Beyond sustainability rhetoric: design guidelines for a responsible fashion system

Introduction The fashion system is under increasing pressure to integrate sustainability across complex and globalized supply chains. However, despite growing commitments, sustainability narratives often rely on reductive solutionism and selective transparency, leading to a misalignment between communication strategies and actual supply chain transformations. This paper critically examines how sustainability rhetoric shapes design briefs and decision-making processes, thereby constraining the potential for systemic innovation. Sustainability rhetoric refers to the recurrent framing of sustainability through simplified narratives, solutionist claims, and selective transparency that prioritize communicability and reputational value over the structural transformation of production systems, governance models, and decision-making processes.Methods Adopting a qualitative research design that combines discourse analysis with a multi-case study approach, the study identifies alternative pathways emerging from fashion companies and research-driven initiatives that operationalize sustainability through material experimentation, technological innovation, and reconfigured supply chain models. Through cross-case analysis, this study develops an interpretative design-driven framework for reconfiguring sustainability as an integrated system of decisions, rather than a trend-driven, futures-oriented, or purely narrative set of isolated interventions.Results The findings reveal recurrent rhetorical patterns that limit the scope of sustainable action, alongside evidence of practices that challenge dominant narratives by embedding digital traceability, localized production, circular material flows, and collaborative ecosystem approaches. The framework articulates how sustainability is enacted across different leverage points of the fashion value chain.Discussion The discussion reframes these findings within a broader systemic perspective, highlighting how sustainability outcomes are shaped by governance structures, economic logics, and cultural and ethical assumptions related to value, speed, and consumption. This research contributes to redefining sustainability in the fashion system by demonstrating how integrating critical design perspectives with supply chain innovation can support a transition toward more transparent, accountable, and transformative models.