Au Bonheur des Futurs: New design placements for sustainable production and consumption through retail and market-making in fashion

This PhD thesis examines the role of retail and market-making practices in producing unsustainable outcomes in the fashion industry, and explores how alternative retail models might produce different outcomes.

The project is exploratory, formed of six linked studies employing an overarching design problematisation and reframing approach. The first four studies explore current understandings of the problem from various perspectives, exposing the inadequacy of current solution proposals. The fifth reframes the problem, centering the retail business model and the ubiquitous practice of selling clothes as finished, ready-made products. The final study advances rudimentary sketches for alternative systems of apparel provision.

The research challenges the concept of the product and the prevailing model of the consumer marketplace. It suggests new potentialities for a sustainable economy which prioritise customer value, human agency, relational goods and community-based creative enterprise networks.