Metadesigning Fashion

incomplete notes towards a conference paper

Our current team

Professor Dilys Williams
- Dilys is founder and Director of Centre for Sustainable Fashion, a University of the Arts London Research Centre, based at London College of Fashion, which she established in 2008.
Prof. John Wood
- John is Emeritus Professor of Design at Goldsmiths University of London
Prof. Mathilda Tham
- Mathilda is Professor in Design at Linnaeus University, Sweden. She is a member of the board of Mistra, the Foundation for Strategic Environmental Research, Sweden
Dr. Francesco Mazarella
- Francesco is Reader in Design for Social Change, at London College of Fashion (LCF).

Current work

The above team will use previous metadesign research to develop a new paradigm of fashion.

Previous metadesign research

Our Goldsmiths University of London researchers received first significant EPSRC/AHRC research funding in 2005. The title of this project was An Open Source Design Cluster that uses Synergy Tools to Guide the Effective Development of a 'Meta-Design' Methodology. In effect we asked ourselves whether design as we know it could deliver synergies rather than products and services. Our work led to publications including our most recent (edited) book Metadesigning Designing in the Anthropocene (Wood, 2022). We began by acknowledging the failure of design (i.e. profession / discipline) to shape the world in ways that ensure our long-term survival. As this implies, metadesign will need heuristics that reconcile both bottom-up and top-down tactics. These will need to include novel transdisciplinary, political and comprehensive processes of co-creativity that blur the lines between designers and users of design.

Why we need metadesign

The last few million years

Is designing part of our DNA? It certainly seems to be in the blood. Homo sapiens has been digging up rocks and coloured earths for around 2.5 million years. These habits probably inspired the embodied and meditative aspects of sign making and the fashioning of weapons, talismans and tradable objects that we recognise in design today. So if it's worked until now, what's the problem? Why would designing need re-designing? One answer is that we made design choices that exceed our comfort zones. We are poor at imagining even moderately large quantities (Du Sautoy, 2009) and we readily confuse qualities with quantities (c.f. Kahneman & Tversky, 2011).

The last ten thousand years

In the last 10k years or so, new agriculture based lifestyles enabled us to develop the organisational thinking that permitted huge colonial and imperial expansion. But these were cultural changes rather than an evolutionary step change. Humans are smart, but our cognitive capacities still struggle to maintain convivial relationships within communities much larger than 150 people. We therefore invented systems of accountability (e.g. standard codes of writing and unit-based currencies) that facilitated essential managerial communications and cross-linguistic trading links. But a greater reliance on bureaucratic systems undermined our local cultures of personal trust and responsibility. In short, they alienated us from Nature and from ourselves.

The last few thousand years

According to pyschologists 1% of the population are classifiable as pyschopaths. When everyone lived in village-sized communities this might have been less hazardous than when we scaled up into nations and corporations. It is telling that imperial history is defined more by leaders, rather than by trends. Recently, new extremes of technological and financial inequality, managed by political populism, have made the addiction to power into an existential global issue. Caio Vassão has described a demiurgic drive inherent in the western understanding of design (Vassão, 2022). Perhaps this stems from Aristotle’s influential description of design as a ‘final cause’ (i.e. an activity that is characterised by its intended purpose. Those who need certainty, or who crave power, will like this definition of design as it seems to offer a way to control the future. Seen from a 21st century standpoint it aligns it with a larger paradigm that is useful to sociopathic leaders in politics and industry. The discovery that designers could increase the measurable output of large corporations may explain why design profession became splintered into many specialisms that could be managed like the obedient parts of a production line.

The last few hundred years

How might metadesigners reinvent design for a world more attuned to kindness and respect, rather than efficiency and predictability? Given that we now face wicked problems that are too intractable for traditional design, perhaps Metadesigners will need to encourage playful curiosity and be more open to serendipitous events along the way. Paul Klee's famous idea of taking a line for a walk offers a useful non-outcome-defined approach that celebrates the pencil's journey, rather than its destination. Re-purposing design as a way to re-map wisdom should make us think very deeply about whether to invite smart bots into our human cultures of learning and fun.

Re-shaping time and money

Unfortunately, when financial profit is seen as the primary purpose of business, design's long-term legacy may become sidelined. Today, Aristotle's emphasis on destination rather than journey now seems natural in a world regulated by clock time and unit-based currencies. Each was designed for an economic order based on quantities rather than qualities, which is why they are oblivious to the synergies that maintain the living world. In order to simulate what Newton called absolute, true and mathematical time, clocks needed to be as ignorant of their surroundings as possible. Nonetheless, it is common for humans to trust clocks when deciding if they need to break for coffee or lunch. Similarly, big financial numbers are hugely attractive to us (Simmel, 1900) yet we are quite innumerate (du Sautoy, 2009). We also designed money with qualities that are exclusively numerical (Simmel, 1900). These unnaturally precise properties enable money to remain fungible and exclusively summative, irrespective of any value that is assigned to it.

Beyond 'Win-Win'

Perhaps transactional logic is one of the oldest tricks acquired by living systems. For example, humans see C02 as a waste product and O2 as a precious commodity. Plants understand the same logic, but from the opposite perspective. Although, ecologically speaking, these processes are synergistic the way that westernised business has evolved, it tends to be reduced to a summative, two-player equation. In such a flattened world, the concept of economic growth is an unconvincing conceit, given the arithmetical principles that underpin money. When we combine two entities in the living world we can always imagine new possible synergies or dysergies. Unfortunately, the nature of money is only summative, so it blinds us to any such emergence. These are not natural rules. They are based on the human ability to think largely in nouns, rather than verbs. We must also believe that each unit as exactly equal to every other unit. Only if we can accept these rules does 2+2=4 etc. The mathematics of relations is similar but works differently. It is a reduced model of ecological reasoning but is more likely to bring contextual specifics into the frame.

Plurality and emergence

Richard Buckminster Fuller was acutely aware of some of these limitations. In 1957 he called for a comprehensive & anticipatory design science’. Part of his methodology was to start by considering the prevailing situation at the level of Universe, then to zoom into details. A crucial aspect of his insistence on comprehensiveness was the fact that synergy seeking is fruitless unless there is plurality. But humans find it hard to focus on many things at once because of the nature of human consciousness. This means that we need a method that optimises plurality in accord with our cognitive limits. In order to create opportunities that may exceed what is currently thinkable we will need methods of semiosis that are richly reactive. This propositional framework may resemble the way that jokes work (see Koestler's description of bisociation). If so it will need a syntax that affords a rich density of ideas without cluttering its own working space.

end of metadesign notes

Metadesigning the fashion system

It is widely known that the global fashion industry is exploitative and environmentally harmful.
While most fashion designers are probably enlightened SME enterprises the harm continues.
The UK Government's (2019) ‘Fixing Fashion’ report failed to address this issue head-on.
On the one hand it identified the primary cause of these practices as the business model.
However its 17 policy recommendations addressed the symptoms not the paradigm

e.g. strengthening the Modern Slavery Act for textiles.
e.g. set standards for reducing microfibre pollution.
e.g. tax incentives for more sustainable businesses.

The levers for change model (Meadows, 1999) shows such piecemeal approaches to be suboptimal.
Even worse, none of the above recommendations were adopted
- “We’ve seen a massive increase in the volume of fashion. Fast fashion has now become instant fashion, which is about overstimulation of the market. We have an imperative now that is far more clear,”
  - (Professor Dilys Williams, founder and director of University of the Arts London’s Centre for Sustainable Fashion)

Could metadesign rehabilitate fashion?

The notion of applying appropriate metadesign principles to fashion is not new.
SUMMARY FINDINGS

(Tham & Jones, 2008)
(Tham & Lundebye, 2008)

A systemic approach

Fashion is a system
- It is the co-dependency of businesses and consumers that create certain outcomes.
- Roland Barthes outlined how fashion corporations calculatedly maintain control.
- He contrasted this with the intuitive & unconscious responses by consumers.
- Understanding this whole complex process calls for a systemic approach.
The system is a paradigm
- It it is useful to think of the fashion system as a paradigm.
- Paradigms are complex sets of habits, meanings and assumptions.
- Unfortunately, they are so normal we may not notice them.
Paradigms resist change
- Paradigms are sustained by vested interests, habits and outdated belief systems.
- This often enables them to survive well beyond their anticipated expiry date.
- Some of fashion's attributes are so established we will call them its DNA.
- Perhaps we can change the DNA by remixing and adding ingredients.
Reimagining the Fashion Paradigm
- Tomorrow's paradigms may defy description using today's language.
- Nevertheless, to change a paradigm we must first imagine it differently (Meadows, (1997).

Reimagining fashion

Imagine a new fashion paradigm.
Imagine fashion with more fun added.
Imagine fashion as a grassroots movement.
Imagine fashion with the exploitation removed.
Imagine fashion re-invented for lasting local benefit.
Imagine fashion run as a network of creative micro-hubs.
Imagine fashion as a catalyst for raising global consciousness.
Imagine fashion advocating feeling good as the path to looking good.
Imagine fashion as a popular movement renouncing disposable plastics.
Imagine augmented fashion as novel combinations of making and performing.

Fashion’s DNA

Our tiny thumbnail history (i.e. Fashion’s DNA) began 70K years ago when clothing became a necessary protection against unfamiliar climatic conditions.
We can foresee a time when protective clothing again becomes a mandatory means of survival against climatic conditions.
Beyond this point fashion has helped us to glamorise and celebrate being alive.
But recent history emphasises the vanity and competition found in royal courts.
- e.g. Louis XIV (i.e. dressing ‘à la mode’)
In becoming more individualistic it may have become shallow, ephemeral and exploitative.
Today the industry pushes consumer demand by offering short-term gratification.
Could we metadesign the fashion system for celebrating community pride and ecological wellbeing?
Could the fashion system deliver greener fun by re-awakening its more performative side?

Some preliminary ideas

Community workshops could up-cycle and co-design micro-local fashions and brands.
More dressing up than owning (garments)
Look for cheaper/better dopamine hits (compared to shopping).
circular and ‘long-tail’ models of business

standard business models narrowly focus on point of sale profits. It is the competition on garment price that leads to exploitative conditions of employment and the wasteful overproduction of single use garments.
But purveyors of ‘pre-loved’ garments were found to be as guilty of ‘greenwashing’ as their fast-fashion counterparts.
Fashion has a communication aspect and a tangible product aspect.
spectrum ranging from slavish social conformity to the focus on a given individual’s uniqueness.
catwalk swank and narcissistic excess we might first reflect upon the deeper purposes of individual identity and why we need to manage it.
For many 21st century consumers, noticing that one’s taste in clothes attracts the wrong kind of attention may be enough to summon feelings of shame. autopoiesis and apoptosis, a pre-programmed process in which it will kill itself.

POSSIBLE METHODS

The Augmented Fashion Quartet

We would utilise our unique Creative Quartets system (see Wood, 2017; 2022).
This is a tried-and-tested workshop tool for asset-trawling & opportunity-finding
It is designed to find unnoticed local assets, opportunities and useful synergies.

Why a quartet?

the following diagram illustrates the auspicious nature of FOUR as a co-creative unit.

Each clink represents a meeting with the potential to become a productive relationship.
Every relationship is an opportunity to generate a productive/innovative outcome.
- In a duet we would only hear 1 clink.
- In a trio we would hear 3 clinks
- In a quartet we would hear 6 clinks
So a quartet has six times more creative potential than a duet

a quartet shown flat

A Creative Quartets workshop

We normally arrange the room as a flattened tetrahedron

invited guests included Prof. John Chris Jones

Augmenting Fashion in Quartets

This suggested version combines 4 ELEMENTS and 4 ROLE TYPES:

The 4 Elements

EXPERTS
NON-EXPERTS
KNOWN ASSETS
KNOWN PROBLEMS

The 4 Role Types

: NOVICE:

e.g. an assistant
e.g. learner
e.g. job-seeker
e.g. observer

: HERITAGER:

e.g. volunteer skilled in needlework
e.g. volunteer skilled in tailoring
e.g. volunteer skilled in dressmaking

: IMAGINER:

e.g. creative fashion designer
e.g. supervisor
e.g. college tutor

: OUTSIDER:

e.g. a creative but not from fashion
e.g. a choir leader
e.g. a craft enthusiast (think beyond the commercial constraints of fashion
e.g. dancer
e.g. choreographer
e.g. designer
e.g. food lover willingly share skills & secrets
e.g. organiser of festive parades or carnivals
e.g. inventor or entredonneur

WORKSHOPS IN PHASE 1

These consist of one-to-one meetings (10 - 30 minute) running simultaneously (i.e. 2 pairs from the same quartet). They would be documented by 2 silent observers.

Session 1

discusses fashion ASSETS & PROBLEMS with to make 'ASSET CARDS' & 'PROBLEM CARDS'
at the same time that:
discusses fashion ASSETS & PROBLEMS with to make 'ASSET CARDS' & 'PROBLEM CARDS'

Session 2

discusses fashion ASSETS & PROBLEMS with to make 'ASSET CARDS' & 'PROBLEM CARDS'
at the same time that:
discusses fashion ASSETS & PROBLEMS with to make 'ASSET CARDS' & 'PROBLEM CARDS'

Session 3

discusses fashion ASSETS & PROBLEMS with to make 'ASSET CARDS' & 'PROBLEM CARDS'
at the same time that:
discusses fashion ASSETS & PROBLEMS with to make 'ASSET CARDS' & 'PROBLEM CARDS'

WORKSHOPS IN PHASE 2

These also consist of parallel, one-to-one meetings but may be preceded by some standard creativity exercises. They may take longer than the meetings in phase 1 (up to 45 minutes each). They should be creative, open-ended because their purpose is to reveal previously unnoticed opportunities. At these meetings, each pair would be given two equal piles of cards on which the local assets and problems (deriving from the workshops in Phase 1) have been summarised. The two categories (assets & problems) will have been shuffled together so the participants may not be clear which is which. Each participant takes one card from the top, turns it over and reads it aloud to the other. The pair then improvise as many ways as possible (within the time announced) that the two card readings could be combined as something new.

Session 1

bisociates whatever pair of ASSETS/PROBLEMS are on the cards in order to INVENT NEW ASSETS
at the same time that:
bisociates whatever pair of ASSETS/PROBLEMS are on the cards in order to INVENT NEW ASSETS

Session 2

Session 3

Six duets conducted in simultaneous pairs

Bibliography

Barthes, R., 1990. The fashion system. University of California Press.
Busch, O.V., 2008. Fashion-able. Hacktivism and engaged fashion design. School of Design and Crafts; Högskolan för design och konsthantverk.
Edmondson, A.C., 2012. A Fuller explanation: The synergetic geometry of R. Buckminster Fuller. Springer Science & Business Media.
Fuller, R.B., 1957. A comprehensive anticipatory design science. Royal Architectural Institute of Canada, 34(8), pp.357-61.
Kennedy, J., 2022. Gödel's incompleteness theorems. Cambridge University Press.
Maturana, H.R. and Varela, F.J., 1987. The tree of knowledge: The biological roots of human understanding. New Science Library/Shambhala Publications.
Nenu, T., 2022. Douglas Hofstadter’s Gödelian Philosophy of Mind. Journal of Artificial Intelligence and Consciousness, 9(02), pp.241-266.
Stankevičiūtė, K., 2021. Blowing up the fashion bubble, or nine things wrong with fashion: an outsider’s comment. A critical essay on fashion as a creative industry. Creativity Studies, 14(2), pp.376-390.
Tham, M. and Jones, H., 2008, July. Metadesign tools: Designing the seeds for shared processes of change. Allemandi Conference Press.
Tham, M. and Lundebye, A., 2008. The Experience of Sustainability: Applying Metadesign to Invite Emotions to Further the Design of Sustainable Futures. In Sixth international conference on Design & Emotion, Hong Kong, October 6-9, 2008. Design & Emotion Society.
Vassão, C.A., 2022. A Framework for Metadesign. J. Wood, Metadesigning Designing in the Anthropocene (1st ed., pp. 74–87). Routledge. https://doi. org/10.4324/9781003205371-8.
Webb, B., 2024, H&M, Boohoo face off with UK legislators over sustainable fashion policy, Vogue Magazine, May 2nd 2024,
Wood, J. Shaming Fast Fashion article in Sublime Magazine (2024)