Kolding School of Design receives international awards

Kolding School of Design was honoured at the Global Fashion Conference 2024 in Bucharest, Romania, with two prestigious awards for a research paper focusing on inclusion and innovation in the fashion industry. Associate Professor Ulla Ræbild and Senior Lecturer Christel Arnevik received the "Special Mention Best Research Paper 2024" and "Best Research on Innovation 2024" awards for their work on body-scanning technologies and inclusive digital fashion development.

The Me-You-Us Project
The Me-You-Us project, developed in collaboration with Willem de Kooning Academy in Rotterdam and the University of Ljubljana, aims to integrate digital tools into artistic bachelor-level fashion and apparel programmes. The project focuses on how digital technologies can promote inclusion, diversity, and a green transition in the fashion industry.

The project is structured in three phases. In the first phase (Me), each participating institution developed its own course introducing digital prototyping using CLO3D. The second phase (You) shifted focus to how body scanning and digital representation could enhance inclusion and diversity while indirectly contributing to sustainability.

- In this phase, we worked intensively with body-scanning technologies to create more accurate digital representations of diverse body types, explains Christel Arnevik.

The award-winning paper specifically describes the development of these courses.

Smartphone Scanning

To make these technologies widely accessible, Design School Kolding’s project utilised two different scanning methods, both available as smartphone apps.

- This approach democratises how we can represent bodies outside the industry’s standard sizes, Arnevik elaborates.

The True to Form app was a central element of the project, and researchers had the opportunity to work closely with its developers, who also participated in the project’s final presentation.

Fashion for Wheelchair Users
One of the project's standout examples is the design of a tailored outfit for Antoinett, a young woman with muscular dystrophy and a love for glittering, unique clothing. With the help of Luma AI’s body-scanning technology, students created an avatar that accurately represented her needs as a wheelchair user. Based on the scan, they designed a shirt with embroidered details and Velcro fastenings, ensuring comfort while seated and making dressing easier. This example illustrates how digital technology and close user involvement can create fashion that is both functional and personal.

International Recognition
The paper presented at the conference was also co-authored by Tiia Jaakkola, a 2023 graduate and research assistant on the Me-You-Us project.

Ulla Ræbild, Associate Professor at the Lab for Sustainability and Design, and Christel Arnevik, Senior Lecturer and Programme Director for Fashion Design (BA), are delighted by the international recognition of their work:

- Receiving this recognition is a great encouragement for the vision of promoting a fashion industry that embraces all body types and needs.