Material libraries, both physical and digital, have become increasingly essential resources for fashion designers seeking innovation, sustainability, and efficiency in their workflows. These repositories enable designers to explore novel fibres, finishes, and materials across disciplinary boundaries, offering both aesthetic inspiration and comprehensive technical data. Digital libraries further facilitate integration with 3D design tools, supporting virtual prototyping and rapid experimentation, while reducing the need for costly physical samples.

Table 2 presents a curated repository of selected material libraries explicitly targeting fashion designers, mapping the state of the art of existing resources and tools available to the sector, derived from web-based research. The analysis highlights the principal functions and workflow advantages of each library.

Cases such as Material ConneXion stand out as a comprehensive global database of innovative materials, covering sectors beyond textiles. Its extensive categorisation and physical samples make it a critical resource for interdisciplinary material exploration in almost all design-driven activities.

The TextielLab Library (Netherlands) and the Textile Museum of Prato (Italy) exemplify how textile heritage archives support contemporary innovation. Both provide direct access to historic and technical textile resources from woven patterns to manufacturing techniques. That enables designers to reinterpret craftsmanship through a modern lens. These archives serve as active laboratories of material culture, offering tactile, visual, and contextual data that connect tradition to digital experimentation. Equally significant is the Fondazione Fashion Research Italy (Bologna), whose vast collection of over 30,000 textile designs forms a crucial bridge between Italy’s industrial textile heritage and contemporary creative industries. The digital accessibility of such archives democratises access to inspiration and supports material-driven design education. The Fabricant Material Library exemplifies the shift toward fully digital fashion, allowing designers to test and render materials in virtual environments, thereby supporting sustainable design by reducing the reliance on physical prototypes.

In summary, material and textile libraries, whether physical, digital, or hybrid, serve as strategic infrastructures for innovation in fashion design. They operate not merely as archives but as active systems of knowledge, connecting aesthetics, technology, and sustainability. Their integration into design workflows enhances not only creativity but also the ethical and environmental consciousness of the next generation of designers.

Material selection methodologies offer fashion designers a structured framework for evaluating fabrics and components across multiple criteria, including performance, sustainability, cost, and aesthetic quality. These approaches encompass multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) techniques and weighted scoring methods, as well as environmental and social life cycle assessments (LCA and S-LCA). These methods ensure that material choices align with both creative objectives and ethical, environmental, or social imperatives.

In Table 3, a collection of material selection methodologies that can overlap with fashion designers’ activity has been provided.

Methods such as Multi-Attribute Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) offer a transparent and rational framework for evaluating multiple materials against predefined priorities, effectively balancing technical performance with aesthetic and sustainability criteria. While life cycle assessment (LCA) and social life cycle assessment (S-LCA) approaches are increasingly applied in fashion design to quantify environmental and social impacts, they provide objective data to support ethical sourcing and reduce the ecological footprint of collections. Although emotional and aesthetic considerations undoubtedly constitute fundamental elements of the fashion design material selection process, a comprehensive, holistic methodology integrating these dimensions remains notably absent. Yet necessary in this domain.

The material selection process is typically structured in sequential steps (Ashby and Johnson, 2013) and guides designers in identifying and selecting the most suitable materials for specific artefacts. This process is feasible by establishing design criteria that demand specific material properties, and it proceeds in parallel with the creative conceptualisation and technical definition of the artefact.

This central activity in the creative process determines the final products’ impact at several levels: at the environmental level, it determines, e.g., emissions necessary to extract, manufacture, maintain and circle or dismission the product itself (Niinimäki et al., 2020; Allwood et al., 2006); at social level may determine the investment in fair trade-certified companies and fair labour supply chains (Niinimäki et al., 2020; Shen, 2020); at economic level can determine a substantial percentage of the artefact’s final price (Allwood et al., 2006; Shen, 2020). In addition, also at the cultural level materials can play a significant role: it is sufficient to look at history to understand how metals and polymers permeated the whole societal culture and progress (Dresselhaus, 1991); to the extent that there is a whole branch of research dedicated to materials-products design and consumer behaviour (and sustainable behaviour), underlining the significant cultural influences of materials in everyday life (Csaba and Bengtsson, 2015; Joy et al., 2012).

Fashion design is a discipline profoundly related to cultural expression, but it is also deeply entangled with the sustainable transition. In this discipline, the material is a means not only to define a physical product but to carry cultural meanings (Barnard, 2013; Csaba and Bengtsson, 2015) (the word fashion itself, e.g., is commonly used also to describe specific cultural dissemination or a way of doing things). From a sociological perspective, the relationship between clothing and culture presents a fascinating and contradictory phenomenon, intersecting with the sociology of consumption, production, and material culture (Entwistle, 2000; Woodward, 2007). Material culture and fashion studies offer insights into the role of clothing and materials in shaping cultural identities, social dynamics, and historical contexts (looking at the phenomenon of sub and counter cultures offers an immediate understanding of this topic). These fields emphasise the significance of fashion as both an aesthetic and symbolic practice, as well as a mode of consumption and production influenced by global economic, social, and technological forces (Joy et al., 2012; Fletcher, 2014).

Being materials and their characteristics at the core of fashion products, it becomes immediately clear that the material selection process plays a key role in this discipline, highlighting the necessity of understanding how specific textiles are selected to respond to physical, cultural and economic drivers of production. Fashion designers often follow a quite structured sequence of steps to select materials for their designs (Ashby and Johnson, 2013; Hasling, 2014):

In fact, some attempts are being made to respond to both the needs of fashion design theory and practice, aiming to address the gap between creative activity and systemic information management. In Table 4, a collection of fashion design-oriented material selection tools is presented. Material selection tools can be defined as digital and physical platforms that enable designers to analyse, compare, and simulate fabrics and other materials efficiently. These tools range from software that digitises material properties for 3D garment simulation to traceability platforms and sustainability indices. By integrating data-driven insights into the design process, these tools enhance decision-making, reduce prototyping costs, and improve design accuracy.

Browzwear Fabrics, Analyser, VStitcher, and CLO 3D Fabric Kit are exemplary tools in 3D garment simulation, enabling designers to model fabric behaviour realistically. This reduces the need for physical sampling while maintaining fidelity in draping and fit evaluation. However, comprehension of material properties that generate specific fabric behaviour is not immediately supported. Repositories such as Textile Exchange, PFMM and Higg MSI are primarily designed for corporate sustainability assessments. Higg MSI (Material Sustainability Index) provides an analytical basis for selecting environmentally responsible materials, offering quantitative comparison metrics that can influence sourcing and design decisions at an early stage. However, its usability for fashion designers is not a declared objective, making the tool very useful but at a systemic level. The platform DAMō instead integrates material selection, certification, and physical sample management in a single platform, representing a novel approach to combining sustainability, sourcing, and digital workflow. The missing link is between material properties and their impact on design activities from the perspective of eco-design practice. Adobe Substance 3D Sampler and Vectary for Fashion demonstrate the growing importance of visual and virtual experimentation, enabling rapid exploration of textures and patterns in digital fashion pipelines; however, a proper material selection process is lacking.

Therefore, from the state-of-the-art analysis, it emerges that there is a necessity for a comprehensive and holistic tool that can support and stimulate fashion designers’ reflections on the impact of materials, as well as the implementation of ecodesign and sustainable practices in their daily activities.

When interpolating these selection steps with sustainable transition objectives, the procedure becomes pretty challenging.

The environmental impacts of every product category are determined by all the inputs (i.e., extraction of resources) and all the outputs (i.e., emissions to soil, water, and air), both directly and indirectly associated with the product system (Vezzoli et al., 2022). To measure these categories, a quantified element must be defined to measure the performance of any product typology, named “functional unit” of the product system itself. The functional unit provides the baseline to compare and proportionate data in the product systems: according to (Vezzoli et al., 2022), the functional unit for the clothing system can be defined as ‘the use of a garment for one year’.

Once the functional unit is defined, the clothing system life cycle phases must be taken into account. In the fashion domain, these phases are typically (a) pre-production, (b) production, (c) distribution, (d) use, (e) disposal (Figure 1).

The pre-production phase encompasses all impacts related to the extraction of raw materials and their processing into textiles and yarns for use in various clothing products. The production phase refers to all garment manufacturing activities, including the “make-up” process (Khan and Islam, 2015; Moazzem et al., 2018; Vezzoli et al., 2022) and, in some cases, ironing; its environmental impact is generally much lower than that of pre-production, yet still significant over the product’s life cycle. The distribution phase covers the environmental impacts of transportation (from factory to user), packaging, and all retail and storage activities. The use phase encompasses impacts from wearing clothes and from clothing care, including washing, drying, and ironing, as well as repair or upgrading. The impacts of washing are particularly relevant due to the consumption of energy, detergents, and water. The disposal phase encompasses the impacts of end-of-life activities, particularly landfilling, incineration, and recycling. The central role of materials in regulations is evident; however, anticipating reflections on material use can allow designers to preview the effects on the whole product’s life cycle.

Figure 2 provides a comprehensive mapping of ecodesign strategies, tactics, and their corresponding European policy and regulatory frameworks. Each row translates a specific design guideline into its associated policy value, highlighting where concrete regulatory drivers exist (e.g., the Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation (ESPR), the REACH Regulation, the Waste Framework Directive, and the forthcoming Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) scheme for textiles) and where policy guidance remains indirect or absent. By assigning policy references at the level of individual design actions, the table enables a fine-grained analysis of regulatory alignment across the product life cycle, from the initial design phase and material selection through to the use phase, until end-of-life disassembly and recycling. This approach supports the identification of regulatory gaps, clarifies the degree of policy support for different ecodesign practices, and provides a structured basis for assessing how current and emerging EU regulations operationalise circular economy principles within the textile and clothing sector.

Detailed operational guidelines can be linked to the referring tactics (Vezzoli et al., 2022), producing a broad range of sustainability objectives, including the extension and intensification of clothing use, resource conservation and biocompatibility, the minimisation of material and energy consumption, the reduction of toxicity and harmfulness, and the extension of material life spans through recycling and disassembly-oriented design, involving in the reflection both design and material related choices. A complete collection of the detailed guidelines is provided in the Supplementary material document. The collection of all guidelines, with a focus on design or material, is reported in Tables 6, 7.

By bridging ecodesign regulations with strategies, tactics, and guidelines, fashion designers can consistently and holistically select textile materials for their work. However, for the sake of everyday practice usability, an operative tool must be designed to consider, at a glance, the technical, regulatory, sustainability, and aesthetic features of textile materials for fashion design applications. Hence, a mock-up tool has been designed as a preliminary attempt to realise a comprehensive database for textile material selection that can holistically consider, in a very usable way, all the complex information surrounding textiles.

The results emerging from the integration of data establish the foundational framework for the development of a mock-up tool dedicated to textile material selection. Building on the clothing system life-cycle boundaries as defined by Vezzoli et al. (2022) and previous research by Mazzitelli et al. (2024), material-related information can be systematically categorised into the following stages: pre-production (raw material acquisition and refining), production (manufacturing, assembly, and finishing), distribution (packaging, transportation, and storage), use (wearing and care practices such as washing and ironing), and end-of-life (disposal or recycling). The analysis reveals that environmental impacts are not uniformly distributed across these stages, with the most significant impacts concentrated in the pre-production and production phases, as well as during the use phase.

Environmental information on products is typically communicated through numerical indicators, reflecting the technical and quantitative nature of environmental assessment methods such as Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) (ISO, 2006a; ISO, 2006b). However, several studies have demonstrated that detailed numerical results can be challenging to interpret and apply during the early stages of design, when critical decisions about materials and product architecture are made (Bovea and Pérez-Belis, 2012; Hallstedt et al., 2010). To facilitate the integration of life-cycle considerations at the design and textile selection stage, it is essential to explore approaches for communicating environmental information in a more accessible, at-a-glance format. Visual, qualitative, or semi-quantitative representations (e.g., heuristics, simplified indicators, or categorical labels) have been shown to support designers’ cognitive processes more effectively and enhance the integration of environmental criteria into early-stage decision-making (Daalhuizen et al., 2015; Lofthouse, 2006). These approaches aim to complement, rather than replace, numerical data by translating complex life-cycle information into actionable insights suitable for early-stage design contexts.

Consequently, a hypothetical material datasheet within a material selection tool should encompass the following elements:

Based on this framework, Figure 3 presents a mock-up material datasheet for a digital selection tool, designed to support informed decision-making in fashion design.

By leveraging the specific set of properties associated with each Material, a corresponding selection of ecodesign guidelines (derived from the framework outlined in Tables 6, 7) can be assigned to each material record. For instance, if a material exhibits a high potential for microplastics release, the associated ecodesign recommendation may involve prioritising its application in garments that require infrequent washing. Similarly, if a material datasheet indicates that end-of-life options are limited to energy recovery, the relevant ecodesign guideline may emphasise design for remanufacturing or life-extension strategies aimed at delaying disposal. Accordingly, the tool should provide a clear and direct link between each material record and a tailored set of “Suggested Ecodesign Strategies,” dynamically generated based on the material’s specific property profile.

Additionally, moodboarding activity is widely recognised as a core practice within fashion and product design workflows, supporting early-stage ideation, aesthetic exploration, and the articulation of conceptual narratives through visual and material references (Eckert and Stacey, 2000; McKelvey and Munslow, 2012). Recent research in sustainable and digital design tools suggests that integrating material information directly into early ideation environments can enhance designers’ ability to consider environmental criteria alongside aesthetic qualities (Lofthouse, 2006; Daalhuizen et al., 2015). Therefore, enabling the direct import of material data and material alternatives into a digital moodboarding environment has the potential to improve tool usability significantly, allowing designers to seamlessly align creative exploration with sustainability-informed material selection during the initial phases of the design process (Figure 4).

Once several material entries are collected, information filtering can be employed through a set of filters, as hypothesised in Figure 5, which are set on fibre nature, fibre origin, geographical production site, and certifications.

Finally, Figure 6 presents a storyboard illustrating the potential use of the mock-up tool, encompassing the homepage, overview page, materials database/collection page, material datasheet, ecodesign guidelines overview, and moodboard page.