Modular Design in Fashion Industry

Modular Design in Fashion Industry

Shubham Anil Jain
Sr. Consultant
Cent Edge Solutions LLP, Bangalore, India
Email: shubhamajain125@gmail.com

 

What is Modular Fashion?
Modular fashion is a kind of fashion that has simply has a detachable part. This is important to the fashion industry as it permit for a piece of clothing to have an extended life cycle. This is usually done through a variety of fastenings, starting from buttons and zips to press studs, Velcro and many more. These fasteners are being used to attach or detach garment parts like collars, hoods and pockets to convert one kind of a garment to another, such as a pair of trousers which can be converted into shorts because of detachable leg bottoms.

Modular design in fashion industry

Due to this, one can easily create not one, but two or more looks from one garment itself. As per the reports of⁠ WGSN, which is a well-known trend forecasting platform used in the industry, it is suggested that the Modular Fashion as one of the top 5 emerging trends for the next decade. To be honest, this is only the beginning of the evolution. Truly, we can’t wait to be one of the front carriers in this sustainable idea that is going to make tremendous changes that are much needed in the Fashion Industry. This concept also gives to freedom as a consumer to create a sustainable and transitional wardrobe that you love.⁠ ⁠

Classification of Modular Design:
Basically, modular design is majorly focused on how to dismantle the module, the different disassembled form and its degree eventually will come out with different advantages and disadvantages. Considering various disassembly form, so modular design can be divided into three categories:

A. Component modular design:
So, the component modular design deals with to retain the basic form and structure of clothing and fashion items, clothing will be taken apart into two or more than two modules. Aspects of the modular design is a withdrawal from the original form of the clothing design, that is to separate the whole into parts, each part of the module is small component of the clothing, and have specific functions, to make sure the module in combination, can restore the original shape of clothing.

Component modular design

Component modules are again sub-divided into two categories: Single function module and Multi-function module.

a) Single function module:
As the name itself depicts that, a single functional module means that a module which is disassembled has a single fixed function, and a module consists of only one form of splicing. The decomposition of a single functional module only required to be disassembled from the complete garment, which is also found to be one of the simplest way, and therefore the most widely used in the market. It’s advantages are that it is very simple as well as detailed.

b) Multi-function module:
This simply means that the module consists of two or more than two functions, each module of the clothing if you want to achieve multi-function, in addition to simple disassembly just like component modular design, but also through the conversion method to achieve. The conversion method consists of 2 simple methods, i.e. the openings conversion method and the role conversion method.

  1. The opening conversion method figured that achieve the effect of integration of conventional garment openings when design, like the size of the collar opening and cuffs opening can be simply incorporated, and then cuff decoration module can be changed to the collar decoration module, or the transformation of cuffs opening and leg opening, or the transformation of collar opening and hem opening can also be considered as a good example.
  2. Role conversion method is to swap the clothing from its original role to other roles, for example positive and negative interchange, pants change skirts, sleeves change trouser legs, or realize the conversion from the role of jacket to the role of pants. As compared with a single function modular design, multi-function modular design have more aspects of design, but at the same time, it is a challenging task for designers because multi-function module design also more difficult and time consuming process

B. Geometric modular design:
This is found to be entirely different from the component modular design. The way geometric modular design disassemble the clothing out of the basic parts of clothing usually have, it usually apart into geometric shapes like triangle, quadrangle or polygon and many like this, the geometric size of the module can be small or large as per the design, dressing can be formed from one type of geometric modules can also be made of different geometric modules, here, the special feature is the splicing way can be flat, and also can be three-dimensional. This modular design have more flexibility as compared to the component modular design, a large number of replication modules is used. Also the geometric module can be arranged into hats, belts, bags and many other fashion accessories.

Geometric modular design

C. Compounded modular design:
However, it is clearly evident that the component modular design and geometric nodular design is also not so quite different from each other, the middle zone between the two kinds of modular design affiliated to the compounded modular design. The designer Chen Weihong’s, in his graduation work “Modular Cycle” showed series good blend about component module and geometric module, simply it is a body module is a component module based on simple dress, and the part as a skirt decoration is geometric aspect of module, which is removed from the basic form of garment, the geometric module is not fixed itself with snap fasteners, it can be the cloak, or skirt, can also be a simple decoration. Further, designers flexibly use different forms of modules to adopt the component module assembly, such a compromise aspects highlights a different appearance, enriched the possibility of modular design.

Compounded modular design

Importance of the Modular Design of Garment:

  1. Nowadays, it is clearly observed that the people’s buying behavior concept constantly changing, along with the strong competition in the garment and fashion market, varieties and customized products gradually becoming the main trend in fashion industry.
  2. Today the world is of mass ready-to-wear, garment design should not only have the common aesthetic look, but also highlights the personality of customization, at the same time maintaining the design efficiency and quality. The idea of modular design of garment deal with this problem effectively to a great extent.
  3. As the concept of modular design of garment refers to segregating the garment products into different basic modules, considering the production process as well as garment structural design, and then building and deforming the modules as per the consumer needs or design objectives, and finally forming different garment products.
  4. It is found that, the design and process of several parts of are organized and normalized into several basic modules, with different structures and particular functions, so as to build a system together.
  5. In the design process, the modules of every specific part of the garment can be created in parallel and manufactured separately and can be merged efficiently and freely in application. This helps in shortening the cycle of product development and manufacturing and aims at the targeted market of mass customization.

Benefits of Modular Design of Garment:

  1. Based on its features of high efficiency, flexibility and creativity. In the evolution of the fashion market, modular design of garment can be flaunted by taking customer requirements as the main design direction, combined with the latest trends of AI intelligent virtual technology or the popularization of garment APP.
  2. This majorly gives consumers a high degree of conversation and options in garment design, so as to realize customers’ loves and aspirations for independent design and enhance the social participation in garment design.
  3. Even, with the analysis of big data, the background can obtain the potential amalgamate needs of different age groups of men and women for different parts of the garment module.
  4. It helps companies to comprehensively hold and identify the customer needs as well as demand and potential demand of the market, so as to achieve the motivation of developing effective use of various parts of garment modules and efficient production resources.
  5. It also enhances the special features of different types of module production, so that the modular design of garment can be classified into modules as per the functional requirements of the target items in the application process, so as to precisely hold the role of each module.
  6. This approach not only makes sure that the innovative series design of particular structure, but also realizes the standardized splicing, so as to improve the practical approach of the design.

Conclusion:
With the initiation and development of science and technology, the intelligent data development mode requires the assimilation and unification of industry management. Modular design of garment should also deal with the development standards in today’s scenario. Currently, the scope of the garment market is explored from the perspective of the extension for modular design. So, overall modular design of garment can enhance the types of garment products, also achieve the design goal of mass customization and improved the competitiveness of items. Therefore, it is surely evident that the garment market can be uplifted with the development of the garment module branches.

References:

  1. Liu L (2017) Research on the Application of Modular Design Method in Fashion Design [J]. Industrial Design
  2. Chen Y, Li M (2018) Modular Design in Fashion Industry. Journal of Arts and Humanities 7(3)
  3. Camille Freestone, November 11, 2020,Why You Should Be Investing in Modular Fashion https://coveteur.com/2020/11/11/modular-fashion-benefits/
  4. Understanding Modular Fashion https://www.buhndi.com/pages/understanding_modular_fashion55.
  5. Molshree Vaid, 30 June 2021, Modular Fashion – the next big thing? https://www.ecotextile.com/2021063028006/features/modular-fashion-the-next-big-thing-2.html

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