EXPERIENCE WITH IMPLEMENTATION OF WTO-ATC AND IMPLICATIONS FOR BANGLADESH

This paper reviews the implementation of the Agreement on Textiles & Clothing (ATC), its implications for the future of Bangladesh's apparel sector and some of the possible strategic response which Bangladesh could design in order to address the emerging challenges in the global apparel market.WTO, Bangladesh

The Use of Design Patents to Protect Apparel Dresses, 1910 to 1950

Intellectual property pertains to the intangible aspects of the mind. Design piracy of apparel is possible within the United States because intellectual property rights do not fully protect clothing design. The purpose of this study was to examine the efforts of apparel designers and apparel companies to protect their fashion designs through patents

Woven Apparel Fabrics

This chapter considers the different woven manufacturing processes used in the production of apparel fabrics. It details the mainapparel fabric types and looks at the key performance requirements of those fabrics, in relation to both the weave structure and the fibre type. The chapter then goes on to briefly describe important considerations in the design process and the various end uses for woven fabric. Application examples detailed towards the end of the chapter include fabrics that are timeless classics and fabrics that are established fashion favourites. Key words: apparel, design, applications, performance, fabric aesthetics

Implementing Zero Waste Fashion in Apparel Design

The fashion industry is one of the largest contributors to the economy in Indonesia. However, this industry is the producers of both pre-production and post-production waste in large quantities causing environmental pollution. To meet the needs of consumers for fashion products, this industry actively design or renewing the design of apparel, resulting fabric waste from production in significant quantities during the process. Currently, there are varying viewpoints from practitioners and academics who argue that in order to reduce waste, the effort will be optimized when done during the pattern making and cutting process. Since the year 2008, the concept of zero waste fashion design or better known by the acronym ZWFD has been widely studied and practiced by students, academics, and practitioners in the field of fashion that has interest in the issues of waste pre-production and its influence on the environment. ZWFD itself refers to the steps to produce apparel with the minimum waste from fabrics during the pattern making and cutting process. This research aims to examine how the concept of ZWFD can be implemented in the course of design and apparel production. Characteristic of the fabric used in this experiment is first identified in order to deliver the possible way to work with the fabric in a three dimensional form. Furthermore, the experiment process continues until a certain form and and a lowest waste percentage is achieved. The final result of this research is a garment with as much as seven different looks from one key pattern with two different pattern making methods, namely flat pattern cutting and draping. Keywords : Apparel, Draping, Zero Wast

Indian Organised Apparel Retail Sector and DSS (Decision Support Systems)

Indian apparel retail sector poses interesting challenges to a manager as it is evolving and closely linked to fashions. Appealing mainly to youth, the sector has typical information requirements to manage its operations. DSS (Decision Support Systems) provide timely and accurate information & it can be viewed as an integrated entity providing management with the tools and information to assist their decision making. The study exploratory in nature, adopts a case study approach to understand practices of organized retailers in apparel sector regarding applications of various DSS tools. Conceptual overview of DSS is undertaken by reviewing the literature. The study describes practices and usage of DSS in operational decisions in apparel sector and managerial issues in design and implementation of DSS. A multi brand local chain and multi brand national chain of apparel was chosen for the study. Varied tools were found to be used by them. It was also found that for sales forecasting and visual merchandising decisions, prior experience rather than any DSS tool was used. The benefits realized were; “help as diagnostic tool”, “accuracy of records and in billing”, “smooth operations”. The implementation issues highlighted by the store managers were; more initial teething problems rather than resistance on the part of employees of the store, need for investment of time & money in training, due to rapid technological advancements, time to time updation in DSS tools is required . Majority of operational decisions like inventory management, CRM, campaign management were handled by ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) or POS (Point of Sale). Prioritization as well as quantification of benefits was not attempted. The issues of coordination, integration with other systems in case of ERP usage, training were highlighted. Future outlook of DSS seems bright as apparel retailers are keen to invest in technology.

Accessing axis : exploring design coginition from visual and haptic experiences as an apparel designer in digital 3d imaging using 3d printing technology

Despite the rise of 3D printing technology in recent years, the novel technology has not yet heavily expanded to the realm of textile and apparel design. Although 3D printed design explorations have been unique and successful, the information shared only pertains to unique garment silhouettes or materials applied as oppose the insights into the specific 3D CAD process, which is the core of such digital fabrication methods. Following the Mutual Shaping of Technology framework, this study zoomed in on the ways for traditional apparel designers transition into the digital 3D modeling process from the visual and haptic cognitive aspects. This investigation involved a focus group study with 10 participants who are 3D CAD practitioners with hands-on object making backgrounds. The group study outcomes further contributed to the strategy that was then utilized in an independent case study involving studio practice and the development of a 3D printed wearable garment. The results from this exploratory study suggest that the transition from hands-on to digital modeling is a rather challenging process and relies heavily on tacit knowledge and the combination of object and spatial visualization skills interpreted in the forms of visual and haptic memory in order to develop an efficient workflow in the digital design process. The findings of this study are of great value in understanding the cognitive nature of the apparel designer's virtual design process in order to reflect on the current design curriculum. This study also is of importance to the future 3D CAD program interface design for both apparel and non-apparel design practice

A Unifying Textiles and Clothing Course: Implementing Corporate Aesthetic Management

With a growing industry focus on branding, textiles and apparel courses should better prepare design and merchandising/marketing students to work together to create brand identity through product and store design

LiveCap: Real-time Human Performance Capture from Monocular Video

We present the first real-time human performance capture approach that reconstructs dense, space-time coherent deforming geometry of entire humans in general everyday clothing from just a single RGB video. We propose a novel two-stage analysis-by-synthesis optimization whose formulation and implementation are designed for high performance. In the first stage, a skinned template model is jointly fitted to background subtracted input video, 2D and 3D skeleton joint positions found using a deep neural network, and a set of sparse facial landmark detections. In the second stage, dense non-rigid 3D deformations of skin and even loose apparel are captured based on a novel real-time capable algorithm for non-rigid tracking using dense photometric and silhouette constraints. Our novel energy formulation leverages automatically identified material regions on the template to model the differing non-rigid deformation behavior of skin and apparel. The two resulting non-linear optimization problems per-frame are solved with specially-tailored data-parallel Gauss-Newton solvers. In order to achieve real-time performance of over 25Hz, we design a pipelined parallel architecture using the CPU and two commodity GPUs. Our method is the first real-time monocular approach for full-body performance capture. Our method yields comparable accuracy with off-line performance capture techniques, while being orders of magnitude faster

Apparel Import Intermediaries: The Impact of a Hyper-Dynamic Environment on U.S. Apparel Firms

This is the post-print version of the article found in Clothing & Textiles Research Journal.This study's objectives were to clarify the standing of apparel import intermediaries (AIIs) and to obtain an immediate and deeper understanding of them in their real-life settings from the perspective of industry experts with years of immersion in apparel industry phenomena. Based on interpretive analysis of qualitative in-depth interviews with 13 corporate executives of AII firms located in New York City, the authors critically evaluated AIIs' views of their environment, development, and functions. Findings indicated ambivalent reactions to the hyper-dynamic environment that has resulted from the global reordering of the apparel industry and described two development paths of AIIs, transformation or birth. Results also showed that this hyper-dynamic environment has shaped firms' functional responses, leading AIIs to implement design, marketing, sourcing, and service activities in unique ways. The study explicates the critical role that classification systems and terminology play in firm identity, the tracking of economic data, and policy development within the U.S. apparel industry