NARRATIVE ANALYSIS: IMPLICATIONS FOR FASHION TREND INVESTIGATION

Fashion today reflects a more fragmented and less homogeneous society. Diversified fashion and polarised fashion can exist simultaneously. Fashion trend forecasting is facing greater challenges, to effectively inform a market which increasingly uses fast fashion processes. With concern that ineffective forecast information can lead to loss of business opportunity for the fashion industry, this paper discusses the feasibility of adopting a new approach to visual semantics, to indicate changes in market perceptions of meaning and desire. A pilot study was carried out by using semi-structured interviews and narrative analysis, whereby interviewees were encouraged to provide narratives of "storyline" about their search, purchase and wearing experience in the genre of active sport wear. The concept of 'storyline' was adopted in order to more effectively elicit the consumers discourse portraits of past, present and future search and purchase behaviour, which is considered to indicate expectations of future change of meanings, which are proposed to influence future decisions and behaviours. The result of this test provided implications for developing an approach/toolkit for fashion professionals as an alternative way to investigate fashion trend.