Designing Collaborations to Remake Waste: A Blueprint for Fashion Businesses

Australian brands have been successfully collaborating to remake textile waste over the past five years, yet how these partnerships are negotiated and the ways that actors develop these remake products has not been closely evaluated. Without deeper understanding of these practices, there is a risk that they fail to gain widespread adoption, as seen in cases from the 2010s, where international upcycling collaborations stagnated following only a handful of projects. Recognising the opportunity offered by the numerous Australian examples, this PhD project closely studied these remake collaborations, examining 38 cases to uncover insights and advance these practices.

Over four years, the project investigated a wide array of remake collaborations, analysing products and conducting interviews, sharing these conversations as the podcast Seam Change. This research, culminating in the PhD thesis, revealed diverse dynamics around material transfer and varied methods for designing and remaking products. To transform these findings into a practical resource, the blueprint was developed. This tool enables actors identify their preferred approaches to remake collaborations by outlining specific choices and connecting these to the resulting types of projects or partnerships, highlighting that there are different ways to participate and offering clarity and guidance on these options.

This blueprint captures and conveys various approaches to remake collaborations, enabling actors to tailor their participation based on their business. Brands with textile waste can decide whether they are focused on transforming or transferring these materials, while remake designers can determine their strategy for developing products and services. By communicating the implications of different choices, the blueprint reduces uncertainties around collaborating for remake, empowering actors to strategically design their involvement. This blueprint facilitates more participation in collaborations to remake textile waste, which in turn supports emerging designers, cultivates local redesign and remanufacturing skills, and helps establish sustainable fashion ecosystems.

Looking more closely at the blueprint shows the five-phase process at the centre, which guides actors through steps of conducting collaborations. Surrounding this are key choices which shape the design of the collaboration, the products it creates and the way material is transformed. On the left, actors with textile waste can select their involvement level by opting for one of three models, these having different material ownership dynamics, either transferring the material to the remaking actor, or transforming material which is retained by the brand. The top of the diagram shows how remaking designers can exert control over materials and product design through four tactics, linking the combination of tactics to different types of collaboration strategies. At the bottom right, the categorisation of remaking methods is linked to specific skills involved. These skills are then connected to how they transform materials surfaces, forms, or extract textiles, helping actors to identify suitable methods based on what aspect of the garment is problematic. For actors engaging in collaborations, this blueprint draws connections between skills, materials, business and service approaches, showcasing the potential diversity of remaking practices while also enabling more intentional decision making.