Designing for longevity isn’t just about durable materials — it’s about sustaining meaning. Empathy in design means understanding how users feel and ensuring that products continue to connect with them over time. This article explores how familiarity and surprise shape emotional durability and offers tools to balance both in your design process.
Target group descriptions are a great start, but words alone often feel limiting. To truly understand and empathise with your customer, you need to bring them to life. In this article, I show you how to transform customer insights into inspiring tools: image boards and user personas. With these, you’ll not only see your target group more clearly but also design with empathy and confidence.
Many emerging designers start by creating what they like — but if your goal is to sell, your designs must serve your customers. Defining a clear target group will help you align style, function, and values with real customer needs. In this article, I explain why identifying your target group matters, how to research them, and share an example from my Dear Body collection.
“Dear Body” is a womenswear collection I designed to explore how clothes can adapt to the changing female body and support emotional durability. In this case study, I share the research insights, design principles, and techniques I used to create garments that respect body changes, build confidence, and last longer.
How can fashion brands design clothes people truly want to keep? From personalization and storytelling to timeless design and community, I explore six practical methods that help foster emotional durability. These approaches don’t just extend a garment’s lifespan — they build deeper customer loyalty and brand value.
To create emotionally durable fashion, we need more than timeless aesthetics or high-quality materials. We need to understand our customers — their lives, desires, and evolving needs — and design with those insights in mind.
Before you bring your next idea to life, pause and ask: what value does this truly offer to the people I want to serve?
In this article, I explore the concept of value proposition — what it is, why it matters, and how to craft a clear, customer-centric statement using the Value Proposition Canvas. If you want your creative work to resonate and drive real impact, this is where you start.
Why do we hold onto some clothes for years, while others barely make it past a season? This post introduces the concept of emotional durability—the hidden force that makes us want to keep and rewear garments. From memory-filled band T-shirts to perfect-fitting jeans, we’ll explore what gives clothes lasting meaning—and how designers can use that to create truly sustainable fashion.
An interactive resource and report designed by Deloitte and Global Fashion Agenda to help textile companies understand and act on their sustainability impacts. Organised by value chain activities, the toolkit provides a structured overview of both positive and negative impacts, alongside a seven-step framework for strategy development. It supports actors across the fashion system in identifying their influence, shaping goals, and collaborating for systemic change.
A solution platform developed by CIRCULOSE® in collaboration with Canopy to help brands scale circular materials. It features a curated material library, a cost estimation calculator, and access to a global supplier network. Circulose® Forward supports fashion teams in sourcing, costing, and integrating CIRCULOSE® — a fibre made from recycled textile waste — into their supply chains with clarity and ease.