A new manufacturing fashion system. 4.0 competence and roles in Italian clothing design and production

Fourth Industrial Revolution and digital technologies are driving profound transformations within the classical industrial system. Nevertheless, design and production models in Italian fashion system are not much into these type of changes. On the one hand, because of the cultural reasons related to the concept of Made in Italy – which quality is perceived as inextricably linked to the classic way of production. On the other hand, fashion products are difficult to patent, so companies face a lot of knots on legal protection of innovations. This contribution wants to frame the current relationship between Industry 4.0 and Italian fashion system, presenting the state of innovations and limitations. The analysis of this picture will serve to illustrate how design can interact with other disciplines to manage the practices, the approaches and the tools, able to build a new useful design and productive models.