Promoting Sustainable Fashion Through Interdisciplinary Collaboration

This project involved a cross-disciplinary collaboration between Digital Marketing students in the School of Business Technology, Retail, and Supply Chain and Visual Merchandising (VM) students in the School of Art and Design at Technological University Dublin. The goal was to promote the social enterprise Change Clothes, which is a community-based clothing reuse hub. Their mission is to prevent textile waste at its source, tackling the problem locally before it becomes a global issue.

The primary objective of this project was to empower students to develop strategies that drive awareness and adoption of an alternative to fast fashion and how we can flip people's mindsets and consider sustainable fashion practices. Through collaboration, the project aimed to integrate marketing strategies and visual merchandising techniques to create impactful messaging and experiences to promote Change Clothes' mission. VM and Digital Marketing students researched Change Clothes by experiencing the reuse hub; they then conducted primary research at sustainable conscious stores and researched current trends in small-scale repair and sustainable store design to align with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs).

The VM students had to ensure their installations adopted an eco-friendly display application. The VM students pitched their team ideas online with their client, Mary Fleming from Change Clothes and the Digital Marketing students. The VM students in teams produced unique commercial installations promoting conscious clothing choices, such as “The Capsule Collection” and “Not your Granny's Wardrobe”, which Change Clothes have since used as an advertising tool.
The Digital Marketing students took the VM students’ ideas and marketed their innovative concepts. They conducted research and developed digital marketing strategies, each aligned with specific UN SDGs, such as Responsible Consumption and Production (SDG 12) and Climate Action (SDG 13). The Digital Marketing students produced research posters with innovative digital marketing strategies, such as leveraging social media platforms for awareness campaigns and utilising data-driven approaches to target eco-conscious consumers.

The project ended with a celebration of the students’ collaborative efforts. Invitations were designed and sent to Mary Fleming of Change Clothes, students of the VM and Digital marketing cohorts, faculty, friends, and family. On the night, conscious displays and posters were unveiled and accompanying academic UN SDG research posters were showcased at the event at TU Dublin city campus. Attendees discovered Changed Clothes' mission: “On community-focused, fun, affordable, and social, creative reuse solutions for textiles at every stage of their lifecycle”