Living Labs as Cultural Infrastructures: Performing and Normalising Circular Fashion Practices

The transition to circular models in fashion and textiles requires changes that go beyond technical innovation. The literature recognises that systemic change depends on the transformation of shared meanings around consumption and production, and that spaces for co-design and collaborative learning are crucial to generating this transformation. This article documents how Living Labs operate in this capacity, analysing the Madeback Circular Fashion Festival (May–November 2025), a pilot project of the Fashion & Textile Living Lab at the Politecnico di Milano. The study employs the Living Lab Integrative Process (LLIP) as both a design framework and an analytical lens. Adopting a qualitative and participatory method, the study documents how the three spaces of the LLIP—Problem Space, Solution Space and Implementation Space—simultaneously structured both design innovation and empirical analysis. The results point to three main contributions: (i) Living Labs can function as cultural infrastructures in which performative and narrative dimensions may contribute to the gradual normalisation of alternative practices; (ii) the Quadruple Helix operates as a living process characterised by distributed intentionality and emerging trust; and (iii) transformative learning appears through the co-production of knowledge in embodied and relational practices. The article identifies contextual factors that enabled the project—from its location in a design university to its multi-year funding—and the related constraints on transferability, concluding that Living Labs are promising infrastructures for sustainable transitions when they consciously integrate performative, cultural and relational dimensions.