Creation of conceptual design process model and its application on developing high-fashion collection

Abstract

As materials and other cultural and social issues become larger, more complex design methods need to draw on and be better articulated that they have been developed in field of fashion design. There is a convergence in design process developments as the choices and other matters become more expansive through the materials on offer, cultural and gender shifts in identity and that fashion is indeed more and more like a personal architecture. Hence, it requires a more sophisticated development of both design research and also design approaches. So there is a convergence about creativity and fashion design needs to 'step up' to this challenge even in mass fashion. As the existing models of creative processes tend to illustrate the diversity of the process and provide a broad description of the design process, there is an obvious knowledge gap in the subject of conceptual fashion design. The stratified random sampling technique was adopted in this study. A total of 100 respondents were invited to an in-depth interview, including 50 fashion and textile design postgraduate students (1st group), and 50 competent designers (2nd group) in fashion design. In the first phase of analysis, the coding process was designed to capture the relations identified in the design process used by each target group. Hence, the turn-structured protocol data of the design discourse activities were coded in terms of the proposed design process model. In the second phase of analysis, the predicted relationships of the design process used in each target group were consolidated. Two conceptual fashion design process models (one model for postgraduate fashion design students and one model for fashion designers) were developed. Finally, by integrating the above two models, a finalised conceptual fashion design process model was then formulated and a high-fashion collection of six outfits was also created.