Design and Product Development

Designing in the Wild: Towards Specialized Clothing Designs

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Abstract

Designing clothing is often designer-centric, especially when creating fashion wear, ready-to-wear clothing and accessories. Fashion designers are expected to peruse the market, speculate on new styles and forecast trends with a vision to realizing designs that will sell. Designs for clothing often seem to come from ‘within’ the designer and are a reflection of what has been previously created and what might be considered desirable in the future. Alternatively, with the growing needs for more specialized designs due to aging demographics, specialized work situations and people with special needs it is almost impossible to predict the trends and market without understanding authentic human behavior.

Keywords: multi-method, complexity, process, wicked problems

How to Cite:

Strickfaden, M., (2013) “Designing in the Wild: Towards Specialized Clothing Designs”, International Textile and Apparel Association Annual Conference Proceedings 70(1).