Development and application of an integrated Life Cycle Assessment and Multi-Criteria Decision Making Model to support sustainable solutions in the fashion industry: the case of Fashion Art.

The urgent problem of climate change has gained widespread attention in today's world, leading to a critical analysis of its far-reaching effects. In particular, the fashion industry, with its substantial environmental footprint, has come under scrutiny for its environmental, as well as social impacts. And for these reasons, there is an increasing recognition of the need to assess sustainability within the fashion world, not only as an ethical consideration but also as a strategic opportunity for competitive advantage. Indeed, this paradigm shift toward sustainable practices is not only a response to environmental imperatives but also a transformative pathway for the fashion industry to thrive in a changing world. In this context, among environmental impact assessment metrics, LCA appears to be the most suitable. The utilization of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) emerges as a systematic and analytical methodology, evaluating the environmental footprint of a product or service throughout its entire life cycle. LCA employs a scientific and standardized approach, considering the entire product life cycle, adopting a systemic perspective, and enabling a comprehensive impact assessment while avoiding burden shifting. Despite its efficacy, LCA encounters challenges, particularly in interpreting diverse life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) results across impact categories through normalization and weighting. However, the demand for identifying relevant impact categories and obtaining unequivocal results has spurred further research, including the computation of single scores. This thesis aims to develop a model synthesizing various LCA environmental indicators to derive a single evaluation score. And in addition, the creation of a decision model that helps identifying the most sustainable solution, in the decision-making context. To address these needs, this study explores and develops an integration model of LCA and Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) applied to the case of Fashion Art, a luxury fashion company specializing in the design and production of clothing, particularly in the Denim sector. The model adopted in this study is the hybrid method: FAHP&TOPSIS based on the LCA results. This combines the TOPSIS method for preference ranking and the AHP method for weight assignment, with AHP modified into FAHP to address ambiguity in MCDM problems through fuzzy set theory when parameters are not precisely defined.