The Fashion & Textile Living Lab (FTLL) is a design-led Living Lab at the Department of Design, Politecnico di Milano. It operates from a permanent space on campus that works as a public demonstrator, competence centre and co-creation hub, bringing together companies, brands, designers, artisans, public institutions, researchers and citizens to co-design and experiment with circular solutions for fashion and textiles in real-life settings.
Research lines:
• Transformative learning and sustainability cultures: design-led educational and participatory formats that foster sustainability literacy, collective learning and cultural change around fashion consumption, involving citizens, students and institutions.
• Distributed and collaborative circular making: co-design and distributed manufacturing processes that integrate design, craft and industrial knowledge along the textile value chain, addressing waste reduction, local resource valorisation, repair, upcycling and redesign.
• Product–service systems for the use and post-use phases: design of service models, sustainable retail strategies and enabling tools (toolkits, digital platforms) that extend product lifespans and reconfigure the relationship between value, use and ownership, including care, repair, redistribution and take-back services.
The Lab runs a growing portfolio of projects, workshops, courses and collaborations with companies, designed to build on one another over time. Among its flagship initiatives:
• MadeBack Circular Fashion Festival (https://www.instagram.com/madeback_fest/): a multi-actor public format combining garment collection campaigns, workshops, talks and exhibitions.
• Voices from the Wardrobe: a longitudinal narrative project on the people–garment relationship.
• Su.Re. – Sustainable Retail Toolkit & Digital Hub (https://sure.retailexperiencelab.com/): a toolkit and open platform for designing sustainable retail services with fashion companies.
We are looking for Living Labs, SMEs, start-ups, brands and retailers, public authorities and research partners working on circular textiles, product-life extension, sustainable retail and consumer engagement, including for Horizon Europe and other EU proposals.