The UK has a unique profile of design-led fashion micro and small enterprises (MSEs), linked directly with the UK’s internationally respected arts education system. These businesses, many based in London, are widely recognised as drivers of design innovation and inspiration for the global fashion industry, whose influence permeates wider cultural and economic domains. Increasingly in recent years, fashion MSEs are demonstrating alternative ways of doing business with sustainability mindsets and purpose that focus on more than economic goals for prosperity.  

 

The project Rethinking Fashion Design Entrepreneurship: Fostering Sustainable Practices (FSP), funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), is the first to research and identify the holistic approaches pioneering fashion MSEs bring to the concept of sustainable prosperity and the potential for such practices to transform the fashion industry.   

 

This collaborative research is led by Centre for Sustainable Fashion (CSF), a University of the Arts London research, education and knowledge exchange centre, based at London College of Fashion. Academic project partners are based at London College of Fashion, The Open University and Middlesex University’s Centre for Enterprise and Economic Development Research (CEEDR; a partner in Surrey University’s Centre for Understanding of Sustainable Prosperity CUSP).