Asst. Prof. Dr. Thanotai Mongkolsin
Abstract :
The BANI World (Brittle, Anxious, Nonlinear, Incomprehensible) concept characterizes the contemporary world as fragile, unpredictable, and difficult to comprehend. These attributes have profound implications for fashion accessory design, necessitating innovative approaches that address uncertainty and instability. Within the fashion industry, brittleness manifests in environmental crises, economic instability, and the reliance on unsustainable supply chains. To mitigate these challenges, designers are adopting Circular Fashion principles, particularly through upcycling and material repurposing. By utilizing discarded materials, fashion can become more resilient and adaptable. Additionally, growing anxiety among consumers has heightened the demand for fashion that provides emotional security and comfort. This aligns with emotional fashion design, which integrates soft textures, protective features, and sensory-friendly elements to evoke a sense of well-being. Furthermore, the nonlinear nature of the modern fashion industry—driven by rapid technological shifts and unpredictable market trends—requires brands to embrace flexibility and adaptability. Unexpected Material Juxtapositions, where unconventional and contrasting materials are combined in surprising ways, serve as an innovative design strategy in response to these shifts. Additionally, fashion acts as a medium for interpreting incomprehensible societal changes, encouraging designers to experiment with avant-garde aesthetics and speculative storytelling to navigate an uncertain future. In this project, it integrates these insights with inspiration drawn from upcycled everyday objects, particularly broken plastic baskets, sandbags, zippers, and hangers from childhood storage. These objects, typically considered kitsch due to their outdated yet nostalgic appeal, are transformed into a sustainable fashion bag design that challenges conventional aesthetics. The final design merges the unpredictability of BANI world, the playfulness of kitsch, and the sustainability of upcycled materials, resulting in a bold, ironic, and functional fashion statement. By repurposing discarded objects, this project highlights the potential of fashion to embrace sustainability, emotional engagement, and experimental design, redefining how materials and aesthetics interact in an era of uncertainty.
Objectives :
- To design a fashion accessory, inform of a bag that embodies the unpredictability of the BANI world.
- To promote sustainability through upcycled everyday objects by incorporating discarded materials, repurposed textiles, and unconventional elements, reducing waste while enhancing creativity in fashion accessory design.
- To explore the fusion of kitsch aesthetics and functional design by using bold, playful, and nostalgic elements, transforming everyday objects into a visually striking and interactive fashion statement.
Conceptual Framework :
The BANI World (Brittle, Anxious, Nonlinear, Incomprehensible) framework, which describes the contemporary world as fragile, filled with anxiety, unpredictable, and difficult to comprehend (Bogatko & Yakhnovets, 2023; Zakharov, 2022), has significant implications for fashion design. In the current fashion industry, brittleness arises from environmental issues, economic crises, and reliance on unsustainable supply chains. To address these challenges, fashion designers must incorporate Circular Fashion principles (Reconomy, 2024), emphasizing resource efficiency through strategies such as upcycling (Botea-Muntean & Constantinescu, 2024). Furthermore, anxiety among consumers in the BANI era has increased the demand for fashion products that provide a sense of security and comfort. This aligns with emotional fashion design principles, which have been integrated into this project’s design approach. Moreover, the fashion industry is evolving rapidly in a nonlinear manner, requiring brands to be flexible and adaptive. Emerging business models such as Unexpected Material Juxtapositions offer viable solutions within the BANI World context. Additionally, fashion serves as a medium for reflecting societal changes and future trends. Designers must navigate incomprehensibility by interpreting complex cultural shifts through experimental fashion design.
This project integrates these insights with inspiration drawn from everyday objects from childhood that have been left unused in storage, such as broken baskets, sandbags, zippers, and hangers from school days (Lawson, 2006). These elements embody the kitsch style, characterized by its outdated yet distinctive aesthetic (Kulka, 1988; Ortlieb & Carbon, 2019; Tedman, 2009). The resulting design concept merges the unpredictability of the BANI world, the nostalgia and humor of kitsch, and the sustainability of upcycled everyday objects. By repurposing discarded materials, this bag design challenges conventional aesthetics, transforming waste into a bold, playful, and functional fashion statement.
Process / Methodology :
Process
- Collect and analyze information related to the BANI World and its relationship with fashion design from various perspectives.
- Identify and explore inspirations for the design concept.
- Establish connections between the BANI World, fashion accessory design, and sources of inspiration, leading to the development of key fashion design elements—including color, silhouette or form, material, and detail & technique (McKelvey & Munslow, 2012; Seivewright, 2012) —as a foundation for the design process.
- Synthesize the gathered data to formulate a comprehensive design approach, detailing the key insights and strategies derived from the research.Fashion Design Elements related to the BANI world concept:Brittle → Reclaimed Yet Reinforced Materials: Upcycled broken plastic baskets, combined with deadstock shoelaces woven together to create a “fractured but strong” aesthetic.Anxious → Safety and Comfort Features: Wrapped textures, soft elements, and rounded zippers to enhance a sense of security and ease.
Nonlinear → Unexpected Material Juxtapositions: One side of the bag features a glow-in-the-dark element, creating a surprising visual effect at night.
Incomprehensible → Kitsch & Surrealism: Everyday objects such as baskets, hangers, shoelaces, and sandbags are reimagined as bag components, featuring playful and unconventional designs with bold, clashing colours.
- Begin the sketching process based on the available materials.
- Refine and finalize the sketches, selecting the most suitable design.
- Experiment with detail and technique development, create a structural prototype of the bag, and address any challenges encountered during the prototyping process.
- Assemble all components to construct the final bag design.
- Conduct usability testing by carrying and using the bag in real-life scenarios.
- Evaluate and summarize the design outcomes, assessing functionality, aesthetics, and alignment with the initial concept.
Techniques and Materials :
Techniques
- Disassemble the broken plastic baskets to extract the bottom parts, which will be used as the two side panels of the bag.
- Weave shoelaces through the baskets’ holes to reduce the sharpness of the plastic, provide a soft tactile experience, and support the structure of the damaged basket.
- Use the remaining shoelaces to wrap the coat hangers, creating a soft grip when holding the bag.
- Sew leftover sandbags into a zipper to form the interior lining of the bag, providing space to store items.
- Assemble all parts by weaving the sides of the bag together and attaching the sandbag lining as the inner compartment.
- Apply glow-in-the-dark paint to one side of the bag, including the edges, to reflect light when used at night, enhancing safety in low-light conditions.
Materials: Deadstock shoelaces, unused baskets, unused hangers, defective sandbags, deadstock zippers and glow-in-the-dark pigment
Result / Conclusion :
The BANI World framework redefines fashion by emphasizing sustainability, adaptability, emotional engagement, and creative experimentation. Brittleness in the industry is addressed through upcycling and circular fashion, ensuring durability and reduced waste. Meanwhile, the anxious nature of modern consumers drives the need for comfort-oriented, emotionally reassuring designs, which kitsch aesthetics complement by introducing humor and nostalgia. As the industry becomes increasingly nonlinear, transformable and multi-purpose designs become essential. Kitsch fashion embraces this disorder through bold colors, exaggerated elements, and unexpected material pairings, encouraging innovative applications of everyday objects in design. Finally, the incomprehensible aspects of the BANI world drive fashion towards avant-garde and surreal aesthetics, with kitsch’s absurdity providing a creative bridge for reinterpreting familiar materials in unconventional ways. By integrating fashion, kitsch, and everyday objects, this approach challenges traditional fashion norms while promoting sustainability and emotional engagement, making fashion not only functional but also a reflection of cultural and societal evolution in an unpredictable world.
Table 1: Connection Between BANI World, Fashion Design, Kitsch Style & Everyday Objects
| BANI World | Fashion Design Response | Kitsch Style | Integration of Everyday Objects |
| Brittle | Sustainable & upcycled materials to reduce reliance on fragile supply chains. | Nostalgic aesthetics create familiarity & emotional comfort. | Repurposed discarded items like baskets, shoelaces, and zippers add durability & uniqueness. |
| Anxious | Soft textures, ergonomic shapes & protective elements enhance security. | Playful, exaggerated designs reduce stress & encourage humor. | Everyday materials like plush textiles, rounded zippers, and padded elements provide tactile comfort. |
| Nonlinear | Transformable design adapts to fast-changing needs. | Clashing patterns, maximalist layering embrace disorder & unpredictability. | Unexpected material combinations (e.g., glow-in-the-dark elements, mix of rigid & soft textures) reflect nonlinearity. |
| Incomprehensible | Avant-garde & experimental fashion challenges conventional aesthetics. | Surreal, ironic, and absurd designs create a sense of curiosity. | Objects like sandbags, hangers, and baskets are creatively reimagined as fashion components. |
From the summary of the information in Table 1, develop the design work in the attached images
References :
Bogatko, J., & Yakhnovets, D. (2023). From a VUCA to a BANI world. Science tutor L. Bedritskaya, BSEU (Minsk).
Botea-Muntean, D.-R., & Constantinescu, R. (2024). VUCA and BANI worlds – Challenges for nowadays business models. Could circular economy and various digital instruments like Internet of Things help a business model to respond to such challenges? An examination of solutions and future strategies through marketing lens. Journal of Information Systems & Operations Management, 18(1), 38–290.
Kulka, T. (1988). Kitsch. The British Journal of Aesthetics, 28(1), 18-27.
Lawson, R. (2006). The science of cycology: Failures to understand how everyday objects work. Memory & Cognition, 34(8), 1667–1675.
McKelvey, K. & Munslow, J., (2012). Fashion Design: Process Innovation and Practice. Second Edition. UK: John Wiley and Sons Ltd.
Ortlieb, S. A., & Carbon, C.-C. (2019). Kitsch and perception: Towards a new ‘aesthetic from below’. Art & Perception, 7(1), 1–26. https://doi.org/10.1163/22134913-00001091
Reconomy. (2024, September 3). The state of the circular economy in the fashion industry. Reconomy. https://www.reconomy.com/2024/09/03/the-state-of-the-circular-economy-in-the-fashion-industry/#:~:text=The%20concept%20of%20circular%20economy%20in%20fashion&text=In%20a%20circular%20system%2C%20garments,returned%20to%20the%20production%20cycle.
Seivewright, S. (2012). Basics Fashion Design 01: Research and Design. Switzerland: AVA Publishing SA.
Tedman, G. (2009). Origins of Kitsch. Rethinking Marxism, 22(1), 56–67. https://doi.org/10.1080/08935690903411644
Zakharov, Y. (2022). Comparative analysis of approaches to world concepts: SPOD society, VUCA society, and BANI society. Social Economics, (64), 149-158. https://doi.org/10.26565/2524-2547-2022-64-13
