Trash fashion: designing out waste, personalised knitwear

Exhibit: a seamless one-piece sweater industrially knitted to personalised fit, considerately designed, especially created for this exhibition, in a one-step knitting process, eliminating cutting waste. It builds on the work previously completed in the Considerate Design for Personalised Fashion Project to develop a small range of simple sweaters which could be personalised to customers' measurements, utilising technology. The process of co-developing the design with the customer starts from a body scan and is translated into the seamless knitting technology, predicting a future where knitwear could be made on demand, direct from the scan data. At present, there is still a manual stage involved, but research is ongoing towards this possibility, with a view to reducing consumption and waste through mass customisation, whilst increasing delight. A 3 minute video, made by the Science Museum, is on display with the sweater, filmed at the LCF JPS and Lime Grove sites to document the concept, design, body scanning and one-piece industrial knitting process. The two exhibits are part of a selected exhibition Trash Fashion: Designing out Waste at the Science Museum London.