Emma Harris

Our current economy operates as a linear system, where fashion businesses and consumers exist in a system of constant production, consumption and disposal. Textile and fashion industries leverage aggressive marketing, facilitating over-consumption without consumer awareness of design and production processes, leading to waste. Current consumption habits have diminished consumers' multi-sensory experiences of physical items contributing to consumer disconnection to products. Furthermore, fashion/ textile products lack layers of complexity and sophistication in meaning causing consumers to lose interest in them. These failed consumer-product relationships show that designers are failing to design products that aid consumers in developing emotional bonding towards their textile possessions.

As part of our mission to transition to a Circular Economy (CE), my research aims to understand how sensory experiences of materials can foster human-product attachment (HPA) within a circular fashion /textile industry. Micro-phenomenology Interview and Analysis method combined with Material Driven Design form the backdrop of my research methods - I am using embroidery as a sensory tool to aid HPA whilst acknowledging its design challenges related to circularity. Within this context, my research reflects on and identifies the issues, factors, constructs and determinants affecting human-product attachment. Understanding these factors, constructs and determinants provides insight into producers, consumers and product relationships. The literature suggests that to facilitate long term HPA, designers should develop products that explore multi-sensory experiences and affective responses that evoke emotional bonding to textile products.

Current research into sensory experience of textiles goes beyond the technical and tactile perception of textiles and seeks to understand at a deeper level the affective responses that lead to emotion based experiences. This led me to reflect on my key research question – Does the sensory experience of materials (embroidery materials, products or processes) and their affective responses elicit and enhance long term HPA? In highlighting this main problem, I also identify a sub-question related to embroidery circularity. An important tenet of CE is to ensure products remain in use for as long as possible and have a regenerative life-cycle. CE design requires adopting eco-design strategies that encourage product longevity and recyclability within a circular system. In highlighting this problem, I ask – how can we design embroidery for CE ? The coupling of these two questions presents a possible design solution for HPA within a circular fashion and textile industry.