This paper presents a set of Life Cycle Design (LCD) guidelines to operatively support fashion companies to design
low-environmental impact cloth. The LCD guidelines for environmentally sustainable clothing care systems has
been developed with the following process adopted since several years in company/organization consultancy by the
LeNSlab of Politecnico di Milano: desk research of the fashion system and its environmental impacts and sustainable
best practices analysis; identification of the environmental design strategy priorities; definition of cloth-specific
guidelines. i.e. a process of specifying the general LCD strategies: material minimization, energy minimization,
non-toxic harmful resources selection, renewable and biocompatible resources selection, product life optimization,
material life extension, design for disassembly; tool development both as a handbook and a digital tool. The result is
both an open access handbook and a digital tool of LCD clothing care guidelines and checklist to support and orientate
the future designers and companies to an environmentally sustainable design of clothing for fashion.

Authors: Diana Giannone, Carlo Vezzoli, Giovanni Maria Conti