Bridging fashion design and the knitwear industry: a literature review

Abstract

In contrary to most textile products a knitwear piece originates from the process of creating form and surface in symbiosis. The fashion designer, while creating such a piece, needs to balance spatial, sculptural, and aesthetic components while worrying about the technical barriers that his knowledge, or lack of, will rise. On the opposing end, there is the knitwear industry which has technically skilled technicians that can build knitwear from the “tick” of a computer mouse and with ingenuity generate new forms, news surfaces but with (usually) absence of the aesthetic, modernity, pertinence that the fashion designer can create. This article concentrates on the research developed in this gap between these two professionals, especially in the field of fashion knitwear design and aims to study the (miss)communication and structural fences that affect the collaboration between them.