Search results

Excess consumption of apparel is driven by the apparel industry to offer more styles at lower prices in shorter time and the consumers’ desire to change fashion. The purpose of this paper is to apply adaptable design in apparel as a sustainable design solution for excess consumption problem.

Guided by sustainable apparel design model C2CAD, two adaptable apparel prototypes for female college students were designed and developed. Focus group discussion and wear test were conducted with female college students to evaluate users’ acceptance, fit, comfort, and adaptability of the two prototypes.

Both prototypes were comfortable to wear by users with different sizes, indicating the users could wear the garment when she changed size. The adaptations and conversions were easily and enjoyably figured out by the users. The users would keep and use the adaptable apparel for a long time. The users would also buy fewer apparel if they were to own the adaptable apparel. Adaptable apparel would increase apparel utilization, eliminate the need to purchase unnecessary additional amount of clothing, and reduce excess consumption.

This research provided a pilot study on adaptable apparel design as an innovative approach to help solve excessive consumption problem. The adaptable garment prototypes would allow the fashion-forward female college student to easily change the function, fit, and style of the environmentally friendly garments.

The objective of the research is to characterize various key factors affecting apparel design and product quality.

In the fulfillment of the objective, the Delphi method and a survey questionnaire were used to collect related materials. This was followed by descriptive statistics, reliability, and factor analysis in order to set up the “house of quality” using the method of quality function deployment.

The factors that were found to affect the quality of apparel design were fashion sensitivity, ability of material application, colour sensitivity, fashion trend, fashion market positioning, and management. Fashion style, cloth quality, cutting quality, discount, and personal favourites were the key factors affecting consumers when choosing apparel. Keen observation ability, marketing analysis, and market development were very important for designing and producing high value‐added products.

The survey was conducted in Taiwan, which perhaps limits the usefulness of the findings elsewhere.

The article may assist apparel designers to understand the requirements of consumers of fashion products.

Apparel design rules have been formulated in Taiwan using the method of quality function development to assist apparel designers to improve design quality and production performance.

The purpose of this paper is to develop and implement a new sustainable apparel design and production model, cradle to cradle apparel design (C2CAD), that provides guidelines for apparel designers and manufacturers to solve some of the sustainability problems related to apparel production.

The C2CAD model was developed by integrating McDonough and Braungart's “cradle to cradle” model into existing apparel design and production models. Knitwear design and production was used to implement the C2CAD model as a proof of concept. The performance and cost of the C2CAD knitwear were evaluated.

The C2CAD model has four main steps: problem definition and research; sample making; solution development and collaboration; and production. Following the four steps and with an international collaboration similar to current apparel industry practices, “Four‐season sustainability” children's knitwear prototypes were developed. Produced with an acceptable manufacturing cost, the products have good mechanical and color fastness performance.

The C2CAD model provides practical guidelines for apparel designers and manufacturers and allows them to address all three pillars in sustainable development: economic development, social development, and environmental protection.

The C2CAD is the first apparel design and production model that emphasizes sustainability in addition to functional, expressive, and aesthetic considerations. The production process of “Four‐season sustainability” children's knitwear demonstrated the implementation of C2CAD model in sustainable apparel design and production.

A common pipeline of apparel design and simulation is adjusting 2D apparel patterns, putting them onto a virtual human model and performing 3D physically based simulation. However, manually adjusting 2D apparel patterns and performing simulations require repetitive adjustments and trials in order to achieve satisfactory results. To support future made-to-fit apparel design and manufacturing, efficient tools for fast custom design purposes are desired. The purpose of this paper is to propose a method to automatically adjust 2D apparel patterns and rapidly generate acustom apparel style for a given human model.

The authors first pre-define a set of constraints using feature points, feature lines and ease allowance for existing apparels and human models. The authors formulate the apparel fitting to a human model, as a process of optimization using these predefined constraints. Then, the authors iteratively solve the problem by minimizing the total fitting metric.

The authors observed that through reusing existing apparel styles, the process of designing apparels can be greatly simplified. The authors used a new fitting function to measure the geometric fitting of corresponding feature points/lines between apparels and a human model. Then, the optimized 2D patterns are automatically obtained by minimizing the matching function. The authors’ experiments show that the authors’ approach can increase the reusability of existing apparel styles and improve apparel design efficiency.

There are some limitations. First, in order to achieve interactive performance, the authors’ current 3D simulation does not detect collision within or between adjacent apparel surfaces. Second, the authors’ did not consider multiple layer apparels. It is non-trivial to define ease allowance between multiple layers.

The authors use a set of constraints such as ease allowance, feature points, feature lines, etc. for existing apparels and human models. The authors define a few new fitting functions using these pre-specified constraints. During physics-driven simulation, the authors iteratively minimize these fitting functions.

With the developments of e-commerce markets, novel recommendation technologies are becoming an essential part of many online retailers’ economic models to help drive online sales. Initially, the purpose of this paper is to undertake an investigation of apparel recommendations in the commercial market in order to verify the research value and significance. Then, this paper reviews apparel recommendation techniques and systems through academic research, aiming to acquaint apparel recommendation context, summarize the pros and cons of various research methods, identify research gaps and eventually propose new research solutions to benefit apparel retailing market.

This study utilizes empirical research drawing on 130 academic publications indexed from online databases. The authors introduce a three-layer descriptor for searching articles, and analyse retrieval results via distribution graphics of years, publications and keywords.

This study classified high-tech integrated apparel systems into 3D CAD systems, personalised design systems and recommendation systems. The authors’ research interest is focussed on recommendation system. Four types of models were found, namely clothes searching/retrieval, wardrobe recommendation, fashion coordination and intelligent recommendation systems. The forth type, smart systems, has raised more awareness in apparel research as it is equipped with advanced functions and application scenarios to satisfy customers. Despite various computational algorithms tested in system modelling, existing research is lacking in terms of apparel and users profiles research. Thus, from the review, the authors have identified and proposed a more complete set of key features for describing both apparel and users profiles in a recommendation system.

Based on previous studies, this is the first review paper on this topic in this subject field. The summarised work and the proposed new research will inspire future researchers with various knowledge backgrounds, especially, from a design perspective.

Developing countries engaged in apparel value chain are going global, seeking opportunities to upgrade the industry through providing higher value-added products and services. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how Sri Lankan apparel industry designers interact with the western fashion world in the apparel value chain process, and how they acquire, adapt and apply the knowledge needed to develop high-value fashion products in their fashion design practice.

The study adopts a qualitative approach through semi-structured interviews conducted with fashion design and product development professionals in the Sri Lankan apparel industry. An inductive thematic analysis is used in identifying participants’ experience of the western fashion world within their fashion design practice.

The study proposes a “fashion knowledge bridge” illustrating the ways in which Sri Lankan designers acquire and merge high-value fashion consumer culture and lifestyle knowledge with the manufacturing industry, through multisensory and virtual experience, termed “exposure”, in their interactions with the western fashion world as well as the manufacturing culture of the Sri Lankan apparel industry. Designers’ exposure improves the feasibility and reliability of their apparel products, aligning to the end-consumer needs. The study also proposes a “designers’ exposure framework” that illustrates gains made by the Sri Lankan apparel industry resulting from knowledge enhancement through the designers’ exposure.

The study is based on a qualitative methodology that has potential subjective biases on the part of the researchers; in this case only the Sri Lankan designers’ perspectives were used in synthesising the findings.

The findings propose frameworks with theoretical and managerial implications for developing designers’ capabilities in apparel manufacturing countries that seek industrial upgrading through value-added fashion design practice.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the individual and joint effects of collative design factors, complexity and novelty, on aesthetic response to apparel products; and whether the influence of these factors is moderated by consumers’ centrality of visual product aesthetics (CVPA).

A mixed factorial experimental design, using women’s tops with design complexity and novelty (high vs low) manipulated orthogonally, was conducted among 260 female participants to test the model and its corresponding hypotheses.

Consumers’ aesthetic response was more positive for high than low complexity and novelty apparel designs. Further, when viewed in combination, high complexity + low novelty and low complexity + high novelty apparel designs were favored over high complexity + high novelty and low complexity + low novelty apparel designs, respectively. High CVPA consumers were more distinguishing than low CVPA consumers with respect to novelty in apparel designs.

This study suggests that firms need to be aware that complexity and novelty are crucial for consumers when judging apparel designs.

This study fills an important knowledge gap in the aesthetics literature by drawing on the processing fluency theory and Wundt curve and considering the joint effect of novelty and complexity, both critical determinants of a product’s marketplace success.

There are numerous design principles that can guide strategic decisions and determine good product design. One principle that has received considerable attention in the literature is the MAYA principle, which suggests that consumers seek a balance of typicality and novelty in products. The purpose of this paper is to test the MAYA principle specific to various categories of apparel. By drawing from the MAYA principle as a two-factor theory, the effects of specific aesthetic properties (i.e. typicality and novelty) of apparel products on consumer response were examined.

An experimental design in three phases was implemented.

Results revealed that typicality is the primary predictor of aesthetic preference relative to pants and jackets, while both typicality and novelty are significant predictors of aesthetic preference relative to shirts, suggesting that the MAYA principle better explains aesthetic preference relative to shirts.

Understanding consumers’ reactions to product design provides potential value for academics as well as practitioners.

Consideration of both aesthetic properties is needed when implementing the MAYA principle in apparel design.

Although studies have examined the MAYA principle relative to consumer products, few have examined how the principle operates relative to apparel products. The definition of a design principle, such as the MAYA principle, assumes that the logic proposed should apply to all types of products. Yet, this empirical study reveals that this is not the case when applied across different apparel categories.

Mass customization (MC) is one of the changes for the US apparel industry that will provide a competitive advantage and offer products needed by consumers. However, as the points of customization and their extent of customization characterize business models including the process strategies to achieve a successful MC strategy, it is imperative to define the points of customization. The purpose of this research is to investigate and introduce the critical points of customization and their extent for apparel.

An apparel industry survey together with case studies was used to collect information to test and support the hypothesis developed through the comprehensive literature review.

Five critical points of apparel customization are defined. These points and their extents of customization are compared, analyzed and validated. It is suggested that the success and the capability of apparel MC will depend on how effectively a company can combine the defined points of customization and their extent of customization in pre‐production, production and post‐production of the apparel product.

The research findings of points of customization is for an apparel product. However, the concepts may be applied to products in other industries.

The post‐production customization point using current technologies is a popular practice for mass customization. However, to achieve a higher level or extent of customization such as design point of customization, it is essential to use advanced product development, manufacturing and processing technologies.

The points of apparel customization and their extent of customization have not been studied before for the apparel MC domain. These points and extent of customization provide new insights into the mass customized apparel manufacturing and apparel MC business models.

The purpose of this paper is to test an online apparel co-design experience model and to investigate six determinants (perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, enjoyment, level of personalization, social presence, and attitude towards the co-designed product) of online apparel co-design experience and effects on behavioural intention.

Female college students (n=265) were surveyed after an actual online apparel co-design experience in a computer lab and interactions with other users wherever such arenas were provided. structural equation modelling was used for data analysis.

The findings revealed that subjects’ apparel co-design experience was positively affected by enjoyment, attitude towards the co-designed product, perceived ease of use, and social presence. And behavioural intention towards the mass customization sites was positively affected by subjects’ attitude towards the co-design experience, subjective norm, and enjoyment.

The research makes a unique theoretical contribution by conceptualizing MC 2.0 (MC sites that provide arenas for user interaction) and by incorporating and confirming the significance of both “enjoyment” and “social presence” variables as predictors of online apparel co-design experience.