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This study focuses on the objective evaluation of the silhouette of the front bloused line of women’s blouses, in which fusible interlinings are used in the construction of the open part. The wearing test was carried out over three seasons and the bloused lines before and after the fatigue were observed and examined in relation to the mechanical properties of fused composites and their constituent fabrics. Since bending properties and KOSHI were found to play an important role in the change of the silhouette formation of bloused lines, those of fused fabrics were studied by applying the simple model. Finally, in the sensory test, applying the blouses fatigued and not fatigued, their open parts made up of fused composite are evaluated by 71 consumers for their preference. The essential concepts involved in the consumer preference were clarified.

The US apparel industry continues to be a large, mature industry that is intensely competitive. It is also highly fragmented and is undergoing restructuring and operational changes that further accentuate past trends. The principal drivers of change continue to be the increasing levels of low‐cost imports, but also include dramatic changes in retailing following consolidation of the retail sector, new technology, changing work habits and demographic changes (principally the ageing of the baby boomers). In addition, trade and tax legislation that confers special status on firms operating in certain Caribbean countries has resulted in the growth of outward processing that in turn has led to further domestic firm operational restructuring.

Nowadays, artificial intelligence (AI) technology has demonstrated extensive applications in the field of art design. Attribute editing is an important means to realize clothing style and color design via computer language, which aims to edit and control the garment image based on the specified target attributes while preserving other details from the original image. The current image attribute editing model often generates images containing missing or redundant attributes. To address the problem, this paper aims for a novel design method utilizing the Fashion-attribute generative adversarial network (AttGAN) model was proposed for image attribute editing specifically tailored to women’s blouses.

The proposed design method primarily focuses on optimizing the feature extraction network and loss function. To enhance the feature extraction capability of the model, an increase in the number of layers in the feature extraction network was implemented, and the structure similarity index measure (SSIM) loss function was employed to ensure the independent attributes of the original image were consistent. The characteristic-preserving virtual try-on network (CP_VTON) dataset was used for train-ing to enable the editing of sleeve length and color specifically for women’s blouse.

The experimental results demonstrate that the optimization model’s generated outputs have significantly reduced problems related to missing attributes or visual redundancy. Through a comparative analysis of the numerical changes in the SSIM and peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) before and after the model refinement, it was observed that the improved SSIM increased substantially by 27.4%, and the PSNR increased by 2.8%, serving as empirical evidence of the effectiveness of incorporating the SSIM loss function.

The proposed algorithm provides a promising tool for precise image editing of women’s blouses based on the GAN. This introduces a new approach to eliminate semantic expression errors in image editing, thereby contributing to the development of AI in clothing design.

This study aims to measure the competitiveness of top apparel exporting nations competing with China in different apparel product categories across the global environment.

Compound annual growth rate, trade competitiveness, market share percentages, revealed comparative advantage and its variant normalized revealed comparative advantage using two-, four- and six-digit harmonized system codes for the period of 2016–2021 were used to understand the comparative advantage of competing apparel exporting nations.

The findings revealed that China still holds a more decisive comparative advantage than its competitors over the majority of the product categories within the knitted or not knitted apparel and clothing accessories. The other competing nations hold better export competitiveness over China in specific categories. However, that is not sufficient to be the “Next China.”

The study has important implications for different stakeholders of the global apparel industry, such as governments, industry officials, policymakers, investors, researchers and students. The study’s limitations arise from using product categories as competitiveness indicators, notably relying on a macro level approach for measurement while the micro level perspective is not analyzed, which constitutes a significant limitation of the study.

This research thoroughly analyzes the competitive position of the top ten apparel-exporting countries in the global market.

Value is a word that is frequently used by consumers, retailers and manufacturers. Understanding how consumers define value is imperative to the success of the industry. Value has often been defined as price or quality; other factors such as time, energy, product category and type of retail outlet may determine the definition of value by consumers. The purpose of this research was to define value, specifically how department store consumers define apparel value. Value ivas examined with two apparel products, a man's dress shirt and a woman's jacket. Research was conducted using focus groups (qualitative) and in‐store data collection (quantitative). The two hypotheses were tested by using t‐tests and forward step‐wise regression. Results from the 533 department store consumers indicated that: (a) value can be defined using qualitative and quantitative methods, (b) the definition of value was different for the two product categories, men's dress shirt and women's jacket, (c) the value definition for the majority of this study's consumers was ‘I look for the highest quality with an acceptable price’, and (d) product features and marketing attributes are weighted differently, yielding three consumer value equations for the sample's department store consumers. Implications exist for fibre producers, textile mills, apparel manufacturers and retailers in the product development and marketing of ‘value’ apparel products to meet diverse core consumer groups.

Reviews the sizing systems developed in several countries — the USA, Austria, England, Germany, Hungary, Japan and South Korea. A comparison of these systems shows that: the way of labelling garment sizes has varied from one sizing system to another; most of the sizing systems classified figure types by height and drop value (the difference between hip girth and bust girth measurements), and the way of classifying garments and the key dimensions of garment types in each system was slightly different. Recognizing the need for greater uniformity, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) developed an international size labelling system. Many countries, including England, Japan, South Korea and Hungary, revised their size labelling systems by adopting the ISO system.

Describes the history of CAD systems as well as their benefits and costs for a clothing company. Presents and analyses results of a survey concerning the use of CAD systems for marker making in the clothing industry of the United States. Describes and evaluates the functions of CAD marker making with the help of a case study.

Manufacturing sector plays a vital role in the economy of developing countries like India. The Indian textiles and clothing industry has an overwhelming presence in the economic life of the country. The readymade garment segment contributes 42 per cent of the Indian textiles exports, which include cotton garments and accessories, manmade fiber garments and other textiles clothing. The overall export basket of India has increased from 13.6 per cent in 2014-15 to 15 per cent in 2015-16 for textiles and apparel products including handicrafts. Though clothing exports from India have witnessed high growth rates in the past decade as compared to other commodity exports, India’s performance, when compared to many competing countries, has not been much encouraging. India has lagged behind in clothing exports as compared to China, Bangladesh and Vietnam. This study mainly focused on analyzing the changing clothing export structure of select countries such as India, China, Bangladesh, Vietnam and Turkey by using revealed comparative advantage indices.

This study uses different variants of revealed comparative advantage indices, namely, Balassa’s RCA Index (Balassa, 1965), Dynamic RCA index (Kreinin and Plummer, 1994) and Revealed Symmetrical Comparative Advantage Index (Laursen, 1998). Indices were calculated for the period 2003 and 2013 under knitted category (HS 61) and not knitted category (HS 62) up to four-digit classification. Spearman rank correlation was applied for analyzing changes during the period under study. For calculation of RCA and dynamic RCA indices, the export data have been taken from UN Comtrade, an electronic database of United Nation and International Trade Statistics database of World Trade Organization.

The results highlighted that India ranks at the bottom in seven HS 61 clothing products and fourth in five HS 61 products. Bangladesh stands at the top in 11 of the HS 61 clothing products among selected countries. Similarly, Vietnam has also gained stronghold position in the global clothing trade. In many of these products, Bangladesh has higher revealed comparative advantage as compared to other countries. In HS 62 product category, India was at the bottom in eight products, whereas Bangladesh has gained the most in nine products on the comparative advantage basis. The findings highlighted the shift taking place in global clothing trade structure as trade was shifting toward low-cost countries such as Vietnam and Bangladesh. Surprisingly, India has foregone strategic advantage in many value-added products to low-cost countries such as Bangladesh and Vietnam.

This is one of the few studies undertaken to analyze comparative advantages of leading clothing exporter countries (mainly from Asian region) in the recent times. Findings depict changing export structure and dynamics of clothing exports in the region. Findings would help government, industry associations and policymakers in enhancing sector competitiveness and in identifying the growth products.

The European Union (EU) has notified its revised Generalized System of Preference (GSP) on 31 October, 2012 which will come into effect from 1 January, 2014. The EU is also in the process of, or contemplating, to sign Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) with many developing countries. Recently, EU has officially announced initiation of FTA negotiations with USA. Such preferential tariff arrangements could lead to significant erosion of preferences enjoyed currently by the Least Developed Countries (LDCs). In this backdrop, the main objective of the present study is to investigate the economic impacts originating from preference erosion in the EU market which could potentially affect LDCs in general, Bangladesh in particular. In this context, a dynamic computable general equilibrium (CGE) analysis has been developed by using the Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP) model and database to explore the aggregate impact of the preferential erosion as well as sectoral implications for which different partial equilibrium analyses were used. The analysis evince that if the EU eliminates all tariffs for Pakistan, India and Vietnam, Bangladesh's real GDP could decrease by 0.27 percent whilst welfare loss could be to the tune of US$ 54 million. Total exports to the EU will be reduced by 0.18 percent; consequently, Bangladesh’s terms of trade and exports of textiles and clothing could be fall by about 1 percent. The product level disaggregated analysis using RCA and unit price of major items also indicate that a number of products including textiles and clothing will be confronted with formidable market access difficulties in the EU.

The purpose of this study is to develop an easy-to-use CAD software for fashion flat sketch that can create new sketches by combining the flat sketch modules.

A sample fashion flat module database was constructed by performing a sketch modularization process as well as a morphological analysis. In addition, an automatic module assembling algorithm was developed to create new sketches using the database.

The module assembling algorithm enabled the users to make new fashion flat sketches by the combination of design modules in the database. The example database constructed in this study was composed of bodice, sleeve, collar, cuffs and pocket modules chosen based on the results of a morphological analysis.

A CAD program has been developed that might improve the efficiency of design work by helping the users to make fashion flat sketches more easily.

The automatic module assembling algorithm developed in this study has not been implemented in any existing commercial systems. It is expected that users who do not have expertise in fashion design could be able to participate from the clothing design stage as a mass customization prosumer by using the software.