Utilizing digital fashion in the process of fashion design

Abstract

With the development of wearable computing and the blurred boundaries between fashion and engineering, the use of digital technology has become essential for next-generation fashion designers. In the working environment of fashion designers, however, digital technology is underutilized, resulting in a gap between the technology being used in the fashion field and the speed of technological development. To reduce this difference, this dissertation defined the concept of digital fashion using an integrated perspective of engineering and fashion. Furthermore, this research developed and analyzed the integration of digital technology in the process of fashion design, in particular, the planning and making stages The dissertation comprises two detailed studies: 1) a color trend analysis using fashion images for fashion planning and 2) visual prototyping using e-textiles for the making process. These two detailed studies were both implemented and evaluated based on human-computer interaction methodology. First, for the planning stage of the fashion design process, ideas were gathered by conducting a qualitative survey of fashion designers before color trends were quantitatively analyzed using human parsing and k-means clustering of data from fashion collection images. Second, for the making stage, a methodology was developed for designing digital garments using physical computing. The idea of using physical computing was derived from fashion major students and then implemented by developing a visual prototyping tool. Through evaluation, the learning effects of this tool and its applicability in the fashion field were verified. This thesis is meaningful in that it presents a new fashion design methodology with a transdisciplinary approach encompassing digital technology and fashion. The methodology used in this dissertation can serve as a useful guideline for researchers in refining and enhancing their theories from the perspective of digital fashion.