CONNECTED THREADS Supporting Sustainable Garment and Textile Manufacturing in Ireland

The Irish garment industry is best described as a small scale, ‘cottage industry’, with disparate producers lacking any tangible network cohesion on a national scale. The global presence of industry behemoths greatly impacts the competitive paradigm which has coalesced around the immediacy of ‘fast fashion’ – a race to the bottom from an economic and environmental perspective. The fashion industry is one of the most wasteful consumer industries in the world (Brydges, 2021) and there is growing impetus to address the industry’s unsustainable practices and remediate the damage it is causing (European Commission, 2019, 2020, 2021). Textiles has been identified as a priority product group by the European Commission in their legislative initiative to establish sustainability principles (European Commission, 2020). Of particular interest is the value chain, from initial design to producing a prototype and sourcing raw materials, through to the production system, the manufacturing context, brand development and ultimately, the lifecycle of the product. The fashion industry in its current state is a substantial threat to the environment for reasons that are well documented in both the academic and the popular press. It is at odds with our regional, national, European and global goals for a sustainable, carbon-neutral economy. This research programme aims to engage disruptive digital technologies for the benefit of the Irish garment design industry. It adopts the concept of place-making to develop and support the design industry as it transitions towards a sustainable alternative to fast fashion. The placemaking perspective leverages designers’ strengths as artisan, micro-producers, embedded in local (often rural) communities.