Advanced Manufacturing for Sustainable Fashion. Developing Interdisciplinary Educational Experiences

As a creative industry with high cultural, social, and environmental impacts, Fashion is crucially demanding a paradigmatic shift through digital transformation toward a positive, sustainable change. Therefore, fashion education needs to nurture professionals able to tackle increasingly complex challenges, delving into technological systems and aiming at meaningful environmental, economic, cultural, and societal transformations. New learning paths, approaches, and tools should prepare future fashion designers with a hybrid set of skills placed halfway between design, technology, science, and arts. This paper presents the lessons learned from the Advanced Manufacturing for Sustainable Fashion (ASMF) module conducted at Politecnico di Milano (Design School) in the course Design for the Fashion System. While exploring digital fabrication and smart wearable technologies, students delve into prototyping activities aiming at reflecting on sustainability and fashion design practices’ impacts. The paper describes the used learning tools and approaches and reports on instructional and pedagogical learning outcomes, problems, and future implementation of interdisciplinary educational experiences toward a systemic design paradigm.