After receiving the outcomes of the third co-creation workshop, I realised with increasing clarity that my next step had to be listening to the voices of the industry. The participants of the first three rounds were all closely connected to Chengdu’s local culture. They helped me understand the emotions, lifestyles and everyday textures embedded in that culture. But whether “anxiety-free design thinking” could truly enter the fashion industry and be translated into an operative design approach was something that only insiders could answer. Therefore, before officially beginning the fourth round of questionnaires, I did something else first — I wrote emails.
I divided my contact list into four categories: luxury brands, mainstream commercial brands, independent designers, and independent fashion labels. Each category represents a completely different ecosystem within the industry, as well as a different angle from which I wanted to test the viability of anxiety-free design thinking.
Luxury brands were the first names I wrote down. They take “design philosophy” most seriously, and they hold the strongest discursive power. Their daily work revolves around turning an idea into a collection, transforming an abstract concept into fabrics, lines and silhouettes. If this design philosophy I proposed could not hold up within their system, then perhaps the concept itself contained structural issues. Although I was fully aware that luxury houses were unlikely to respond to a cold email from a postgraduate student, I still placed them in the first category — because I needed that benchmark.
Next were mainstream commercial brands. They do not operate through philosophy but through business logic — a form of decision-making grounded entirely in reality. They represent the question: Can this concept actually land? If they were willing to respond to the questionnaire, I could understand whether this idea might find a position within the broader market system. Even if they did not respond, their presence on my list still served as an important industry coordinate.
The third group consisted of independent designers, the category I was most confident about. They tend to be sensitive, open, experimental, and willing to have conversations with unfamiliar researchers. They occupy a liminal space between industry and culture, valuing both design logic and emotional expression. For them, anxiety-free design thinking might be a method, but it might equally be a way of articulating themselves.
The final group included independent fashion labels. They are neither as rigorously structured as large corporations nor as experimentally driven as independent designers. They exist in a “half-commercial, half-expressive” zone. I chose them because if a design philosophy can travel across cultures, trends and price ranges, it will ultimately land in brands like these. They are where cultural expression and market logic intersect.
Putting these four groups together formed my “industry map” for the fourth intervention. It was far from random — in fact, it was a deliberate stratified logic that allowed me to gather voices from different levels to collectively test whether anxiety-free design thinking could genuinely stand within the fashion industry.
Of course, from the very beginning, I knew that the response rate for cold emails from a researcher would likely be extremely low. Therefore, I prepared three plans. Plan A involved the 40 emails themselves, sent using a stratified sampling approach to cover the major structures of the industry. Plan B was to expand the range of independent designers and labels if responses were limited, as they are the most open to dialogue. Plan C was a snowball strategy — if needed, I would ask friends to forward the questionnaire, allowing designers to introduce other designers so the invitation could circulate within smaller industry circles. To express sincerity and avoid appearing random in my choices, I opened each email with a personalised paragraph describing my understanding of the brand — its distinct qualities, aesthetic value, and why I believed their participation would be meaningful. This was not only a gesture of respect but also a way of showing that my invitation was thoughtful and intentional.
With all the preparations complete, I finally pressed “send.” In that moment, I realised that the most authentic part of this project was not the beautifully structured interventions, but the emails I typed at my desk. They represented an attempt to cross cultures, disciplines and industry boundaries — to take a design philosophy distilled from Chengdu’s culture and place it into the real fashion world, to see whether it could be heard, understood, or responded to.
In the end, out of the forty emails, ten received thoughtful and complete responses. They came from different corners of the industry: independent studios, emerging brands, and more established teams. Although the number was not large, each reply was sufficiently deep and specific. These ten designers did not represent statistical breadth, but they represented something more important — industry authenticity.
After writing these emails and receiving the ten responses, I realised that my prior understanding of the industry structure had been somewhat idealised. Real industry reactions are rarely linear, nor do they necessarily align with brand hierarchy. This made me recognise that the value of a design philosophy is not determined by the scale of a brand, but by the willingness of individuals to seriously engage with it. These responses allowed anxiety-free design thinking to be validated, questioned and reinterpreted within real industry contexts for the first time.
Based on this experience, I intend to deepen these conversations in the next stage of my research. I plan to bring anxiety-free design thinking back to the designers who responded, developing small-scale visual sketch exchanges and micro-workshops that allow the concept to be continuously tested, challenged and refined from within the industry itself.
Chinese Version：
在收到第三轮共创工作坊的成果之后，我越来越清晰地意识到：下一步我必须听见行业的声音。前三轮的参与者都和成都本地文化密切相关，他们帮助我理解文化的情绪、生活方式与日常触感。但“无焦虑设计思维”是否能真正落入时尚行业并转化为可操作的设计方法，这必须由行业内部的人来回答。于是，在真正开始第四轮问卷之前，我先做了另一件事情——写邮件。
我把名单分成了四类：高奢品牌、主流商业品牌、独立设计师、独立服装品牌。每一类都象征着时尚行业里完全不同的生态环境，也代表着我想从不同角度验证“无焦虑设计思维”的愿望。
高奢品牌是我最先写下的。他们对于“设计哲学”这件事是最严肃、也最有话语权的。他们每天工作的逻辑就是把一个理念转化为一个系列，把一句抽象的概念转化为面料、线条和廓形。如果我提出的这个理念在他们的体系里是完全站不住的，那么这套思路可能本身就存在结构性问题。虽然我十分清楚高奢品牌几乎不可能回应一封来自研究生的陌生邮件，但我依然把它们放在了名单的第一栏。因为我需要这个标尺。
接下来是主流商业品牌。它们并不以哲学为驱动，而是以商业为考量，这是一种完全现实的判断逻辑。它们代表了“概念是否真的能落地”的那一层现实。如果它们愿意回应问卷，那么我就能知道这个理念是否能在更广阔的市场体系里找到位置。哪怕它们不回应，它们在我的名单里本身就代表了另一种行业坐标。
第三类是独立设计师，这是我最有信心的部分。他们通常敏感、开放、愿意尝试，也愿意和陌生的研究者对话。他们处在一种介于行业与文化之间的模糊地带，既看重设计逻辑，也看重情绪表达。无焦虑设计思维对于他们来说，既可能是一种方法，也可能是一种讲述自我的方式。
最后是独立服装品牌。它们不像大集团那样严密，也不像独立设计师那样以实验为主，它们处在一种“半商业、半表达”的位置上。我选择它们，是因为如果一个理念能够穿越文化、穿越趋势、穿越价格带，它最终会落在这样的品牌上。它们是文化表达和市场逻辑的交汇点。
我把这四种不同生态放在一起，构成了我第四轮干预的“行业地图”。它并不是随机的，而是一种非常清晰的行业分层逻辑。我需要来自不同层级的不同声音，来共同形成对“无焦虑设计思维”能否成立的判断。
当然，我从一开始就知道，一封陌生研究者发出的邮件，回复率极可能是极低的。所以我提前做了三个准备。Plan A 就是这 40 封邮件本身用分层抽样的方式，尽可能覆盖行业的主要结构；Plan B 是当回复不足时扩大独立设计师与独立品牌的范围，因为他们最愿意参与对话；Plan C 是滚雪球策略，如果必要，我会让朋友帮我转发，让设计师介绍设计师，让问卷在行业的小圈层里流动起来。同时，为了体现我对他们的真诚邀请，而非随意挑选合作对象，我会在每封发给不同品牌的邮件开头，专门写下我对该品牌的理解，包括其独特之处、风格价值以及我认为他们参与其中所能带来的意义。这种方式不仅展示了我对品牌的尊重与专业度，也让对方真切感受到我发出的邀请是经过深思熟虑的。
带着这些准备，我按下了“发送”按钮。那一刻，我忽然意识到，这个项目最真实的部分并不是那些被设计得很漂亮的干预流程，而是我坐在电脑前敲下去的这些邮件。因为它们象征着一种跨越文化、跨越学科、跨越行业的尝试，把一个从成都文化中提炼出来的设计哲学，丢到真实的时尚行业里，看它能不能被听见、被理解、被回应。
最终的结果是，四十封邮件里，有十封得到了认真而完整的回信。它们来自不同的角落，有来自独立工作室的，有来自发展中的品牌，有来自更成熟的团队。虽然数量不多，但每一封都足够深刻，也足够具体。这十位设计师，代表的不是统计意义上的广泛，而是行业意义上的真实。
在写完这些邮件、并收到十封回信之后，我意识到自己原本对行业结构的理解其实过于理想化。真实的行业反应往往不是线性的，也不必然与品牌层级对应。这让我认识到，设计理念是否有价值，不是由品牌规模决定，而是由愿意认真理解你的那群人决定。而就是这些反馈，让“无焦虑设计思维”第一次在真实的行业生态中被验证、被挑战、也被重新理解。
基于这一经验，我决定在接下来的研究中继续深化这些对话，把“无焦虑设计思维”带回给那些愿意回应、愿意思考的设计师，通过持续的视觉草图交流与小规模工作坊，让这一理念在行业内部被进一步推敲与发展。
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