Design management of sustainable fashion

The aim of this research is to advance an understanding of how design in the fashion industry can be successfully managed to contribute to environmental sustainability. Its objectives are to investigate how fashion businesses establish and support environmentally sustainable strategies, and how design leaders and managers contribute to the setting of these goals. The paper reviews the literature of the fashion industry, its sustainability strategies, and the management of design. Semi-structured interviews and a quantitative survey of designers was undertaken in the UK. A framework based on the level of business engagement in sustainability was used to structure the thematic analysis of the findings. The research demonstrates the relatively weak influence of designers on sustainable fashion strategy and concludes by developing design management theory for sustainability through a modified Design Atlas framework