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Future of Sustainable Fashion II
The Future of Sustainable Fashion event took place on Monday, April 14, 2025, at the MOMus - Museum of Modern Art in Thessaloniki, Greece. The workshop was implemented surrounded by the relative with the subject exhibition Collective Threads: Anna Andreeva at the Red Rose Silk Factory. This initiative was implemented by Helenos Consulting, a partner of the Eye of Europe Project, and aimed at engaging domain professionals, including foresight and fashion experts.
Introduction (topic, context and objectives)
Today, our highly complex and uncertain world requires strategic tools that will help us create new sustainable development trajectories. Fashion is more than an industry. It can reveal unique and collective identities, norms, and ethics but is also associated with environmental issues. It is one of the largest pollutant industries, prompting a shift in how we produce and consume fashion items. How might the climate crisis change our attitudes, and how does this impact the fashion industry?
Historically, fashion trends have been reflecting social issues. Characteristics examples are the 50’s full skirts in America, which put the woman in a specific position within the family and society, and the feminine wig hair in Ancient Egypt as a symbol of wisdom and respect revealing the matriarchal regime that was dominating in that period, and many other incidents. Nowadays, the role of the sexes has changed, while fashion consumption can also demonstrate our ethics and norms about social issues such as working conditions and climate change. The main goal of the workshop on the Future of Sustainable Fashion is to explore all these connections among objects, fiction, culture, and systems and to inspire participants to rethink their consumption habits, express themselves, imagine, and co-create alternative futures. It proposes a significant shift in fashion's approach to the future, moving away from short-term trends and predictions based on economic growth and industrial productivity, and instead embracing a more long-term, values-driven, empathetic, collective, humane, and environmentally conscious approach.
This is the second pilot workshop for the Future of Fashion initiative, conducted with the participation of both Greek and international experts in foresight and fashion. The first workshop took place in January 2025. You can find the main results of the second workshop below.
Fashion Timeline
Past
Fashion was durable, handmade, and tied to natural materials, with strong emotional bonds between people and their garments. Clothing often carried across generations, reflecting quality over quantity. However, it was costly, limited in diversity, and tied to colonialism and social hierarchies, reinforcing inequality and resource exploitation.
Present
Today fashion is more diverse and expressive, even used to raise awareness of social issues. Comfort and practicality dominate post-COVID, while second-hand markets and circular practices grow. Yet fast fashion drives overconsumption, low quality, and environmental harm. Participants noted weak emotional ties to clothes, dominance of brands, and issues like greenwashing, gender washing, and cultural appropriation.
Future
The future holds promise for circular economies, biotech, smart textiles, and genderless garments, supporting ethical consumption and new identities. AI and robotics may enhance craftsmanship and efficiency, but risks include loss of human connection, homogenization of style, and VR/AR fashion reducing cultural depth. If fast fashion persists, environmental damage and inequality may continue.
What-if Scenarios, Fashion Artefacts, Values and Emotions
One group imagined a divided society where only elites thrive, while most are confined to virtual realms. Their artifact: a hybrid, gender-neutral swimsuit that adapts to shifting conditions with nanotech and smart textiles—yet remains accessible only to the wealthy, symbolizing resilience twisted by inequality.
In another scenario, data privacy is sacred but isolating. People live under strict control, trapped in artificial experiences. To protect identity, they wear a full-body raincoat with adaptive length and a display that projects chosen expressions—balancing protection with controlled self-expression.
A third vision depicts a lonely world governed by AI that prioritizes nature over humans. With human bonds eroded, a responsive shoe links wearers to emotions, AI, and the environment through nanotech and smart sensors.
In a more dystopian future of environmental collapse and inequality, survival comes through a solar-powered suit with filters, moss-covered sleeves, and a protective helmet—designed to sustain life in toxic conditions.
Finally, in a world where AI dominates creativity and resources vanish, people carry a holographic backpack that appears or disappears on command. Lightweight, secure, and private, it holds only essentials—symbolizing survival in a fractured, unstable reality.
Fashion Futuring Wheel
The future of fashion is envisioned as decentralized, sustainable, and deeply human-centered. Manufacturing shifts toward zero-waste, small-scale, and locally embedded systems supported by AI, blockchain, and 3D printing—not to replace labor, but to enable ecological and ethical value chains. ESG principles drive reduced carbon footprints, water preservation, and circular economies, reinforced by social pressure and collective responsibility. Fashion reconnects with arts and philosophy, emphasizing craft, care, and meaning over status, while education prioritizes ethics, emotional intelligence, and creative autonomy. Consumption becomes intentional and value-driven, with durability and minimalism replacing fast trends, though risks of overconsumption remain. Communication focuses on empathy, authenticity, and storytelling rooted in lived experience, while design principles highlight circularity, versatility, and garments that symbolize equity. Finally, material innovation—through biotechnology, nanotechnology, and smart, biodegradable textiles—anchors fashion in regeneration, adaptability, and a closer connection to people and the planet.
Posted on: 01/10/2025