Designing Fashion Transitions.

The fashion industry is experiencing a significant shift, influenced by new regulations and tools aimed at improving transparency, accountability, and lifecycle monitoring throughout supply chains. In this transformative landscape, the integration of technologies opens new possibilities for circularity, traceability, and material innovation, while also holding the potential to reshape fashion design and manufacturing processes and practices toward a more sustainable and responsible industry. This study highlights the critical role of design as a methodological tool to support the transition toward a sustainable and circular fashion industry and its supply chains as a whole ecosystem. It explores data-informed and generative design strategies to enable digital interoperability toward mass personalization, on-demand, and inclusive garment design and production. It investigates hybrid practices that merge non-standard fabrication technologies with traditional craftsmanship, aligning with Industry 5.0 values of human-centric production. By positioning fashion as both a cultural practice and a complex industry needing integrated systemic approaches, the paper underscores the core importance of design as a transformative driver that relies on cross-disciplinary collaborations. This contribution offers both theoretical and practical insights for researchers, designers, and industry stakeholders navigating the complex transition toward a more sustainable and digitally enabled fashion ecosystem.