Design Research in Fashion: from Trends to Design Directions

Trend forecasting historically represented a particular research tool developed in Fashion and based on an observation activity that aims to early own information about fashion trends’ evolution in order to manage productive chain and marketing strategies. Today, on a design oriented point of view, trend research does not aim to new products development. A trend appears as content already present on the market for a long time so it can be observed and described as overt and relevant to a certain community of users. Since Fashion looks into real experiences and affects them by giving an interpretation of them, it requires a careful reading of the present and the creation of probable contents. Starting from this knotty problem, the aim of the paper is to clarify the reasons why trend research cannot be considered a research tool for innovation and codify a design research process that can be relevant in fashion design practices.