A platform-based inquiry on sustainable fashion and design in the Milanese landscape

From Firenze University Press Journal: Fashion Highlight

University of Florence
2 min readJan 31, 2025

Tommaso Elli, Politecnico di Milano

The contribution presents research that inquires about the themes of fashion and design from a sustainable perspective. The research aims to identify meaningful initiatives in the metropolitan area of Milan through collecting, visualizing, and analyzing social media data. The approach is derived from the methodological outlook of Digital Methods (Rogers, 2013) that use web platforms (i.e., social media, search engines, websites, etc.) as proxies to learn about cultural change and societal conditions, with the fundamental underpinning that “the real” and “the virtual” represent no separated realities (Rogers, 2009). It is, therefore, assumed that the interplays that occur on social media (i.e., the use of hashtags or the mentions among users) can be used to inspect relationships at the urban landscape level. Although similar approaches have been widely used to represent and study societal trends and issues, they appear less experimented on a territorial scale.The objective of the research is to experiment with the application of digital methods to identify innovative sustainability initiatives around fashion and design in a specific geographical area by devising and testing a method to collect data from social media platforms, inquiring emerging topics around the selected themes and the relation-ships among urban actors, and identifying initiatives connected to sustainable consumption models.The research is built around the Instagram platform and the account of Manifattura Milano, an initiative of the Department for Economic Development and Labour Policies of the Municipality of Milan, realized by the Urban Economy, Fashion and Design Project Management. It is a predominant hub that promotes urban initiatives related to urban manufacturing, social inclusion, and the rehabilitation of former industrial areas in cities. It strongly focuses on sustainability and circularity concerning fashion and design. Its account appears well managed, with posts that systematically mention the actors with whom it collaborates, often corresponding to urban figures. For this reason, it is assumed to represent a good starting point for a survey aimed at discovering which Milanese stakeholders (i.e., associations, institutions, professionals, traders, producers, disseminators, etc.) are active in sustainability and circularity and, at the same time, are interested in fashion and design.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.36253/fh-2709

Read Full Text: https://riviste.fupress.net/index.php/fh/article/view/2709

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University of Florence
University of Florence

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