The fashion design industry contributes £28bn or £50bn including indirect contributions, to the UK economy with a growing workforce of nearly 900,000 making it one of the largest creative industries in the country. This is an industry-led challenge in which designers will lead a highly creative process of applying, co-developing and implementing new textile and industrial digital technologies (IDTs) in collaboration with supply chain manufacturers and other technology experts, in the high value luxury textile and fashion sector. The R&D cluster will deliver exciting new creative innovation opportunities, new products, shorter product development and design lead times, reduced costs, and substantially increase global industrial competitiveness and productivity. The research focuses on developing new creative design processes, products, service and business models, linked to two key themes: 1. Digitally Connected and Sustainable Processes. 2. Digital Communication and Data Analytics. The R&D in both themes will also feed in to the creation of new fashion design degree and industrial apprenticeship programmes to address a skills gap in the industry for multidisciplinary STEAM-based designers, that possess a unique combination of art, design, science and technology competencies.

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.