Clothing and Textiles: Future by Emergent Design

A national Futures Seminar, organized by ACPTC's Future Development Committee, was held in Minneapolis in April 1983. The seminar gave impetus to a series of subregional workshops which identified strengths and weaknesses of the field of textiles and clothing as a basis for future planning. The interrelationships among these strengths and weaknesses/opportunities and threats are discussed here in the context of a college or university setting. Because the issues involved are inextricably interrelated, the author contends they cannot be resolved in piecemeal fashion. It is further suggested that perhaps one of the reasons that we have not yet found the solutions to our problems is because we may not be asking the right questions.