staying with the trouble: sustainably-minded fashion MSEs

This research examines how sustainably-minded fashion designers operating micro-to-small enterprises (MSEs) integrate sustainability into both design and business practice. Through a longitudinal multiple case study, the project investigates how designers define sustainable fashion for themselves, how those definitions shape their strategies, and what kinds of support, constraints, and trade-offs structure their work over time.

overview

Sustainability in fashion is often discussed in relation to large global firms, corporate initiatives, and efficiency-driven tools. This project shifts attention to sustainably-minded fashion MSEs, a group that has been active for decades but remains underexamined despite its importance to the sector. The research asks how these businesses actually put sustainability into practice through design, sourcing, business models, production decisions, branding, collaboration, and alternative modes of operating.

The study shows that these enterprises are not simply smaller versions of large fashion firms. They operate with different values, constraints, ambitions, and forms of success, often working outside the traditional fashion system in order to create room for experimentation, flexibility, ethical production, collaboration, and closer control over their supply chains.

approach

This project uses a qualitative, longitudinal multiple case study approach to investigate the vision, values, capabilities, and sustainable design and business practices of sustainably-minded design entrepreneurs operating MSEs. The broader study followed 42 participants between 2014 and 2021, including 35 design entrepreneurs and 7 sustainable fashion experts across the United States, Canada, Europe, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Ghana. Data collection included semi-structured interviews, field notes from studio visits, websites, social media platforms, and relevant media interviews. Thematic and content analysis were used to identify recurring patterns, practices, and challenges across cases.

significance

The project finds that sustainably-minded fashion MSEs are highly committed to sustainability, but that their efforts are organized differently from those of large global firms. Rather than centering eco-efficiency tools and corporate metrics, these enterprises tend to work through values-driven combinations of creative design, social commitments, environmental strategies, and alternative business models. Across the study, common practices included aesthetic sustainability, ethical production, quality and durability, small production runs, waste minimization, sustainable materials, seasonless design, zero-waste approaches, transparency, collaboration, and anti-fashion calendar models.

A major outcome of the research was the development of the ReDesign framework, which links a design entrepreneur’s core values to sustainable business model archetypes and aligned sustainable fashion strategies. The workshop materials show how this was translated into a practical framework: participants first identify their core values, then determine which sustainable business model best aligns with those values, and finally select corresponding fashion strategies to apply in practice. The five business model archetypes include Ethically Responsible Enterprise, Social Enterprise, Fair Community Trade, Ethical Anti-Fashion Enterprise, and Circular.

This is where the project becomes especially useful beyond scholarship alone. The research was adapted into workshop programming and tools for fashion entrepreneurs and students, including sessions on sustainable business models, values, and storytelling, as well as worksheets for identifying core values, mapping business models, and communicating sustainable business values. The workshops framed sustainability not as a one-size-fits-all label, but as a values-driven and strategically differentiated practice.

More broadly, the project argues that these MSEs matter not because they provide a perfect model of sustainable fashion, but because they demonstrate viable pathways toward alternative systems. Their practices suggest that sustainability in fashion can be organized around sufficiency, local production, craft, collaboration, alternative calendars, and slower, more responsive business models rather than growth, speed, and overproduction alone.

outputs

• Conference presentation, ITAA Annual Conference 2023: Small is the new black: A longitudinal multiple case study of sustainably-minded fashion MSEs design and business practices

• DMI Academic Design Management Conference 2014: Sustainable fashion: A re-conceptualization of the role of fashion design

• Manuscript in preparation: Staying with the Trouble: Sustainably-Minded MSE Fashion Brands

• The Fashion Zone Incubator: ReDesign workshop programming on sustainability in design and business developed for Ryerson/TMU fashion students and entrepreneurs.

• ReDesign workshop tools and worksheets: Core Values Worksheet, Sustainable Business Models and Strategies Worksheet, and Communicating Sustainable Business Values Worksheet.

workshop application

The ReDesign framework was translated into workshop programming for fashion students and emerging entrepreneurs, focusing on how core values shape sustainable business models and how those models align with specific sustainable fashion strategies. Workshop tools included a Core Values Worksheet, a Sustainable Business Models and Strategies Worksheet, and a storytelling worksheet to help participants communicate their values and business purpose.