Anne Prahl is a London-based design consultant with over 20 years of experience in the global textile and clothing industry. She has a PhD focused on designing sustainable wearable sensors for preventative health. Her work emphasizes sustainable innovation through research, designing collections, delivering workshops, and developing tools to inspire responsible design practices. She is currently looking to collaborate on further developing her research on non-embedded wearable sensors for the sports and wellness sector.

1. Anne Prahl PhD
concept+design
2017
Sustainable design inspiration & innovation

2. ©AnnePrahl,2017
Anne is a London-based trend,
design & innovation consultant
with in-depth knowledge and
understanding of the global
textile & clothing industry.
She has worked as designer,
design and category manager,
trend forecaster and freelance
design consultant for over 20
years, for companies including
Nike, Speedo, WGSN, Esprit,
Ellesse, Reusch, Marks &
Spencer, Puma and Animal,
in the UK, Hong Kong and
Europe.
Sustainable innovation opportunities
As the sportswear & outdoor market is growing at unprecedented levels, demand and opportunities
for new materials and products continue to increase and it is particularly important to consider how
sustainable innovation can contribute to a circular economy, where environmental and human
wellbeing is deeply integrated into the design process.
Combining her extensive knowledge of the international sports and activewear market (p. 3) and
passion for wellbeing and sustainable design, Anne has been specialising in the exploration of
sustainable design approaches since 2007(pp. 4-6) and offers flexible, tailor-made creative
support to design & development teams and management:
Research & strategy
• Market research & analysis (brands, textiles, products, consumer trends & business models)
• Brand & range development
Inform & inspire
• Trend forecasting & analysis (textiles & materials, colour, key styles and consumer)
• Creative direction & design concepts (textiles, clothing, footwear, accessories & branding)
• Sustainable innovation trends & developments (textiles & materials, design & manufacturing
processes, products, consumer behaviour & services and business models)
• Design for Sustainability inspiration lectures, interactive workshops & bespoke training
Create & develop
• Collection design (clothing & accessories)
• Specification sheets, sample development and factory liaison
• Fabric & trim development
Recyclable & biodegradable wearable material concepts
© Anne Prahl, 2015

3. Sports & activewear design:
Trend forecasting/ creative direction/ textile & product design and
development
In the early 90’s Anne was instrumental in paving the way for Puma UK’s first dedicated
women’s sports collections, as well as establishing men’s, women’s and children’s accessories
as a key category for the brand. During her eight years at the Pentland Group, she was first
tasked with developing German ski & football brand Reusch into a global player, before
spearheading the sportswear shop-in-shop concept and its products for Marks & Spencer and
later oversaw the design and development of Ellesse’s tennis, ski, active lifestyle and fitness
collections for the global market.
Since setting up her design consultancy in 2003, Anne has worked on long-term design
contracts for Nike (EMEA and APA), where she was responsible for women’s SportCulture
products. At Esprit she worked on monthly Men’s sportswear collections, while at Topshop
she proposed & designed the first dedicated sportswear range and designed the MOTO SNO
collection.
Between 2007 and 2013, Anne was Freelance Editor (sports & materials) and acted as Interim
Head of Sports (2010-2011) for trend forecaster WGSN, where she was responsible for design
direction, key silhouettes, textile forecasts, design of inspirational sports & activewear
collections and regular trend analysis and tradeshow reports.
©AnnePrahl,2017
MOTO SNO (Topshop)
NIKE EMEA WGSN WGSN
NIKE EMEA

4. London College of Fashion Chelsea College of Art & Design Orsola de Castro
MA Collection: ‘Gathering Pattern’ (exploring closed-loop production for swimwear)
Design for Sustainability:
Research/ textile & product design/
collaborative design projects
©AnnePrahl,2017
In 2007, Anne gained her Master’s Degree in Design
for Textile Futures from Central Saint Martins
College of Art & Design in London, an experience
which started her on-going journey into exploring
Design for Sustainability.
This journey is taking her to new places and opportunities, as she is continuously exploring her role as a designer through diverse
research and design projects. Following the presentation of her MA collection, Anne was commissioned by Speedo International to
develop a groundbreaking creative project, which explored the reuse, remanufacture and recycling of banned LZR Racer suits
and other performance swimwear.
This project included collaborations with Orsola de Castro (From Somewhere), Chelsea College of Art & Design (interior and spatial
design students) and London College of Fashion (BA Sportswear and Fashion Contour design students) and provided Speedo with
significant insights into the complexity of designing products suitable for remanufacture and recycling at end-of-life/ use.

5. ©AnnePrahl,2017
Design for Sustainability:
Presentations & lectures/ design projects/ workshops & training/
tools & education
WRAP Clothing Knowledge Hub
Keynote at Copenhagen Fashion summit
Student sketch of Sustainable Design lecture
Esprit Sustainable Design workshop RCA/ Esprit Sustainable Design project/ collection
Anne’s more recent projects have focused on informing & inspiring others. She presents
lectures and webinars to the next generation of designers and is a regular contributor to the
Youth Fashion Summit in Copenhagen and visiting lecturer at VIA University College in
Denmark.
Anne further specialises in developing and delivering sustainable design workshops and
training, such as the Design for Durability workshops and bespoke training sessions
delivered on behalf of WRAP, which were designed specifically to support key UK brands
and retailers. She is the co-inventor of the WRAP Clothing Knowledge Hub, which she
developed in collaboration with biov8tion and Sustain to provide an easy-to-access online
tool, which promotes resource efficiency and considered design.
Throughout these projects, Anne explores and advocates design as the central force to
create opportunities for more environmentally-considered textile, product and service
solutions. This approach has resonated with the many students she has taught and inspired
on their journey to become responsible designers, as well as industry stakeholders, who are
keen to transform their existing working process, in order to achieve positive change across
the entire lifecycle of clothing and other products.

6. ©AnnePrahl,2017
Design for Sustainability:
Designing wearable sensors for Preventative Health:
An exploration of material, form and function (PhD)
The research proposed that in order to engage a broad section of the population in a preventative lifestyle to significantly reduce the
pressure on global healthcare systems, wearable sensors need to be designed to integrate easily into the users’ existing lifestyles,
routines and outfits. The thesis and supporting collections demonstrate that this could be achieved through the design and
development of recyclable, biodegradable and cost-effective substrate materials, non-integrated wearable form factors and
meticulous consideration of a divergent range of user needs and preferences.
Combining her interest in sustainable innovation and sports, fitness & wellbeing,
Anne successfully completed her practice-led PhD research at London College
of Fashion in early 2016. Her work explored the design of new wearable
materials and form factors for on-body sensing, both from the wearer and the
environment. The research focus was to design and develop new types of
wearable sensors, capable of providing alternatives to garment/ textile
embedded sensors, as these could cause significant issues at end-of-life of
the product.
Early-stage sensor prototypes
©AnnePrahl2015
Skin-attached wearable sensors Presenting at Forward Thinking Summit, Oslo
Anne has been disseminating her
research with industry and academic
stakeholders at key events, such as her
EOG/ SAC commissioned webinar, the
Sustainable Innovation 2016 conference
in Epsom, the Forward Thinking Summit in
Oslo and the Circular Transitions
conference in London.
She is now looking for collaborators
with similar interests to develop this work
further in the sports & wellbeing sector.
©AnnePrahl2015

7. Contact details
anne.prahl@btinternet.com phone: +44 (0)2072280922 mobile: +44 (0)7710327797 https://uk.linkedin.com/in/anne-prahl-phd-2983627
References and links
Behind the Scenes at the Speedo LZR Racer student collaboration shoot - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGsSa3uMgX4
Speedo Pavilion LZR Racer student collaboration -
http://www.treehugger.com/sustainable-product-design/amazing-summer-pavilion-made-from-200-upcycled-speedo-swimsuits-photos.html
‘Space of Waste’ Speedo LZR Racer student collaboration -
http://blogs.arts.ac.uk/chelsea/2011/04/03/space-of-waste-chelsea-college-of-art-and-design-ecobuild-2011/
Speedo/ From Somewhere collaboration -
http://www.ecouterre.com/speedo-from-somewhere-launch-full-range-of-upcycled-swimsuit-couture/
Presentations & webinars:
'Design for sustainable consumption' at the Copenhagen Fashion Summit, 2012 - https://vimeo.com/86405738
‘A trend perspective: Designing out waste’ webinar for Copenhagen Youth Fashion Summit, 2014 - https://vimeo.com/87607213
‘Designing with/ designing out waste’ at Performance Days Munich, April 2016 -
https://www.performancedays.com/details/designing-with-designing-out-waste.html
‘Design-driven innovation for Wearable Technology’, Forward Thinking Summit Oslo, 2016 - http://doga.no/nyhet/video-framtanker2016
‘Responsible Innovation for Wearable Technology: Exploring design strategies and future concepts’, EOG/ SAC webinar, 2016 -
https://vimeo.com/eogcsrsustainbility/wearabletech
Sustainable Innovation 2016 Conference, University for the Creative Arts, Epsom
http://cfsd.org.uk/events/sustainable-innovation-2016/abstracts/
Tools & resources for industry:
WRAP CLOTHING KNOWLEDGE HUB - http://ckh.wrap.org.uk
WRAP Sustainable Clothing Guide and design for durability training - http://www.wrap.org.uk/content/extending-life-clothes
Design for Sustainability projects & workshops:
Esprit SDW - http://www.esprit.com/company/sustainability/developing_eco_awareness_/
Esprit/ RCA student collaboration - http://www.verymagazine.org/magazine/very-issue-16/14-issue-16/155-esprit-royal-college-of-art
George (ASDA) design for durability workshop - www.wrap.org.uk/sites/files/wrap/George-SCAP-trial-cstudy.pdf
PhD thesis:
‘Designing wearable sensors for Preventative Health: An exploration of material, form and function’ - http://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/9077/