for and know very little about what actually happens to their clothing once it’s left them. So, in the project, one thing we’ll do is to explore that and also bring this whole thing into discussion; How do you grow when durability is becoming a requirement? Or, do you need to grow as much every year? Could one imagine growth in other ways than financial growth and what would that look like?
”Could one imagine growth in other ways than financial growth and what would that look like?”
There’s more and more conversation about degrowth.
— Yes, exactly. And I’m not a degrowth expert but I do hear it mentioned increasingly. Mostly in academic or more ’speculative’ contexts, not so much in business. It’s my experience that even brands very conscious about and focused on sustainability still talk about growth — and economic growth that is. Mostly they do this by saying they will take customers from the less sustainable brands, that it’s better that people buy their products from them than from the really bad brands. In my view, degrowth is a necessity. It also requires fundamental shifts in our economic systems. Not to speak of mindsets. But it’s very hard to bring to the table of a company when the entire structure that they’re also part of is all about growth and economic growth.
It’s a challenge to implement it into your business model.
— Yes, I don’t think anybody has the answer for that. But in our project, there is also a link to services. If you are supposed to not sell as many products anymore but create better quality, perhaps you can increase the margins a bit if it’s made of better quality and you know more about the people you design for. And then, there are also opportunities to attach services, such as repair or redesign, that you can also start to make money of. But that also then requires completely different skill sets in the company — or at least that you collaborate with others to provide those services.
— However, as of now, we’re looking into durability; how do you create durable products, and what are the challenges in the design phase and in the making? After that, we can try to initiate a discussion about how that (new services, Ed’s note) works with your business model.
What are the reasons why durability is so under-researched?
— I haven’t investigated the exact reasons but I think that first, fashion has not been a field that has received much funding for research at all — up until just recently. It’s also been a sector that hasn’t been much regulated. The current sustainability challenges of the industry and the fact that it’s come to broader attention, also from politicians, have changed this for the better. In Sweden, MISTRA Future Fashion started already in 2012 while here in Denmark, TRACE is the first large-scale funding going towards textiles.
— I guess durability has been under-researched also in other sectors. For the last decades, it’s not like many things have been designed or produced to last — rather the opposite — so why would you look into the durability of anything, not least fashion?
— Over these last decades, we’ve optimised on a take-make-waste model, celebrated economic growth above everything and created models that’s all about selling more. Within such a model, durability doesn’t really count much.
According to Reitan Andersen, the whole conversation about durability is also always tied to what’s going on in the EU.
— I’m not an expert on what’s going on there. But just look at the EU strategy for sustainable and circular textiles — durability, and repair, are mentioned again and again, as well as the infrastructure to support this. As a way to avoid waste, and create new job opportunities.
— Also, the data behind the upcoming regulations are much discussed. For instance, the question of the ’sustainability’ of fossil materials like polyester. You’ll hear large fast fashion brands, and others, speak very much in favour of polyester being the most sustainable material — and present data to support their arguments. Previously often with references to the Higg Index. You’ll hear others say the exact opposite.
— Clearly, there are no easy answers here. Luckily, the funding finally going towards this sector is slowly starting to produce more accurate and nuanced data. This hopefully will inform decisions made more so than who has more money to pay large lobby organisations to feed the EU information in their favour.
What are the next steps in your research project?
— We’re doing all the data collection up until summer and in a few weeks, we’ll start the analysis of it. The partners on the project will also be taking a course online in the fall where we look at what we’ve learned from these companies. And, what does research say? Then we’ll give them an opportunity to work with this knowledge, but in relation to their own design process and their own business model. We’ll give them knowledge and tools to work with, but then we’ll also ask them to start working with it themselves because our experience is that otherwise, they’re gonna leave the project and things will continue as usual.
— We’re trying to change the format; meeting face-to-face online in a webinar setting and then, some self-study and guided work with their own process where they can also check in with some of the knowledge institutions. The hope is that this will allow more people to join the course, Reitan Andersen concludes.
