For many years, Sri Lanka’s textiles and apparel (T&A) industry practices were dependent on labour intensive manufacturing for export orders. In the late 1990’s, both government and private industry sectors identified that for Sri Lanka’s T&A industry to expand and to further create revenue there was a need to add value to the production supply chain via fashion design. However at the time, there were no design courses of adequate level to train fashion designers. Identifying the gap in the education system, in 2000, the University of Moratuwa and several private institutions initiated fashion design education, in order to prepare fashion designers to suit the country’s developing creative industry system. A decade on since the introduction of tertiary level fashion design education, it is estimated that approximately seven hundred fashion/textile designers have graduated. Yet, to date, there has been no investigation conducted or data collected to examine the role of the fashion designer within Sri Lanka’s T&A industry and what their value is to the country’s developing economic system. Therefore, the aims of this research are to address the key questions of: What is the role of the fashion designer in the emerging creative economy of Sri Lanka? How can Sri Lanka achieve a sustainable economic development via fashion design? And is Sri Lanka’s fashion design education meeting the needs of graduates as they transition into the T&A industry? To address the key questions and discuss the potential of fashion to be a vibrant sustainable creative industry in Sri Lanka, two phases were undertaken with the research. Firstly, a review of existing literature was undertaken, focusing on examining theories of the creative economy and industry, the global fashion system and Sri Lanka’s position within this system. Secondly, data collection was carried out, namely a questionnaire and three case studies. The collection of data was aimed at examining what the fashion designer’s / design education providers’ / private fashion business sector’s contributions would be towards the emerging creative economy of Sri Lanka. Drawing together all the research and data analyses, this research work has identified that the fashion designer within the Sri Lanka’s system has multiple tasks in applying fashion design in order to build a sustainable fashion industry system for Sri Lanka. A decade on since the initiation of fashion education in the country, the curricula of the education sector has to be reviewed under a common goal and revised to meet the new challenges in the system to adequately prepare future fashion designers to suit the emerging creative economy of the country
