Biobased Innovation as a Fashion and Textile Design Must: A European Perspective

Abstract

Fashion industry investments drive the choice for textile solutions characterized by radical experimentation and a firm commitment to sustainability. In the last five years, textile innovations have been strongly related to biobased textile solutions evolving to become effectively feasible and strategic. The produced qualitative knowledge implementations consider new production patterns, innovative technical and digital know-how, and new consumption scenarios. The directions the industry is tracing may provide new opportunities for future textile development in the circular biobased economy. This paper presents a map of current European practices. It discusses the possible passage through a holistic paradigm that goes beyond the boundaries of the old productive systems to accompany the sector towards a new sustainable and transversal state. It also presents three selected best practices that return the actual context in which the phenomenon occurs. A model is presented to demonstrate how these circular processes of biobased materials production enable more process innovations which are developed through implementing the process itself: companies’ search for rethinking and implementing the traditional practices or designing new ones (as determined by the doctoral research of one of the authors).