Creative Design: Professional

Knitgeist

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Abstract

This creative scholarship investigates how design fallout from computerized seamless knitting can be transformed into innovative, sustainable knitwear through modular silhouette design and speculative aesthetics. Addressing a gap in existing sustainability research that largely focuses on cut-and-sew reuse or surface design, the study reframes industrial misknits and digital “errors” as generative design material rather than waste. Using a research-through-practice approach, misaligned, unevenly dyed seamless knitted tubes produced on circular Santoni and WHOLEGARMENT® Shima Seiki machines were reassembled through threading, gathering, and modular connections to create an adaptive, zero-waste ensemble. The resulting design draws on cyber-organic and cyberpunk narratives to position knitwear as a protective, expressive interface within a hyper-connected future. By integrating modular functionality, silhouette distortion, and narrative encoding, this work advances creative scholarship in knitwear by proposing failure-driven design as both a sustainable strategy and a vehicle for conceptual and aesthetic innovation.
 
 
 

Keywords: knitwear, modular design, sustainability

How to Cite:

Gorea, A. & Tyler, C., (2025) “Knitgeist”, International Textile and Apparel Association Annual Conference Proceedings 82(1). doi: https://doi.org/10.31274/itaa.21821