On the importance of fashion design within a sustainable fashion curriculum at Textile Universities in Europe – Preliminary results of the European research project fashion DIET

A strong demand to transform the textile and fashion industry towards sustainability imposes a continuous implementation of the guiding principle Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) in education and industry. To reach this goal, the European research project “Fashion DIET – Sustainable Fashion Curriculum at Textile Universities in Europe. Development, Implementation and Evaluation of a Teaching Module for Educators”, co-funded by the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union (2020-1-DE01-KA203-005657) aims to generate an ESD module for university lecturers and research-based teaching and learning material, provided via an e-learning portal. Firstly, an online questionnaire was rolled out to define university lecturers’ attitudes towards needs for ESD contents and methods. The feedback questionnaire allowed selecting the most important data for the elaboration of an action-and research-oriented further education module. The survey has revealed that the development of a sustainable product strongly has to take into account the design phase, as sustainable fashion and design is one of the fields, where sustainability aspects are already implemented by lecturers and researchers. On a country-specific level, strengthening education in designing and patterning of clothing has been seen as a major target in Bulgaria. A deeper analysis reveals that fashion designers are well suited to the complex shape of many sustainability issues, especially against the background that about 80 per cent of environmental impact and costs are the outcome of the decisions made in the design phase. Hence, in terms of sustainable fashion a new role for designers arises, as they need knowledge and skills on sustainability how to choose from sustainable materials, to increase garment longevity and how to bind consumers emotionally. Overall, a new ESD Module on sustainable fashion has been perceived as highly useful in the survey. Fashion DIET explores the importance of fashion design in enhancing teaching and learning on ESD by educating the educators and enabling them as multipliers for a sustainable textile and fashion industry. On a higher level the European project strengthens the quality and relevance of the learning offer in education towards the latest developments in textile research and innovation in terms of a more sustainable fashion.