Call for Papers
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Fashion Design, Creative Processes and New Materialities v. 20 n. 50
Submissions: January to July 2026
Publication: January 2027
Organizers:
PhD Aline Moreira Monçores (University of Beira Interior – UBI, Portugal) – Orcid
PhD Caroline Loss (University of Beira Interior – UBI, Portugal) – Orcid
PhD João Victor Azevedo de Menezes Correia de Melo (Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro – PUC-Rio, Brazil) – Orcid
The call for papers is now open for the dossier “Fashion Design, Creative Processes and New Materialities”, which invites scholars and practitioners to reflect on the creative act and the materials currently in use. We are living in a moment of dichotomies, in which distinct paths emerge as solutions to contemporary production challenges. In this context, coexistence and collaboration become fundamental to design (Appadurai, 2014).
Fashion, as a manifestation of Design, must operate within sustainable practices and, depending on the industrial or cultural context, reclaims traditional activities of great social value, incorporates unconventional materials, or makes use of high technologies, significantly reducing impact, losses, and waste. At the core lies the creative process, a fundamental element in defining forms and materials and in preconfiguring their production.
The creative act involves not only form but also the selection and intervention in the material that envelops the body, in a “combination of an imaginary stimulus with the limitations of a problem, whose purpose is to find a ‘crossing’ between them, what we call an idea” (AZNAR, 2011). Thus, techniques such as upcycling and fiber recycling, combined with the use of unconventional materials such as canvas, cork, metals, and paper, open space for exploring innovative solutions aligned with circularity. A range of results and experiences arise from the search for solutions that extend the lifespan of materials already in circulation and reduce waste generation.
New textile materialities challenge the very notion of fabric as a passive support, repositioning it as a technology in itself, capable of mediating relationships between body, environment, and informational systems. In the field of technological interfaces, smart textiles and wearables shift clothing from a strictly representational plane to that of sensory and computational platforms, in which conductive fibers, responsive polymers, and data architectures become central design elements. This technical-material layer reconfigures gestures, perceptions, and modes of presence, opening space for garments that capture vital signs, regulate temperature, respond to environmental stimuli, or visually perform intangible data, articulating fashion, interaction design, embedded electronics, and wearable computing.
Simultaneously, the construction of textile surfaces through additive manufacturing processes and 3D printing makes explicit the idea of fabric as a field of morphological, structural, and ecological experimentation, in which the design unit is no longer merely the yarn or weave but the voxel, the parametric node, the programmed pattern. By enabling complex geometries, gradients of rigidity, and on-demand production, these technologies bring fashion-making closer to advanced prototyping logics, distributed recycling, and the circular economy, reconfiguring production chains, authorship regimes, and notions of luxury linked to technical rarity and material intelligence.
Likewise, digitalization in the fashion industry seeks to optimize design, production, and product management processes, while digital tools are employed to strengthen sustainable practices. This advancement promotes the co-evolution of fashion and textile designers’ roles, aligning them with technological and social transformations. Thus, the designer’s role expands, requiring the development of a shared language with engineers, enhanced technical competencies, and proficiency across different digital platforms, particularly in three-dimensional computer-aided design (3D CAD) software (Sun & Zhao, 2018; Koerner, 2017). Parallel to this, there is growing demand for material digitization in product development, in which the creation of digital fabrics seeks to reproduce, in virtual environments, the appearance and tactile characteristics of physical textile and non-textile materials, directly impacting the early stages of the creative process.
Guiding Question
Considering the above, how can different production systems — and, to some extent, cultural systems — be combined to create garments aligned with contemporary technological, sustainable, and local demands? Seeking to respond to this question and inspired by Appadurai, this dossier aims to open space for reflections on fashion through the concept of coexistences, encompassing practices, technologies, and materialities.
Topics of Interest
We seek articles presenting interdisciplinary reflections, including but not limited to the following topics:
Materials and Creative Processes
- Revisited materials (ancient, traditional, or displaced from their original use) that engage with the creative process, or designers who use such materials as creative impetus
- Textile material as the basis of the process or creative method, where the material defines the object
New Materialities
- Technological interfaces, such as the development of wearables
- Surface construction through new production processes such as 3D printing
- Digital materials used in virtual prototyping processes
- Direct printing experiments on textiles
- Development of trims and hybrid structures
- Critical reflections on the social, symbolic, and environmental impacts of these new textile materialities
Other Perspectives
- Techniques and processes supported by culture
- The use of traditional knowledge in conjunction with technology
- The relationship between technologies and local contexts
- Artificial intelligence as a medium for fashion
- Technologies as mediators in the symbolic construction of Fashion, among others
References
APPADURAI, A. Il futuro come fatto culturale. Saggi sulla condizione globale. Milano: Raffaello Cortina, (2014.
AZNAR, Guy. Ideias – 100 técnicas para a criatividade. São Paulo: Summus, 2011.
FAN, W. et al. Textile production by additive manufacturing and textile waste recycling: a review. Environmental Chemistry Letters, 2024.
GONÇALVES, J. M. C. S.; TEOFILO, V.; CAMPOS, F. F. C. Reflexões sobre a manufatura aditiva na produção e consumo de moda. Ponta Grossa: Atena, 2019.
KOERNER, J. Digitally crafted couture. Architectural Design, 87(6) pp. 40-47. 2017.
KRENAK, Ailton. Ideias para adiar o fim do mundo. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2019.
MANZINI, Ezio. Design para inovação social e sustentabilidade: comunidades criativas, organizações colaborativas e novas redes projetuais. Rio de Janeiro: E-papers, 2008.
SALCEDO, Elena. Moda ética para um futuro sustentável. São Paulo: GG Brasil, 2014.
SANCHES, Maria Celeste de Fátima. Moda e projeto: estratégias metodológicas em design. São Paulo: Estação das Letras e Cores, 2017.
SAYEM, A, S. M. (2022). Digital fashion innovations for the real world and metaverse. International Journal of Fashion Design, Technology and Education, vol.15, n.2, pp. 139-141.
SALTZMAN, Andrea. El cuerpo diseñado: la forma y el proyecto della vestimenta. Buenos Aires: Paidós, 2004
SCHWAB, Klaus. A quarta revolução industrial. Tradução Daniel Moreira Miranda. São Paulo: Edipro, 2016.
SUN, L.; ZHAO, L. Envisioning the era of 3D printing: a conceptual model for the fashion industry. Fashion and Textiles, v. 4, p. 25, 2017. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40691-017-0110-4
SUN, L.; ZHAO, L. Technology disruptions: Exploring the changing roles of designers, makers, and users in the fashion industry. International Journal of Fashion Design, Technology and Education, vol. 11, n. 3, pp. 362-374. 2018. Londres: Taylor and Francis, 2018.
VOLPATO, Neri. Manufatura aditiva: Tecnologias e Aplicações da Impressão 3D. São Paulo: Editora Blucher, 2017.
