This paper engages a framework that treats garments as multilayered material infrastructures embedded within wider ecological and metabolic systems. Drawing from fashion design, circular economy theory, and life-cycle analysis, it explores how plant-based garments can align with sustainable construction principles in the built environment.
Fashion and architecture are often treated as culturally distinct disciplines, yet both industries share challenges around material extraction, end-of-life waste, and globalised, high-impact supply chains. By viewing clothing through the lens of urban metabolism (Samie, 2023), garments can be repositioned as participants in the same resource-intensive systems that architecture attempts to reform.
This paper presents the case of research-in-practice, micro-commercial project Les Plantes, a fully plant-based fashion brand produced in Melbourne, Australia, using new or end-of-line cellulose-derived fibres at all stages of product design and assembly. Materials were selected in attempting to design for ease of recyclability, biodegradability, and end-of-life circularity. The design model incorporates principles of bioregionalism (Fletcher & Tham, 2019), sourcing from local suppliers and material systems that mirror building practices. However, while Fletcher and Tham (2019) suggest that new fashion systems should favour nearby resources (p.40) this case also highlights the many challenges of localised sourcing within the Australian fashion system.
This practice-based project bridges insights from circular design literature (Moreno et al., 2016) with fashion-specific challenges, offering explorations in the design-for-recycling process into the fashion system. The case study proposes a vision for garments that have a reduced environmental impact aligned with material selection that divests from both animal-derived and petroleum-derived fibres, while being also metabolically compatible within purposeful environments at end-of-life.
By drawing parallels between architecture and garments as macro and micro-infrastructures, this presentation invites reflections and explores challenges at the intersection of material sourcing, localised design, and ecological accountability.