Designing Collaborations to Remake Waste: A Blueprint for Fashion Businesses

To understand how these Australian fashion businesses have been forming partnerships to transform textile waste, this project investigated 38 cases of remake collaborations within Australia, learning more about these circular practices.

By analysing the types of products created and interviewing six of the remaking designers involved, the project explored the inner workings of these collaborations, and drew out knowledge to enable more participation in the future.

As the project progressed, the complexity of choices within remaking practices became apparent, from employing different methods, to focusing on specific strategies, services, or product types. The biggest challenge was representing the breadth of practices and decisions in a way enabled others to navigate these logically.

This was resolved through the design of a comprehensive diagram - the blueprint - breaking down remaking into interconnected parts to actively consider both the process of collaboration, the models of involvement, and the ways actors can approach creating products and transforming materials.

The blueprint synthetises a 400-page PhD thesis into a single page diagram and associated key, capturing the complexity of design decisions involved. As a tool for industry, it has had initial positive feedback from local designers who have understood how this can help them situate and communicate their work, and has been applied as part of core course content within RMIT’s School of Fashion and Textiles to educate emerging designers.

While based on existing practices, the blueprint goes beyond simply understanding how actors collaborate to remake textile waste, but rather translates these complex options into a guide for others, building symbols and language to help users communicate and navigate these practices.

The blueprint is an all-in-one, downloadable double-sided A4 page, designed for easy printing and use by industry actors to communicate and facilitate remake collaborations.

Its circular layout avoids linear hierarchies, instead mapping a range of remake collaboration types, from options to test participation by giving textile waste, to partnering with an artist for limited-edition remake products, or building long-term synergistic relationships based on specific material streams.

The multiple sections of the diagram, when combined with the key, break down the complexity of remake practices, establishing a shared language to support users to find the best fit for their business.

On the left side of the diagram, those holding textile waste are presented with three models of involvement. Each model defines a different ownership dynamic, ranging from full transfer of material to the remaking actor, to scenarios where material remains with the business but is transformed through the partnership.

Positioned at the top of the blueprint are four tactics available to remaking designers, enabling them to influence material and product outcomes. These tactics are mapped to various collaboration strategies, illustrating how different combinations shape the business focus.

In the lower right section, the blueprint categorises remaking methods according to the specific skills required. These are then linked to the way each method interacts with the material — whether by altering surfaces, reshaping forms, or extracting textile materials. This structure supports users in identifying the most relevant techniques based on the problems with their textile.

Relationships between elements are visually linked through the use of symbols and lines on the diagram side, while the concepts are further expanded and explained within the key on the reverse, resulting in an innovative and novel tool which visually synthetises complex pathways.

This project recognises the crucial role small-to-medium enterprises (SMEs) can play in building local circular economies, particularly within an industry dominated by globalised, linear systems.

Current models of fashion production and consumption must scale down, and this project explores how collaborations — especially between larger brands and independent remaking businesses — can become practical, localised means to do so, by providing solutions to unwanted materials, such as pre- or post-consumer textile waste.

While individual remake initiatives such as HoMie’s REBORN have gained attention, there remains a gap in accessible, structured guidance for others to follow. This blueprint responds directly to that need, enabling users to situate themselves within the process and navigate options based on their scale, resources, and intentions.

The blueprint is innovative in both form and function. It bridges the intention-behaviour gap by reducing uncertainty and outlining the specific processes and factors involved. It empowers actors to choose pathways more strategically, articulating how larger brands may either transfer or transform their materials, while the smaller remaking actor might design different products or services around these collaborative relationships.

Importantly, the blueprint goes beyond showcasing exemplary remake projects. It operates as a forward-thinking design tool — offering not a single solution, but a blueprint for diverse, context-specific practice.

By mapping not just what remaking looks like, but also linking key decisions and the resulting types of collaborations, it equips users to make informed, strategic choices. This positions the project as a genuinely new contribution: an easily applied tool that enables meaningful participation in circular textile waste practices which encompasses a range of approaches.

This project can support a transition in remake practices from isolated exemplars into scalable and accessible models. By encouraging brands to engage with SMEs through collaboration, the blueprint fosters local production and enables brands to explore circular practices without requiring in-house remaking capabilities.

It addresses a current challenge—textile waste—with an immediately implementable, if imperfect, solution, helping brands recognise the potential of remake while enabling remaking businesses to articulate and apply their specialised skill sets. The collaborations studied within this project have shown the potential of remaking practices in Victoria.

Building on this momentum, the blueprint supports wider uptake by clearly communicating the processes, relationships and remaking options involved. It promotes diversity in methods—beyond traditional sewing—to include approaches such as printing, embellishing, and dyeing, thereby broadening the scope of what remaking can be and encouraging creative application of skills to transform textile waste.

The blueprint facilitates collaboration pathways that not only reduce waste but also create social value through commercial projects. It enables larger businesses to support smaller remaking actors, giving these SMEs access to quality waste streams, new markets and public visibility. These collaborations build local creative ecosystems and contribute to Victoria’s growing reputation as a leader in sustainable design innovation.

This project enables waste to shift from being a management problem to a creative opportunity which develops localised remanufacturing capacities. In doing so, it aligns with circular economy principles, promotes material stewardship, and offers a model with relevance far beyond fashion, as many of the approaches could be extended into other creative fields.

Developed as a beautiful and user-friendly design tool, the blueprint supports others to instigate remake collaborations, achieving lasting impact through what it enables — socially positive design partnerships which engage the community in the transformation of textile waste into desirable products.