Fashion designer, fashion consumer, fashion learner

Abstract

Fashion Design is a complex sector, formed by scattered consumers and companies, by non-linear models of production and by dynamic information flow. Sustained by technology pervasiveness fashion designers and fashion consumers create content around fashion brands, beyond the formality of products. New models of consumption fashion push new models of fashion design and should be pushing new models of learning. What kind of learning model can better prepare future professionals to contribute to the sector? This paper hypothesizes that online collaborative environments represent a valid alternative to recognize fashion designers, as fashion consumers, as ‘lifelong’ fashion learners. We confronted the results obtained in previous studies with recent data gathered from providers about consumer behavior on global online and mobile usage and penetration, fashion design sector in Europe and fashion design ‘e-commerce’ worldwide. The results demonstrated that although fashion figured as the most significant eCommerce segment in 2017, fashion design higher education programs offered online are either non-existent or merely transpose the traditional lecture-based education models to online settings. This paper also presents heutagogical principles for fashion design higher education, demonstrating how they could collaborate to bring together fashion consumption, fashion design development, and fashion design learning.