Promoting educational materials in digital fashion

Abstract

Specialized fashion software, as a technological instrument for virtual modelling, has a critical role in reducing the length of the design process and time to market, simplifying communication with other departments and improving the quality of the creative process. This paper presents a survey of the modelling technologies used in Romanian clothing companies as a critical starting point for outlining a new methodology in teaching digital fashion. As part of the larger European survey in the framework of the Erasmus+ Digital Fashion Project, collected data from Romanian textile companies present their current needs for clothing designed with computer technologies and 3D software for virtual prototyping. According to the sampled companies, most have high (over 42%) and medium (over 33%) levels of digital skills. The most needed occupational profile was the 3D Designer, and the age expectation was between 25–40 years. The ability to design clothing patterns using virtual prototyping was the most selected preference when asked about future development requirements. The survey results are valuable both in establishing the new methodological framework for teaching digital fashion and in identifying the needs for the other project outcomes, such as the textile database, the virtual training platform, and the new curricula.