Negotiating Sustainability in Fashion Education in Indonesia

The fashion industry’s growing environmental impact has increased the need for more effective sustainability education, especially in fashion design programs. While previous research has focused on curriculum integration and pedagogical frameworks in sustainability, less is known about how students negotiate sustainability within materially constrained studio contexts, particularly in the Global South. This study examines how undergraduate fashion design students approach sustainability during project-based learning under conditions of material uncertainty and limited resources. Using a qualitative multi-case design, four student group projects in a Sustainability for Fashion course at a university in Surabaya, Indonesia, were analyzed through reflective semi-structured interviews and cross-case thematic analysis. Findings show that sustainability implementation was not linear but evolved through iterative negotiation, with decision-making shaped by material uncertainty, resource limits, and adaptive trade-offs. The results show that students prioritized technical feasibility and adopted pragmatic strategies such as trial-and-error and resource improvisation, when faced with uncertainty. After the project was completed, their understanding of sustainable fashion also shifted toward a more process-oriented, context-sensitive perspective, highlighting sustainability learning as a situated and negotiated practice.