How can a small local practice evolve into a replicable network?

Common Threads explores how design can support social practices that resist the growth-driven logic of the fashion system. Through clothing swapping, it frames this act as collective and political: it not only extends the life of garments but also redefines relationships between people, clothes, and value systems.

Grounded in participatory and community-based design approaches, the thesis analyses how small-scale initiatives such as Swap Party Italia can generate broader systemic impact by connecting local actions into wider networks. Through a distributed network of swap initiatives across Italy, the project develops an open and reproducible infrastructure—including shared tools and communication platforms—that enables others to adapt and adopt the model according to their local contexts.

Within this framework, design shifts from individual authorship toward distributed agency, where care and commoning become central to the transformation of fashion. At the same time, the thesis recognises that systemic change depends not only on tools and methods, but also on the capacity to sustain collective practices over time. It therefore reflects on the vulnerabilities of commons-based initiatives, including challenges related to horizontal governance and social sustainability within the network itself.

By positioning swapping as a small-scale commons-based practice, Common Threads contributes to discussions on eco-social transformation and sustains how design can operate as an infrastructure for collective experimentation beyond market logics.