Abstract:

The urgency of the sustainable transition in fashion demands a profound rethinking of teaching strategies in university-level design education. Current curricula predominantly address sustainability as a technical or material challenge - introducing eco-friendly fabrics, lifecycle assessment tools, or circular business models - while largely unquestioning the cultural imaginaries, aesthetic norms, and consumption logics that sustain the linear fashion system. However, it is precisely at the level of imagination and meaning-making that the most significant transformation must occur. What is needed is not only new knowledge, but a new capacity to envision alternative futures, interrogate dominant paradigms, and develop a critical, systemic design posture capable of operating within complexity and uncertainty.

Transformative learning theory (Mezirow, 1991) offers a particularly fertile framework in this regard. According to Mezirow, deep learning does not occur through the linear accumulation of information, but through "disorienting dilemmas", experiences or provocations that expose the limitations of one's taken-for-granted assumptions, compelling a critical re-examination of interpretive schemes and ultimately enabling a shift in perspective. This process resonates strongly with the pedagogical ambitions of speculative design (Dunne & Raby, 2013), which uses fictional but plausible scenarios to defamiliarise the present and open up spaces for critical reflection and debate. When applied to fashion, speculative design invites students to move beyond problem-solving within existing market frameworks and instead question what fashion could become under radically different social, environmental, and cultural conditions.

Despite this theoretical convergence, structured pedagogical tools that operationalise the encounter between transformative learning, speculative design, and fashion education remain scarce. Most existing approaches rely on individual project briefs or workshop formats that, while valuable, lack the replicability and scalability needed to become embedded in regular curricula.

This contribution proposes "Futuro Imperfetto," a card-based pedagogical model for the collaborative construction of circular fashion scenarios, designed for integration into undergraduate and postgraduate fashion design courses. The model is grounded in three theoretical pillars: speculative design, wardrobe studies (Klepp & Bjerck, 2014; Fletcher, 2016), which reframe clothing as a lived, relational practice rather than a commodity and transformative learning.

It is articulated across four sequential phases, each supported by a dedicated deck of cards:
(1) Dilemma, which introduces ethically complex situations to destabilise assumptions;
(2) Wardrobe, which grounds speculation in the everyday materiality of clothing practices;
(3) World, which guides the construction of plausible future contexts; and
(4) Artefact, which prompts the design of tangible objects or services that embody the envisioned scenario. The card-based format ensures accessibility, modularity, and adaptability to different educational contexts and group dynamics.

The paper discusses the theoretical premises of the model, its internal structure and facilitation guidelines, the conditions required for effective implementation, and its potential to foster transformative learning outcomes in fashion design education.

Keywords:

Speculative design, circular fashion, transformative learning, pedagogical toolkit, wardrobe studies, scenario building, higher education.