The fast pace of fashion often leaves behind a trail of waste. Trends change quickly, and clothes that once felt stylish can seem outdated just months later.
As a result, around 92 million tons of textile waste are produced each year worldwide.
But what if your wardrobe could adapt instead of being thrown away?
What if one dress could turn into a top, or a pair of pants could transform into a skirt?
A team of researchers from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) and Adobe is developing a new tool that could make this possible.
Their software system, called Refashion, is designed to help people create eco-friendly clothing that can be reassembled into new items.
Instead of treating clothes as single-use fashion, Refashion allows users to design garments that can be reshaped, resized, and restyled again and again.
“Most clothes you buy today are static,” explains Rebecca Lin, an MIT PhD student and lead author of the study.
“Refashion helps people design garments that can evolve with them—so they can be repaired, resized, or restyled instead of thrown away.”
The software breaks down fashion design into modules, or smaller building blocks. Users draw and plan each section of a clothing item on a simple digital grid, connecting shapes to outline parts like sleeves, collars, or waistbands.
The system then generates a blueprint for how these parts fit together. A user could, for example, design a shirt with a detachable hood for rainy days—or create a dress that can later be converted into maternity wear or a jumpsuit.
In a user study, both professional designers and beginners were able to use Refashion to build prototypes within about 30 minutes. Some created outfits that could change from an asymmetric top into a jumpsuit, or from a casual outfit into a formal dress.
Refashion’s interface lets users experiment freely. They can customize clothing shapes or use templates for items like T-shirts or trousers.
The software also includes creative design tools: a “pleat” option adds folds, a “gather” feature creates puffy skirts or sleeves, and a “dart” function allows fitted shaping around the waist or chest.
Rather than stitching everything together permanently, Refashion suggests reusable connectors such as Velcro dots, metal snaps, or brads—small fasteners that make it easy to detach and reattach sections.
Once the design is complete, the software produces a 2D pattern showing where each piece goes, then visualizes the garment on 3D digital mannequins of various body types.
Beyond making fashion more adaptable, Refashion could help reduce waste by using fewer materials and promoting reuse.
Lin and her collaborators are now working to expand the system to handle more durable fabrics and curved designs. They also hope to use patchwork techniques—assembling pieces from recycled textiles like denim or crochet—to create stylish, sustainable clothing.
“This is a great example of how computer-aided design can promote sustainability,” says Adrien Bousseau, a senior researcher at Inria Centre at Université Côte d’Azur.
“By encouraging reconfiguration instead of replacement, this approach could help clothes last longer—and make fashion both creative and responsible.”
The research was supported by MIT’s Morningside Academy for Design, Adobe Research, and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, and was recently presented at the ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology.
With Refashion, the future of clothing may be less about consumption and more about transformation—where yesterday’s scarf becomes today’s hat, and today’s T-shirt becomes tomorrow’s jacket.
