Rethinking Fashion Design Entrepreneurship: Fostering Sustainable Practices

The UK is known for its successful creative industries and its fashion designers are widely acknowledged as creative influencers on the world stage. The UK's designer fashion sector, largely made up of micro and small enterprises (MSEs), constitutes a globally recognised creative engine, effectively acting as R&D for the wider fashion industry. Design-led fashion enterprises, whilst often struggling financially themselves, provide pioneering alternative visions of prosperity in business. This project investigates the role of creative entrepreneurship and design in fashion MSEs as a potential driver for change, providing a valuable lens through which to examine the future for a sustainable fashion industry.

A multi-disciplinary research team will work directly with a range of design-led fashion MSEs as co-producers of the research. The fashion designer-entrepreneur, and leaders in MSE teams, will be the focus of analysis. The research will explore sustainability as a creative endeavour, examining four key areas: design and operations; business networks and ecosystems; working practices; entrepreneurship and business models. This will lead to new knowledge and understanding of the internal operations and external context within which these fashion MSEs operate. This knowledge will be applied to establish and support new sustainable models of business development, repositioning designer fashion MSEs as major contributors to the UK's creative and sustainable economy, and ultimately informing future UK policy for the creative industries.

The research will analyse existing and novel business models and practices that foster sustainable prosperity, a concept aiming to balance environmental, social, cultural and economic considerations. We will identify barriers and points of intervention in order to develop alternative business support mechanisms for sustainability to inform fashion businesses at both small and larger scales. To meet this complex challenge, the academic team is drawn from three leading research centres and universities, whose complementary academic expertise will provide a novel cross-disciplinary approach to research in fashion innovation and sustainable prosperity. Led by London College of Fashion (LCF) at University of the Arts London (UAL), the project is a collaboration between UAL's Centre for Sustainable Fashion (CSF), Middlesex University's (MU) Centre for Enterprise and Economic Development Research (CEEDR) and the Open University's (OU) Department of Design. CEEDR is a key partner in Surrey University's Centre for Understanding of Sustainable Prosperity (CUSP). To maximize the impact of the project directly on the fashion sector, the research team will work closely with the Centre for Fashion Enterprise (CFE), a fashion business incubator based at LCF (est. 2003); the British Fashion Council (BFC), the UK industry body responsible for promoting international sales of designer fashion; and the Ethical Fashion Forum (est. 2005), an alternative sourcing platform for international fashion MSEs working with sustainability.

The research team will also work with a group of 20 designer fashion MSEs who want to engage with sustainability practices. Four key project partners will provide current examples of different business models incorporating sustainability: Unmade, Christopher Raeburn, Martine Jarlgaard and RizBoardshorts. These four MSE partners will engage with the research team in knowledge exchange and evaluation throughout the entire project.

Outputs will include: case studies, academic journal articles, key findings report, and policy briefing note. In addition, a business support for sustainability 'toolkit' will provide new guidance for both emerging and established business support and incubator organisations (eg. CFE, BFC, Fashion in Leeds initiative) to foster more sustainable fashion practices.

The major beneficiaries of the project include fashion MSEs and SMEs (small and medium size enterprises), business support and incubator organisations, the wider fashion industry including manufacturers and retail, policy makers, creative industries and the general public.

The core group and partner fashion MSEs participating in the project will gain directly, as they will receive individual feedback and support on their sustainable business development. Fashion MSEs and SMEs more broadly will benefit from the case studies and sustainability toolkit for business support that will be made available to UK support organisations including the Centre for Fashion Enterprise(CFE), partners the British Fashion Council(BFC), and the Textile Centre of Excellence(TCoE) in Huddersfield. With its specific focus on sustainability, the new toolkit will enhance existing business support programmes that are currently run in London by CFE and BFC, and regionally by emerging organisations such as Fashion in Leeds and Manchester Fashion Network. It will provide an understanding of how to support sustainability-led MSEs' incubation, development and long term flourishing. Dissemination to European fashion MSEs and SMEs will be achieved via CFE's WORTH network(http://www.worth-project.eu/) and partner TCoE through access to the EU Textile and Clothing Business Labs network(TCBL). Fashion and creative businesses will gain from tested methods and practices that support implementation of sustainability goals. Industry collaborations across the project partner universities and research centres will benefit from a more informed knowledge exchange between research, education and creative enterprise.

Presentations of the project key findings report, case studies and outcomes will target influential organisations via the final symposium, partner organisations' events and seminars, and by direct distribution through the research centres CSF,CUSP,CEEDR, plus partners' and advisory board members' networks. Such organisations include: the Design Council, Innovate UK, Waste & Resources Action Programme, and UK Trade & Investment. UK manufacturers that work with MSEs and SMEs will be informed and accessed through project partners UK Fashion & Textile Association and TCoE, and the Alliance project, to positively impact understanding of and working relationships with the designer fashion sector. European manufacturers and stakeholders including retailers will be accessed through the TCBL network and CFE's European WORTH project network.

The project report and policy briefing note will be disseminated to UK government departments including BEIS and policy makers to highlight the environmental, social, cultural and economic value of sustainability-led fashion MSEs. Case studies will provide evidence of UK leadership in creative business models for sustainable prosperity and the report will provide an understanding of the nature and needs of the designer fashion sector in the context of the creative economy. CSF's role as co-secretariat to the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Sustainability and Ethics in Fashion will be utilized to ensure that parliamentarians are informed by the research. Facilitated by project partner Baroness Young, the report and policy briefing note will be presented in Parliament, with a view to stimulating key debates in government departments and generating a greater understanding of the designer fashion sector in the UK.

Public awareness and engagement with fashion and sustainability narratives will be increased by disseminating case studies, presentations and findings through social and online media platforms, partners' and research centres' websites and press such as the Guardian, iD Magazine and The Business of Fashion, with the assistance of LCF,MU and OU press offices. Case studies will be disseminated to industry intermediaries such as retailers, buyers and bloggers to foster engagement with sustainability-led MSEs.