( POlimi, politecnico di milano)
navigating fashion consumer archetypes
Co-designing consumer insights for sustainable retail futures
Partners:
The participatory workshop developed by the Department of Design at Politecnico di Milano was aimed at co-designing a tool to support small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the fashion sector in responding to evolving consumer behaviours and shifting retail dynamics. The initiative was conceived to provide SMEs with strategic resources to navigate an increasingly complex market, by enhancing their understanding of future consumer profiles and promoting shared reflection on emerging needs related to sustainability and distribution models.
The participatory workshop focused on generating consumer archetypes based on both actual and aspirational behaviours, with particular attention to the intention–action gap in sustainable fashion consumption. In this initial phase, direct engagement involved consumers only, with the goal of collecting concrete and meaningful insights. These findings will serve as a foundation for a subsequent phase, in which SMEs will be actively involved in translating these insights into strategic retail actions. The process was intentionally designed to be collaborative and iterative, allowing each phase to inform and strengthen the next.
The workshop pursued three specific objectives:
( 1 ) to construct future-oriented consumer archetypes that address the gap between sustainable intentions and actual behaviours;
( 2 ) to formulate practical guidelines that assist SMEs in redesigning their retail strategies in alignment with changing consumer demands;
( 3) to raise consumer awareness of collaborative and alternative retail models, across both local and global contexts.
The participatory workshop unfolded over two main phases. The first phase engaged participants in reflecting on their consumption patterns through a scenario-based card activity. A visual mapping tool allowed each participant to represent their own practices—what they do, do not do, and would like to do—fostering both self-awareness and peer-to-peer comparison within the group.
The second phase invited participants to explore a range of sustainable fashion enterprises and compare them with more conventional industry models. This exercise fostered a broader awareness of the diversity within the fashion sector, highlighting emerging business models and stimulating personal reflections on consumption choices and opportunities for change.
Overall, the participatory workshop enabled the emergence of updated consumer archetypes—more conscious, flexible, and sustainability-oriented—and collected valuable insights to support fashion SMEs in the transition toward more inclusive, circular, and future-ready retail strategies.
