Sustainable Fashion Design: A Review and Perspective

Abstract

Fashion sustainability may potentially reduce greenhouse gas emissions and mitigate climate change by decreasing pollution and waste. However, sustainable fashion design received little attention in recent years. Here, the existing literature (237 publications) on sustainable fashion design is synthesized to understand the trends and future directions. Sustainable fashion design lacked systematic research methodology and paid little attention to down-cycling design. The sustainable fashion design can be classified into four categories of design methods, including reducing waste, reducing environmental impacts, redesigning, and extending the lifespan of garments. Slow fashion design was dominant and the hottest research topic in the past two decades. Further studies are required to explore the methodology of remake fashion design in sustainable fashion. Overall, this study has a large contribution to the theory and applications of sustainable fashion design by establishing a comprehensive documentation library, reviewing multiple aspects of studies, understanding the trends and development, summarizing the status and hot topics, identifying research gaps, and providing future research directions.