Sue Jenkyn Jones

Sue Jenkyn Jones is a Senior academic and author who combines teaching with leading active research into innovative issues in design, manufacturing and marketing of fashion products. Recently, as Course Director of the Digital Fashion Masters programme at the London College of Fashion, and Senior Research Fellow she was PI for the Pan-European EU FP7 SERVIVE project (2008-2011), which investigated mass-customization potentials in both on and offline sales of womens’ workwear and casualwear. As a Deputy Director of the Textiles Futures Centre at the University of the Arts London, and a member of the Digital Studio at LCF she has investigated visual communication and metadata, smart materials and electronic technologies and their application to women’s lifestyles and leisure sports. Susan is now working in China, where she believes there is a strong opportunity to set future trends that incorporate these interests and develop competitive and sustainable consumer products.

Presentation

Can Mass-Customization services for women’s clothing foster personal creativity and identity management?

The paper explores to what extent Mass-customization tools and online design technologies can impact on the sense of creativity, discretion and personal agency desired by women in their clothing shopping needs. Through a discussion of the EU FP7 IST Society Project SERVIVE the paper outlines genres of clothing and textile product offers that may prosper in non-tactile sales scenarios. Aspects of cultural and gender-orientated behaviours and physical body topological differences that influence attitudes towards shopping and online purchases are discussed and how a variety of problem retail scenarios and product data issues may be well served by ITC solutions. Wardrobe management and self-diagnostic tools can be seen to be an aid to self-knowledge, productivity and confidence building in personal and group scenarios. The research develops the theme of personalisation through social networking and questions whether co-design can engage individuals and communities through effective interfaces that better serve the interests of consumers by clustering tastes and pinpointing emerging new markets.

 Can Mass-Customization services for women’s clothing foster personal creativity and identity management?