This project investigates to what extent the culture of place contributes to the establishment of place-based capacity and valuing of the handmade in circular textiles economies. The study is informed through taking a regenerative lens on the concept of the circular economy, one that includes systems thinking and concepts of slowing the loop through sufficiency, i.e., living well with less. The study frames the practices of the handmade as encompassing the materials (the things, technologies), the competences (skills, know-how), and the meanings (the symbolic ideas) of the handmade, as reproduced through repeated performance in acts such as the making, repairing or remaking of clothing and textiles. To examine the value of the handmade in this context, the project will build on prior knowledge developed by the research team, proposing an integrated approach where participants along a connected value chain map their perceptions of sustainability and its value. Under this method of sustainable value creation, the research will test how the craft ecosystem forms the basis for value creation through the handmade for a circular economy.
The project expects to generate new knowledge in circular economy by making visible local economies of small businesses and craft communities of making, reuse and remaking that are typically excluded from the industrial view of a circular economy. The project will provide significant benefits, such as informing new strategies to reduce textile waste and contributing to Australia’s transition to a circular economy.
Project team
Project collaborator
Related research
- Ferrero-Regis, T., Lindquist, M., Van Lunn, C., Hopper, C. (2024). “Mapping fashion networks and pre-consumer textile flows for circular communities”, International Journal of Sustainable Fashion and Textiles, vol. 3:2.
- Ferrero-Regis, T. (2014), ‘1950s made in Brisbane: Italian tailors and the continental suit.’ Clothing Cultures, 1(3), pp. 197-212.
- Heim, H., Ferrero-Regis, T & Payne, A. (2020), “Independent fashion designers in the elusive fashion city”, Urban Studies, 2021, 58(10) 2004–2022
- Mellick, Z., A. Payne and L. Buys. (2021), “From Fibre to Fashion: Understanding the Value of Sustainability in Global Cotton Textile and Apparel Value Chains”, Sustainability, Vol. 13 No. (22), pp.12681
- Payne, A. (2021), “Designing Fashion’s Future: Present Practice and Tactics for Sustainable Change (1 ed.)”, Bloomsbury Academic.
- Payne, A. & Ferrero-Regis, T. (2019) ‘Sustainable fashion in Australia: Raw fiber, fast fashion, and new localism.’ In Gwilt, A, Payne, A, & Ruthschilling, E A (Eds.) Global perspectives on sustainable fashion. Bloomsbury Visual Arts, United Kingdom, pp. 180-190.
Project funding
- Australian Research Council, Discovery Program 2025-2028
