The dyeing and finishing step represents a clear hotspot in the textile supply chain as the wet processing stages require significant amounts of water, energy, and chemicals. In order to tackle environmental issues, natural dyes are gaining attention from researchers as more sustainable alternatives to synthetic ones. This review discusses the topic of natural dyes, providing a description of their main features and differences compared to synthetic dyes, and encompasses a summary of recent research in the field of natural dyes with specific reference to the following areas of sustainable innovation: extraction techniques, the preparation of substrates, the mordanting process, and the dyeing process. The literature review showed that promising new technologies and techniques have been successfully employed to improve the performance and sustainability of natural dyeing processes, but several limitations such as the poor fastness properties of natural dyes, their low affinity with textiles substrates, difficulties in the reproducibility of shades, as well as other factors such as cost-effectiveness considerations, still prevent industry from adopting natural dyes on a larger scale and will require further research in order to expand their use beyond niche applications.

The Pandemic has forced change, raising questions about design models, business models, incentives and community education. The urgency of containment measures has redefined the role of health and highlighted the role of Design, which is involved in emergency situations, in designing the universe of protective devices, intervening with Human Centered Design approaches, proposing shared strategies that translate the knowledge and experience of the most advanced research into products. The case study collects the results obtained from the elaboration of the research project financed by the Campania Region, “Smart&Safe. Design for new personal protective equipment” submitted to the call for the acquisition of research and development services for the fight against Covid-19. The research constitutes a substantial study of the problems related to health emergencies and proposes an update in the redesign of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), now in a plural Intelligent Individual Protection System (IIPS), which determine a relational system of integrated protection.

This study aims to reflect on a possible symbiosis between the fashion system and unrelated companies focused on reducing textile waste. Recent developments in the fashion system, in terms of the organizational network, highlight the importance of collaboration, or vice versa of competition enhancement mechanisms. The highly innovative and creative skills and tasks concentrate much of the value in the creation phase, characteristic of emerging sectors such as creative ones. The methodology will be carried out through a review of the reference literature, with a critical, constructive, and real analysis on strategies for the construction of this symbiosis. It is expected to contribute to a reflection on the development of collaboration and cooperation skills in an interdisciplinary, or even transdisciplinary approach, for the training and preparation of fashion design professionals, requiring a greater commitment from Academia in the creation of interactions and interrelationships with still very different disciplinary sectors.