Whilst some fashion brands limit their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) policy to monitoring working
conditions in their suppliers’ factories, this project asks how a fashion brand could use an innovation process that brings both economic and social value, outside of the factory walls. While the business model concept being proposed is not new, the method being proposed to develop the concept, led by the textile/fashion designer, is where the novelty lies. This project proposes a new role for the textile/fashion designer within the business, bringing the designer closer to the CSR activities within the brand, and closer to the communities in which the business operates. This context requires new practices by textile/fashion designer and new skills, collaborating with a range of actors across private and third sector boundaries. Designers are increasingly engaged in working within communities and across the third sector to design for social good (Emilson et al 2011) and researchers are beginning to study and capture the methods being used (Tan 2009), however fashion and textile design activity is under represented within this discourse. This paper proposes to explore what these expanded design opportunities could mean for fashion/textile designers.