Abstract
In a world where fashion both clothes and defines us, holistic sustainability remains elusive. Despite advances in circular design, recycling, and material innovation, overproduction and overconsumption persist – driven less by necessity than by cultural logics of novelty and disposability. This study begins within that tension, reimagining sustainability not as “less harm”, but as a way of living. Responding to Ehrenfeld and Hoffman’s (2013) call to shift from having to being, it develops a framework of sustainability-as-flourishing to guide this reorientation.
Using a qualitative, interpretivist approach, the research employs autoethnography as a method, situating the researcher in overlapping roles of maker, mother, and scholar. Analysis unfolded in two phases: first, by developing and enacting the six principles of flourishing – care, authentic action, interconnectedness, spirituality, understanding, and pragmatic ways of doing – within daily life; and second, by examining how these principles were mediated and negotiated in digital identity work using Automediality.
Findings reveal flourishing as a fragile, dynamic process, shaped by structural constraints and cultural pressures. Three conditions proved critical: reflection and pausing as prerequisites for supporting sustainable fashion praxis, reconfiguring time as an ethical and relational space, and vigilance against performative sustainability. Digital analysis identified four dynamics – aesthetic negotiation, confessional vulnerability, reciprocal mediation, and what was withheld – leading to the concept of a digital rhythm of being, capturing how visibility and silence shape sustainability online.
This study advances sustainability-as-flourishing by extending Ehrenfeld’s (in dialogue with Hoffman) notion of flourishing into fashion (Ehrenfeld & Hoffman, 2013), and demonstrating how it can be enacted across lived experience and digital identity work. Conceptually, the thesis reframes sustainability from a focus on external metrics to a way of being, grounded in relationality, reflection, and care. Practically, the framework demonstrates how sustainability-as-flourishing can be lived through everyday acts of making, wearing, and digital self-presentation in fashion, offering a tool that can inform future interventions which foreground embodied practice and lived experience, complementing rather than deferring to systemic or market-based approaches...