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Design Futures

Qijun Nie

Qijun (Quentin) has always been a curious person to observe, criticize and investigate around him. As an industrial designer and speculative designer, he started innovative design consulting services for clients in Beijing in 2016 and founded Chao Lai Design Consulting, which allows him to practice product design, prototyping, client relations and business strategy.

Professional training and innovative thinking received at the Royal College of Art and Beijing Institute of Fashion Technology, as well as practical experience in founding a design consulting company, made him realize that he had more important needs and desires to continue his growth.

Show Location: Battersea campus: Studio Building, Third floor

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The fashion industry’s current business model is unsustainable, especially with growing populations and rising levels of consumption across the globe. Over-consumption and climate change are driving widespread environmental damage. The exploitative and linear business model for fashion must change. My concept is to provoke the entire evolving fashion industry, including all brands, manufacturers, consumers, influencers and stakeholders, to change the value system of fashion.

Guilty is a fictional fashion brand whose fashion items serve as tools to communicate cultural messages to consumers.

As people who wear clothes, whether we consider ourselves fashionable or not, our clothes come to us through a global production network. Whether we know it or not, we are all participating in fashion, a clothing system made up of industry, culture and change. Now, more than ever, there is a moral imperative to question how things are manufactured and conceptualized for the long-term lives of future generations.

We're not waiting for some wonder fabric to come along. Some easy decisions we can make. Now. If we simply rethink our value system, we can make fashion sustainable now.



Future Speculation
Future Speculation

In the 2030s, the world will use renewable energy in large part to meet sustainable goals. The fashion industry has been targeted by government and business leaders for reform, and there are many new models in the world to make the clothing system embrace the cycle. Such as using natural materials, organic materials and new materials; Extending the life of clothing as much as possible, and incorporating social carbon credit systems into the fashion industry.

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The business side of fashion requires creating an "expectation of novelty" to keep selling. The core of this movement is around consumerism, how to create a system to reduce consumption but still maintain fashion is what I consider. 

Here, Social credit systems, including garment carbon credits, are important. Introducing carbon credits for clothing into every behavior of people, such as maintenance, modification, upcycling, reproducing and recycling can increase carbon credits points, while carbon credits need to be consumed for purchase and consumption.

The second is for us to stop pretending we need new clothes every season. According to the previous data analysis and expert interviews, seasonless fashion is a potential solution. Fashion is officially a year-round machine: serving customers regardless of season or gender. Fashion weeks are disappearing or losing influence, new collections are developed in terms of content rather than material, and brands launch collections through virtual fashion but don't manufacture them. Production starts only when consumers demand it.

Making it harder to buy seasonal fashion doesn't fully challenge the fashion value system. The last is how to get consumers to think about the impact of each purchase.

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Government, state and business leaders worked together to create an evaluation system to regulate and collect taxes.

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This is the Pakistan series. Because we know that Pakistan is the fourth largest cotton exporter and cotton is an important economic industry for the country. But as cotton grew, local rivers began to
This is the Pakistan series. Because we know that Pakistan is the fourth largest cotton exporter and cotton is an important economic industry for the country. But as cotton grew, local rivers began to dry up and producers began to lose money. So I hid the map, which was destroyed by the fashion industry, in this cloth, which could only be revealed after a long period of wear and tear.

We're not waiting for some wonder fabric to come along. Some easy decisions we can make. Now. If we simply rethink our value system, we can make fashion sustainable now.

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