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13. Implications and applications

This week marks the start of the selection and development of a project for the program with an innovative vision that combines technology, textiles, fashion, digital manufacturing, and sustainability, applying the concepts, tools, and knowledge acquired during the first stage of the program. Everything I learned during the course gave me a broader view of the scope of digital manufacturing in the world of textiles and fashion. However, applying this to a single project is a big challenge, as the possibilities are endless. Although I still did not have a clear idea of the path or the final result I hoped to achieve with this project, I was very clear that I wanted to create a product or system that responded to the concept of slow fashion and the humanization of technologies to take them as allies, since during my professional training in the world of fashion and textiles, I was always aware of the problems caused by consumerism and fast fashion, which have made the industry the second most polluting. Therefore, the clearest thing I knew was that I wanted to do something that would help reduce or take advantage of this waste by creating pieces with identity through body movement.

Here is a brainstorming session with the concepts and ideas that helped me identify my path for this project

Research & Concept

Textile waste

The textile and fashion industry is one of the largest generators of waste globally. The accelerated production model driven by fast fashion has normalized overproduction and the constant discarding of garments, many of which have an extremely short lifespan. As a result, millions of tons of textile waste end up in landfills or are incinerated each year, generating profound impacts on the environment, the economy, and society.

From an environmental perspective, textile waste represents a significant burden on ecosystems. Most garments are made of petroleum-derived synthetic fibers, which can take decades or even centuries to degrade. During this process, they release microplastics into the soil and water, polluting rivers, oceans, and food chains. Even textiles of natural origin, when treated with dyes, chemical finishes, and fiber blends, are difficult to recycle and can release toxic substances into the environment. The accumulation of this waste contributes to soil deterioration, increased greenhouse gas emissions, and the degradation of natural habitats.

The economic impact of textile waste is also considerable. The current system prioritizes low-cost, high-turnover garments, which devalues labor, materials, and design. By quickly becoming waste, garments lose all economic value, wasting resources such as water, energy, and labor invested in their production. In addition, textile waste management entails high costs for governments and communities, which must allocate infrastructure and public resources to treat materials that were designed without considering their end of life. This linear model—produce, consume, and discard—is both environmentally and economically unsustainable.

In the social sphere, textile waste reflects deep inequalities within the fashion system. Mass production of low-cost garments is often associated with poor working conditions, low wages, and a lack of rights for those working in the textile chain. At the same time, much of the clothing discarded in industrialized countries is exported to communities in the global south, where it ends up saturating local markets or accumulating as waste, affecting regional economies and vulnerable social environments. In this way, the problem of textile waste does not disappear, but is simply displaced geographically.

Fast Fashion, Globalization, and Identity

Globalization and the rise of fast fashion have profoundly transformed the way people relate to clothing. What once functioned as a means of cultural, personal, and territorial expression has now become an accelerated production system that prioritizes repetition, efficiency, and standardization. Garments are designed to fit generic bodies, global trends, and increasingly short consumption cycles, diluting individual identity in favor of a uniform aesthetic.

In this context, clothing ceases to tell stories. It loses its ability to reflect who we are, where we come from, or how we inhabit our bodies. Fast fashion not only accelerates the material wear and tear of garments, but also the emotional bond between the wearer and what they wear. Being easily replaceable, garments become disposable not only physically, but also symbolically. Identity becomes homogenized and the body adapts to the garment, rather than the garment responding to the body.

Globalization amplifies this phenomenon by imposing a common visual language that transcends territories, climates, and cultures. The same garment can be found in different cities around the world, erasing local and personal particularities. This process not only impacts the environment through overproduction and waste, but also people, who see themselves reflected in increasingly impersonal objects.

Against this backdrop, hobbies and recreational activities emerge as spaces of resistance and freedom. Through sport, movement, play, and physical practice, people recover authentic forms of expression that do not respond to global trends, but to intimate and repeated experiences. Activities such as swimming, yoga, cycling, or dance generate unique gestures, rhythms, and relationships with the body and the environment.

When these practices are integrated into the design of textiles and garments, clothing ceases to be a generic product and becomes a means of personal expression. Movement, effort, repetition, and time invested in an activity are transformed into visible traces, patterns, and materials that reflect identity. In this way, the user ceases to be a passive consumer and becomes a co-author of what they wear.

Reclaiming clothing as an extension of the body and the activities that define us is a way of recovering identity in a system that tends to aserate it.

weekly assignment

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about your images..delete the tip!!

  1. Remember to credit/reference all your images to their authors. Open source helps us create change faster together, but we all deserve recognition for what we make, design, think, develop.

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get inspired!

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References & Inspiration

MOVING SHAPES

The concept behind the “Moving Shapes” project is to capture the fluidity of dance movements and translate them into textile patterns that express the feeling of stress relief through dance and body movement. I chose this project because it also addresses body movement and the interpretation or materialization of the intangible, such as movement, into something physical and tangible.

MOVING SHAPES


LABAN MOVEMENT ANALYSIS

(LMA) is an effective framework for observing, describing and understanding human movement and what it expresses. It is widely used in the fields of dance, theater, dance therapy, physical therapy, sports, and psychology. It was proposed by Rudolf Laban, who is considered as the most important movement theorist of the twentieth century and the founding father of modern dance in central Europe. He considered human movement as both a science and an art that embraces a continuum from nature to spirituality. I believe that this system aligns with my project on the study of movement in swimming as a structurable body language, as it provides a theoretical basis for the idea that movement can be analyzed, broken down, and translated into visual systems.

FLUID DYNAMICS VISUALIZATION

This system could be very useful for my project, as it shows how invisible trajectories can be made visible through patterns and flows, which could be a direct inspiration for translating aquatic movement into geometry. More information

While these projects explore movement, materiality, and technology, this project distinguishes itself by using underwater body movement as the primary generator of pattern, identity, and durable material systems.

Why, What, Who, When, Where?

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