Fashion futuring: Intertwining speculative design, foresight and material culture towards sustainable futures

In a context driven by uncertainty, climate crisis, and erratic societal behaviors, proposing fashion futures practices on a more sustainable and less predictable basis is paramount. This paper reflects on the limitations of fashion forecasting to offer a values-driven and sustainability-oriented alternative to fashion futures practices. Based on an interpretative and qualitative approach, this study emerges from a series of collaborative workshops that interlace reality and fiction, materiality and culture, free-spirited imagination and strategic planning not as oppositional dualisms but as complementary and entrenched concepts. As a result, it proposes Fashion Futuring a methodological approach that intertwines speculative design, material culture, and foresight as a more expanded, systemic, and values-driven futures-thinking strategy for fashion. Fashion Futuring explores collaboration and cultural values embedded into fictional artefacts as drivers to bridge imagination and reflection for planning transitions towards sustainability.