Towards Circular Fashion: Design for Community-Based Clothing Reuse and Upcycling Services under a Social Innovation Perspective

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Please see the attached review report. 

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

 

Dear Authors,

 

Thanks for giving me the chance to read this manuscript, “Towards Circular Fashion: Design for Community-based Clothing Reusing and Upcycling Services under a Social Innovation Perspective”. The current paper tries to  establish community-based practice models, which contribute toward promoting a greater understanding of sustainable fashion and achieving collaborative co-creation frameworks for community stakeholders.

This is an interesting topic in the field of design and social innovation. However, there are major issues in the current manuscript that should be carefully addressed to be further considered.

 

1.      Method

 

·        This paper did not have a typical research paradigm that lacks traditional methods, such as coding in the interview and quantitative analysis.

·        The analysis part was confusing. For example, in line 303, the user interview did not show how they process the data.

·        In the part of the result analysis, I did not notice any analysis procedure but show the conclusion directly.

·        How the sample was recruited was not clear.

·        The detailed data collection process should be further clarified

 

2.      Language and format

 

· Figures 1,2 and 3 were not quietly relevant to the research topic. I cannot get the logic between figures and contents.

·        Many language issues are found in the manuscript. Please carefully proofread it.

 

 

To sum up, I personally like this paper. However, the problems should be addressed in order to be further considered. Hope these suggestions help.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The article is based on solid research work. The authors expressed their ideas and findings clearly and respectfully.

 

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

The manuscript presents a design study that tries to assist the overcoming both technical (problem-solving) and cultural (sense-making) barriers that apparel reusing and upcycling face. Field research, expert and user interviews, and participatory workshops were used to collect a large amount of first-hand research data from the Shanghai community. The study also develops a platform proposal that integrates strategic service design and practical toolkit design. It is a new community-based service model that represents a significant improvement in the degree of collaboration and co-creation compared to traditional community service models. The study also exemplifies the power of socially innovative design thinking in promoting circular fashion and the closed-loop fashion system.

I suggest the publication of the paper, after small changes in terms of:

1/ Change of references that are internet-based (internet articles), where possible.

2/ Change of reference description in order to be uniform in style.

3/ Almost all figures need to be in better quality or larger size to be readable.

4/ The description of the surveys should be more detailed.

 

 

 

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 5 Report

The paper presents preliminary findings of a complex study on introducing and promoting clothing reusing/upcycling practices at the community level through the lens of design for social innovation. The topic is highly relevant to the Sustainability journal and the special issue on Community and Collaboration in Fashion and Textiles Practice and Education, in particular. At a first glance, the study looks quite complicated and multi-layered, and, in general, I was deeply impressed with the amount of work done by the authors (or, at least, the declared amount). However, there are some things that prevent acceptance of this paper in its current state. To ease the revision process, I outline my comments step-by-step:

First, the paper currently has many “centres” in terms of data, methods, and research outcomes, which are loosely connected to each other.

While the bibliography has many topical and relevant titles, I did not find a proper analysis of even a few of them. In the literature review section, I would expect the overview of thoughts, concepts and approaches that have concrete authors, rather than generalized information. Also, relying solely on Rathinamoorthy's and Manzini’s work is not enough to call your analysis "a systematic literature study and review". I would also recommend to look closer to proceedings of Participatory Design Conference (from various years) as their authors pay a lot of attention to community-based practices and deeply and thoroughly ground them in theory of participatory design, co-creation, community empowerment, etc.

Next, about desk research: did I got it right that you analyzed just one article “Research on Current Situation of Recycling Unwanted Clothes in Shanghai”? And 278 interviews with local residents came from there? If so, please make it clear stating that you used this information as second-hand data for your study.

Next, Part B. User interviews. Please provide more information about the methodology and data collection. How exactly did you find and select your informants?

User profiles: I did not quite get, how exactly you developed four user profiles: based on eight interviews? If so, the data is definitely not enough for such generalization. Also, please provide more details about the interviews: the line of questioning, how long conversations were, and in what settings they were conducted (face-to-face, by zoom, by messenger, etc.).

Next, what is the role of four user profiles in developing Upcycling Case and Bike? And how are these developments connected to community workshops?

And more about design toolkit: have the Case and Bike been prototyped and tested/evaluated or, for now, they exist only virtually, as concepts?

Next, the description of the workshops also could (and should) be improved. Some qualitative characteristics would help to understand the level of immersion, the scale of experimental inquiry, and validate the narrated cases. For example, what are the cultural specifics/differences of Siping and Huaihai communities? What are geographical/spatial specifics of their living that would enable or hinder the development of community-service networks (e.g., the density of population, infrastructures, etc.) What does it mean for a service “to be close to community”? What spaces were used for workshops and what are the requirements (if any) for a space that could fit an “established community ecosystem”? Please have a look at the paper by Kohtala and Hyysalo as an exemplary description of workshops settings with communities of makers: Kohtala, C., & Hyysalo, S. (2015). Anticipated environmental sustainability of personal fabrication. Journal of Cleaner Production, 99, 333-344.

 

In the concluding part, while you suggest further research to be conducted based on other regional cultural contexts, I am not convinced with the current one: to my understanding, it does not provide any insight into the current cultural and regional context. Putting the names of the places and communities does not do this job.

Overall, I would recommend focusing on one activity (and briefly describe others while outlining the design of larger research): either systematic literature review, or user interviews and profiles (or maybe “thick description” of local communities rather than aggregated profiles), or workshops, or design toolkit, or maybe online platform. For now, you try to bite them all, and the result is pretty hard to digest.

 

A couple of more comments:

The story of Mr. Li and his tailor workshop is fascinating, but it has to be analysed and used more efficiently in terms of “lessons learned”. Also, I do love your conceptualization of “community tailors 2.0”! I think it is worth more clearly putting forward somewhere in the text.

Next, throughout the paper, I especially acknowledge visually clear and graphically united figures and diagrams. But in most of them the font size is too small, please increase to improve readability.

 

Finally, there is a list of typos/mistakes spotted:

Lines 190 and 192: Should be “modes” instead of “models”

Line 207: Should be  “A Design Mode Map”

Lines 377 and 380: old student?

Lines 381-382: assistance /…/ to assist

Lines 387-388: a repeat of phrases: “inspired by the traditional tailor's tricycle”. In the next sentence, line 391: “inspired by traditional tricycles”

Line 409-410: the research conducted /…/. Should be “the research team conducted”

Line 412: “The workshop participants are consist of the following roles” – there is something wrong with the grammar here

Line 419: what is slef?

Line 602: Eva Guldmann: Eva is the first name and Guldmann is the second, so in the list, it should be Guldmann, E.

Line 651: Guy Julier: should be Julier, G.

 

Based on the above, I recommend major revisions.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

I don't have any suggestion with respect to this version. 

Author Response

We would like to thank you for your careful reading, helpful comments, and constructive suggestions, which has significantly improved the presentation of our manuscript. In this round, we have changed four figures to improve the text size and color contrast (Figure 3,4,5,6). We hope our revised manuscript can be accepted for publication.

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors have addressed most of my concerns. I am happy to recommend this article for publication.

Author Response

We would like to thank you for your careful reading, helpful comments, and constructive suggestions, which has significantly improved the presentation of our manuscript. In this round, we have changed four figures to improve the text size and color contrast (Figure 3,4,5,6). We hope our revised manuscript can be accepted for publication.

Reviewer 5 Report

I am thankful to the authors for taking my comments and suggestions into account and for incorporating additional information into the text. However, the images still need to be improved - the text in them is too small for readers. 

Author Response

We would like to thank you for your careful reading, helpful comments, and constructive suggestions, which has significantly improved the presentation of our manuscript. In this round, we have changed four figures to improve the text size and color contrast (Figure 3,4,5,6). We hope our revised manuscript can be accepted for publication.