Many emerging designers fall into a common trap: driven by creativity and enthusiasm, they design what they like or what simply feels right. And that’s perfectly fine if:
- You treat fashion as an art form, not a commercial venture, or
- Your personal taste naturally aligns with your customers’ needs.
But if your goal is to sell, the hard truth is: your products must serve your customers. To design with this principle in mind, you first need to understand what they like, what functions they need, and what values guide their choices. In other words—you need to know your target group.
What Is a Target Group?
By definition, a target group is a specific, well-defined segment of people who share common characteristics such as age, interests, needs, income, or behaviors. Businesses identify and study these groups in order to shape products, services, and marketing.
Think of walking through a shopping mall: you can instantly tell which stores are aimed at teenagers, which at professionals, or which appeal to casual vs. more formal dressers. That’s because each brand is designed around a distinct target group.
Why Defining a Target Group Matters
It’s tempting to dream of a brand “everyone” will love—but that’s not realistic. People have different needs and preferences, and therefore require different products.
By clearly identifying your target group, you can:
- Develop relevant products that truly serve customer needs
- Create more effective marketing campaigns
- Allocate resources more efficiently
In fashion, understanding your audience influences every decision—expression, style, materials, color, function, fit, and price. The better you understand your customers, the more value you can create for them. (For more on value creation and value propositions, check out my other post.)
How to Describe Your Ideal Customer
Start with visualizing your customer and trying to identify their characteristics. Some useful categories include:
- Demographics: Age, gender, income, education
- Geographics: Location, climate, culture
- Psychographics: Values, lifestyle, interests, attitudes, personality traits
- Behaviors: Purchase history, online activity, engagement levels, purchasing motivations
- Needs and Pain Points: Unmet needs or problems that your product or service can solve
It’s important to stay grounded in reality and avoid idealizing your target group. Many brands fall into the trap of creating a customer profile that’s too perfect and unrealistic. To avoid this, focus on collecting genuine insights.
How? A few practical methods:
- Listen. Conduct interviews, ask customers for feedback, and interact with them in person. Approach it as if you were trying to make friends — you’re trying to get to know them.
- Visit stores targeting a similar audience or selling comparable products. Observe customer behavior, and if possible, ask questions.
- Analyze competitors. Where do your customers shop now? What attracts them, and what doesn’t? Don’t limit yourself to your own category—insights from other sectors can be just as valuable. You can even show competitors’ products to potential customers and ask what they like, dislike, and why.
- Wardrobe studies. Ask customers to show their favorite items, the ones they wear most, and the ones that sit unused. Have them put together full outfits for different situations. Stay curious—questions here are key to uncovering real motivations.
- Observe online. Watch how people present themselves on social media (how they want to be seen) and compare it with how they actually behave and shop.
These are just a few approaches—you should tailor your research to your product and audience. Whatever helps you understand your customers better will be worth the effort.
Example: Target Group for My “Dear Body” Collection
When you have the insights you need, you can move to analysing them and creating a target-group description. Here’s an example I created for my Dear Body collection (you can read the full case study here):
Target group are women at the age of 25-35. They live in cities and have a mid to high income level. They have higher education and work mostly office jobs, some of them are still studying at universities. It’s important for them to take good care of themselves both physically and mentally, always trying to be the best version of themselves and keep developing. Due to their lifestyle, they are especially prone to their bodies changing in size - they have very dynamic lives with no structured routines, they do sports regularly, they are young mothers. That tends to raise insecurities about themselves and affects their self confidence. They are social and curious, their free time is full of physical activities, travelling, art and nurturing relationships. They like to keep their surroundings aesthetically pleasing, good design and cosy atmosphere make them feel satisfied.
They pay attention to what they wear and how they present themselves. Even though they like exploring and experimenting with clothing, they tend to compromise and balance the aspects of standing out and blending in as the need of belonging makes them care about what others see them like. They try to shop responsibly and appreciate high quality products, choosing quality over quantity. They like supporting meaningful concepts and making a statement as it supports the feeling of being a part of a group. Shopping less mainstream brands is also creating some sense of luxury to them. They represent different body types and the collection targets this variety aiming to respect the personal needs..'
Breaking It Down
Let’s analyse this example step by step.
- Demographics & Geographics – Start with the basics: age, occupation, location. Depending on your product, some aspects matter more than others. For instance, if you design high-performance outerwear, climate becomes a key factor.
- Lifestyle – What routines shape their days? How do they spend their free time? How do they interact socially? Understanding lifestyle helps you link behaviors directly to design needs.
- Deeper values, pains & desires – This is the most complex layer. Look at what your customers fear, hope for, or feel insecure about, and how those factors influence shopping behavior. Here you uncover the real values your product should fulfill and the goals it should support.
A good target group description requires empathy—stepping into your customers’ shoes. But even then, text alone can feel abstract. For creatives, words aren’t always enough. That’s why in my next post, I’ll show you how to bring your research to life through user personas and image boards, which will make your target group more personal, specific, and inspiring.