Changing clothes for sustainability? The how and why of clothing redesign

Redesigning used clothing – requiring deconstruction and reconstruction beyond basic repair and alteration – could be a sustainable alternative to these problems. Only a few authors have researched clothing redesign but even so have identified potential opportunities for economic and environmental gain (Janigo & Wu, in press; Young, Jirousek, & Ashdown, 2004). Our research goals were to add a longitudinal element to previous research which involved women in a collaborative redesign project in 2011 (Janigo & Wu, in press), to further understand how and why female consumers might redesign used clothing, and to identify what characteristics, if any, are shared among consumers of redesign