After completing the second intervention, I realised that translating Chengdu’s cultural experience into a fashion design language required participants who could both interpret cultural meaning and assess its feasibility within real fashion practice. Therefore, I intentionally assembled a mixed team of 2 experienced industry designers and 3 fashion design students, allowing the third-round co-design workshop to benefit from both professional judgement and cultural proximity.
Why this group?
This aligns directly with the core demographic shaping Chengdu’s future fashion identity. Although Chengdu lacks detailed, city-level fashion consumption statistics, industry reports (Mintel, 2023) indicate that 18–30-year-old Gen Z consumers and young professionals represent the fastest-growing fashion consumption segment in China. Meanwhile, The New York Times Chinese (2025) highlights that Chengdu is one of China’s most vibrant youth-culture cities, characterised by a strong and distinctive lifestyle.
Drawing on these cross-referenced insights, I arrived at a key conclusion: the demographic that will truly consume, circulate, and drive the evolution of Chengdu’s fashion identity comprises young fashion-conscious individuals who possess purchasing power and high aesthetic sensitivity, yet lack access to designs that meaningfully resonate with local cultural experience. Therefore, the participant selection for this intervention must be directly aligned with this demographic reality.
Experienced Designers: Ensuring Professional and Production-Level Feasibility
I invited two designers with more than three years of industry experience, each with the ability to:
- independently lead design lines,
- collaborate with suppliers, pattern cutters, and material developers,
- and develop full collections from concept to final garments.
Their involvement was essential for assessing:
- Which cultural experiences can be meaningfully carried by structure, materials, or pattern-cutting?
- Which concepts are unworkable in a commercial production context?
- Which expressions align with industry rhythm, timelines, and design logic?
Their insights ensured that the construction of Chengdu’s fashion identity would not remain purely conceptual, but could plausibly be adopted by fashion brands and understood by the market.
Fashion Students: Ensuring Aesthetic Currency and Cultural Sensitivity
The three student participants came from IFM (Paris) and LCF (London)—institutions known for shaping contemporary fashion aesthetics. Importantly, their demographic aligns directly with Chengdu’s core fashion consumers:
- they are within the age group driving Chengdu’s fashion economy,
- they possess internationalised aesthetic sensibilities while remaining emotionally connected to the “Chengdu lifestyle”,
- and they are naturally drawn to fresh, expressive interpretations of local culture.
They contributed:
- intuitive style preferences — what young people would actually wear and share;
- contemporary design thinking — how cultural experiences may be translated into silhouette, texture, and form;
- emotional-aesthetic judgement — what “ease”, “rhythm”, and “sensory calmness” look like in visual terms.
Their perspectives reflected not commercial constraints but what Chengdu fashion could become from a youth-driven aesthetic lens.
Why this mixed structure is crucial
Bringing together industry practitioners + design students + the core youth consumer profile enabled this intervention to generate insights that were simultaneously:
- Professionally viable
(doable, producible, structurally coherent) - Culturally authentic
(representing Chengdu’s real lifestyle rather than stereotypes) - Market-relevant
(aligned with what young Chengdu consumers are eager to wear and communicate)
This ensures that Chengdu’s future fashion identity is not only:
- rooted in local culture,
- supported by industry logic,
- but also genuinely wearable, recognisable, and communicable by the very people who will carry it into everyday life.
REFERENCE
Mintel (2023)China Luxury and Fashion Market Insights Overview (英敏特发布中国奢侈品与时尚市场洞察概览). Mintel China. Available at:
https://china.mintel.com/press-centre/%E8%8B%B1%E6%95%8F%E7%89%B9%E5%8F%91%E5%B8%83%E4%B8%AD%E5%9B%BD%E5%A5%A2%E4%BE%88%E5%93%81%E4%B8%8E%E6%97%B6%E5%B0%9A%E5%B8%82%E5%9C%BA%E6%B4%9E%E5%AF%9F%E6%A6%82%E8%A7%88/ (Accessed: 20 August 2025).
New York Times (2025) 成都躍升中國增長最快城市：消費、創意文化與年輕力崛起（Chinese edition）. The New York Times Chinese. 21 May. Available at: https://cn.nytimes.com/business/20250521/china-chengdu-fastest-growing-city/zh-hant/ (Accessed: 20 August 2025).
Chinese Version：
在完成第二轮干预后，我意识到下一阶段将“成都文化体验”转译为“时尚设计语言”—需要的是能够既理解文化，又能判断其在时尚行业中可行性的参与者。因此，我有意组建了一支由 2 位资深行业设计师 + 3 位时尚设计专业学生组成的混合团队，使第三轮共创工作坊同时具备专业判断力与文化贴近性。
为何是这群人？
因为这正对应成都未来时尚身份的核心受众。尽管成都缺少极其细化的城市级别时尚消费统计，但行业报告显示(Mintel, 2023)：18–30 岁的 Z 世代与年轻职场人，是中国时尚消费增长最快的人群。同时，纽约时报中文网（2025）指出：成都是中国年轻文化最蓬勃、生活方式最鲜明的城市之一。
根据这些交叉信息，我得出一个关键洞察：未来真正会消费、传播并推动成都时尚 identity 的，是拥有购买力、审美敏感度高、但缺乏与本土文化紧密关联设计的年轻时尚群体。因此，本轮参与者的选择必须与这一现实接轨。
资深设计师：确保“可被执行”的行业可行性
我邀请了两位在时尚行业工作超过 3 年的设计师，她们皆具备：
- 独立负责设计线的专业能力
- 与供应链、打版师、物料商协作的实际经验
- 从概念到成衣开发完整系列的能力
她们的参与对于判断至关重要：
- 哪些文化体验可以被设计结构、材料逻辑所承载？
- 哪些概念在商业生产中不可行？
- 哪些表达方式更符合行业节奏？
这些反馈帮助我确保未来构建的成都时尚 identity 并非“只存在于概念里”，而是真正能够被品牌采用、被市场理解的。
设计学生：确保“审美前沿性”与“文化贴近性”
三位学生来自 IFM（巴黎服装学院） 与 LCF（伦敦时装学院）。
他们与成都年轻消费群体有高度重叠：
- 年龄区间正是成都时尚消费的核心力量
- 美学更加国际化，但情绪体验与“成都生活方式”高度相关
- 对新鲜、叙事性强的本土文化表达有天然兴趣
这类参与者能够提供：
- 年轻人的穿衣直觉——什么是他们愿意穿、愿意分享的？
- 当代设计思维——如何将文化体验转换成结构、面料、廓形？
- 情绪性审美判断——什么才是“松弛”“节奏”“感官愉悦”的视觉语言？
他们提供的并不是商业判断，而是成都时尚未来可能的样子。
为何这种混合结构至关重要？
通过“行业 + 学院 + 年轻消费群体”的组合，本轮干预能够同时获得：
- 专业可行性（可做 / 可生产 / 可落地）
- 文化相关性（确实代表成都，不是刻板符号）
- 市场共鸣性（年轻消费者会不会买、为什么）
这意味着未来构建的成都时尚 identity 将不仅：
- 来自文化、
- 服务行业、
- 更能被真正的“成都式年轻人”所穿着、认可、传播。
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