Selling dreams not dressing : in the AI era sustainable fashion : a photography design study : presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Design at Massey University, New Zealand

Abstract

Given the environmental crisis generated by fashion creation and communication, it is urgent to transform the current workflow towards a sustainable future. Research on sustainable fashion has primarily focused on promoting fashion design and production methods to reduce environmental impact. From the perspective of clothing design, we strive to solve material recycling issues and reduce consumption and resources by improving the various processes in the supply chain. The role of fashion photography has largely been ignored in the field of sustainable fashion despite playing an important role in current fashion communication. This study aims to explore how AI generation tools can reduce the environmental impact in the fashion photography production stage and effectively convey virtual clothing and virtual scene shooting for sustainable brand designers. This study is based on the potential of AI software to reduce production costs, improve the time efficiency of advertising production, and facilitate the realization of sustainable design schemes. In this process, sustainable fashion clothing imagery is used to promote communication and iterations between fashion designers and photographers while meeting design needs and innovating visual effects. This research provides a novel fashion photography process for sustainable fashion brands. It helps reduce obstacles caused by an insufficient advertising budget that plagues many slow fashions and smaller-scale producers. Looking forward, AI fashion photography can contribute to the design stage and embed the visualization strategy at the beginning to aid waste and resource problems. This could reconcile the contradiction between visual effect creativity and production, achieving sustainable goals.