Communications of the ACM
Professor Uses Online Data to Predict Future Fashion Trends
Pennsylvania State University associate professor Heng Xu and her research team are analyzing data to gain insight into the needs, motivations, and behavior of the fashion industry.
Credit: Heng Xu
Pennsylvania State University associate professor Heng Xu and her research team are collecting and analyzing a broad spectrum of data to gain insight into the needs, motivations, and behavior of the fashion industry with the goal of making fashion trends easily comprehensible to the average person.
Xu has a background in fashion, having worked as a part-time fashion model during her undergraduate information systems (IS) studies and attending fashion school before earning her doctorate in IS from the National University of Singapore.
Xu and her team are collecting and analyzing 15 years of data from websites such as Style.com, high-end fashion magazines, runway reviews, and the industry networking accounts of major fashion designers.
A significant component of the work is monitoring social media, in particular Twitter, to see if the researchers can spot trends as they emerge.
Xu says the goal of the research is to create a website that would enable users to easily search for and understand what is in style. She notes she has received pushback from the fashion industry, which worries about analytics demystifying the creative process. "To some people, 'fashion' only belongs on the runway," Xu says. "To me, fashion should be wearable and affordable for everyone."
From Penn State News
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