Future Fashion Factory Report
Digitally Enabled Design & Manufacture of Designer Products for Circular Economies
The Future Fashion Factory: Digitally Enabled Design & Manufacture of Designer Products for Circular Economies publication collates and celebrates the varied research accomplished throughout the highly succesful programme.
Future Fashion Factory is the result of the effort to develop advanced digital and textile technologies to transform the fashion and textile industry’s agility in the luxury design process, and to enable a large-scale shift to circular economies. In 2018, the Creative Industries Clusters Programme (CICP) presented an exciting opportunity for us to forge a major programme of industry-led collaborative R&D in fashion and textiles, working with together with other Universities across the country. Industry-academic engagement was built into the project from initial consultation meetings before then being embedded across all our research activities. Both the FFF Steering Group and the FFF Programme Management Group included multiple industrial representatives, including engagement with the CEO of the UK Fashion and Textile Association (UKFT), both on the Steering Group and as Chair of FFF’s Responsive R&D Investment Committee.
It is in this spirit of industrial collaboration that we have ensured the success of the FFF programme; a collaborative, solutions-led approach to the various challenges facing the fashion and textile industry has become the force that drives each one of the research projects collated below.
Read the full publication here: Future Fashion Factory_Programme Book
Our partners
Future Fashion Factory (FFF) is a £6.1M industry-led collaborative R&D programme. It brings together designers, manufacturers and retailers, to co-develop and implement new advanced textile and industrial digital technologies (IDTs) to create new products and enable shorter lead times, increased global competitiveness and sustainability. It represents a consortia between the Universities of Leeds, the University of Huddersfield, Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU) and the Royal College of Art (RCA).
Core Project Team
- Professor Stephen Russell – Director, Future Fashion Factory, and Director, LITAC, School of Design, University of Leeds.
- Suzy Shepherd – Co-Director, Future Fashion Factory and Co-Founder of Yorkshire Textiles and Leeds Fashion Works.
- Sue Rainton – Programme Manager, Future Fashion Factory and Associate Director, LITAC, School of Design, University of Leeds.
- Giorgio Grande – Communications Officer, Future Fashion Factory and LITAC, School of Design, University of Leeds.
Acknowledgements
Future Fashion Factory: Digitally Enabled Design & Manufacture of Designer Products for Circular Economies
Authors: Grande, G, Rainton, S, Russell, S
Contributing Author: Parkin, S.
Design: Digtronix
The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), Grant Ref: AH/S002812/1, which enabled the Future Fashion Factory programme to be delivered. Future Fashion Factory involved extensive collaboration between multiple industry partners and several HEIs including, the Universities of Leeds, Huddersfield, Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU) and the Royal College of Art (RCA). We wish to thank all our industry partners and academic colleagues for their contributions to the Future Fashion Factory programme.
We would also like to thank the companies who are featured within this publication for allowing us to use their images, and for their consistent collaboration and support throughout.