Abstract

This thesis investigates the potential of using creative pattern making methods as tools to derive creative policy solutions to the wicked problems associated with the fashion industry. As one of the world’s most polluting and carbon intensive industries, many countries have implemented policy frameworks to initiate sustainability in the fashion industry. However, Canada has not yet developed a sustainable fashion policy framework. This research seeks to support thinking on the development of a Canadian sustainable fashion policy framework, by uncovering creative approaches to policy design informed through pattern making methods. Through research-creation explorations in pattern making, this research translates the principles embedded in 5 different pattern making methods into Principles for Fashion System Reimagining. Drawing from literature in design, political imagination, environmental studies, and fashion, the research finds that design principles distilled from pattern making methods can be used as generative thinking prompts to guide systemic problem solving and policy development for sustainable fashion. The intention of the research is to demonstrate how pattern making may be able to offer alternative problem orientations, intervention points, relationalities and scales of thinking on the sustainable fast fashion issue that are urgently required in the climate crisis.