Across Europe, designers, students, researchers, and educators are turning bold sustainability ideas into tangible fashion innovations. Through a series of hands-on Imagineering workshops, the IMASUS project has transformed creativity into action
What happens when creativity, tradition, and sustainability come together? The IMASUS project is answering that question one city at a time, empowering participants to rethink fashion through experimentation, collaboration, and hands-on making.
In Zaragoza, our Imagineering workshop was a first encounter with systemic design for many students and teachers. Participants mapped textile systems, experimented with breakthrough materials, and worked in teams to create garment prototypes that embodied new approaches to fashion and sustainability. These prototypes later took the stage at the IMASUS stand during the New European Bauhaus Festival 2026 in Brussels.
Prato’s workshop at Lottozero textile laboratories was all about pushing boundaries. Emerging designers and sustainability pioneers rolled up their sleeves for hands-on sessions, dissecting old garments for recyclability, testing innovative, bio-based textiles from the IMASUS Material Database, and transforming ambitious sustainability ideas into technical prototypes. Each team walked away with a tangible result: a prototype ready to challenge how garments are conceived and made.
In Athens, the workshop “Timeless Threads: Weaving Tradition into Tomorrow’s Fashion” united designers, students, and creative professionals to blend Greek textile heritage with future-focused thinking. From weaving at the loom to mapping circular fashion systems, participants developed capsule wardrobes and repair networks rooted in local tradition. The workshop culminated in prototypes that fused physical craft with systemic innovation, ideas ready to inspire further development and real-world change.
These workshops were powered by two of the project's key resources: the IMASUS Training Modules and the IMASUS Material Database.
Developed by the textile experts at Lottozero, the Training Modules provide practical guidance on four core sustainability strategies—zero waste, modularity, longevity, and recyclability. Combining hands-on tools, methodologies, and real-world case studies, they help designers move from sustainability theory to practical implementation.
The IMASUS Material Database complements this learning experience with a growing collection of innovative textile materials, offering insights into each material's origins, properties, environmental impact, and design potential. It enables designers to make more informed, sustainable material choices throughout the design process.
Together, these resources ensure that the knowledge generated during the workshops continues well beyond the classroom, supporting fashion practitioners across Europe in designing more sustainable products and systems.
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IMASUS (Imagineering Sustainability) is a practice-based framework that bridges academic research on sustainable fashion materials with the daily needs of fashion practitioners. It aims to enhance their access to, understanding of, and integration of these materials into sustainable fashion design practices.
