UPCYCLING WEFT: post-use possibilities for fashion artifacts.
information design, fashion, post-use, upcycling.
The purpose of this study is to provide reflections from the point of view of information design on this new scenario of transformation of co-design actions between designers and consumers in the clothing segment, in order to understand what messages are transmitted by clothing designed in a sustainable way by the upcycling process . This research is of a qualitative and exploratory nature, whose methodology involves an experiment: project ‘Peça Perdida? Abra seu guarda-roupa!'. As for the bibliographical research to build a theoretical framework, the approach includes the fields of design and anthropology, participatory design, information design and contexts of regeneration in the circular economy. The analysis of the results and the experimentation process carried out was anchored in a research of fashion artifacts developed by the upcycling process of fashion brands: (local) A Roda (Pernambuco); (national) Comas (São Paulo); and (international) Patagonia (California) in order to identify which information system these garments transmit in the communication process. In the end, differences were noticed in upcycling produced for marketing purposes and in upcycling carried out through co-design. And so, levels of variation in the upcycling process were identified: minimal upcycling, called 'affective weft', moderate upcycling, called 'controlled weft' and radical upcycling, called 'creative weft '.