Artisanal Fashion Design: Entrepreneurs on Thinking, Process, and Decision Making

This thesis examines the ways in which fashion designers think about themselves, the design process, and the fashion industry. Recent interest in design thinking has brought decision making to the forefront in an effort to resolve conflicts between creative individuals and managers during the design process. Within the fashion design literature there are studies of processes in large fashion manufacturing enterprises but very little has focused on small-scale fashion design entrepreneurs. In this inductive, qualitative study, I use grounded theory as the methodology in the analysis of semi-structured interviews of twelve Canadian fashion design entrepreneurs. The findings explore their perceptions of their identity as designers, their perceptions of design process, and their relationship to their business. This research has developed the concept of “artisanal fashion design” as a distinct subset of design for further study and for consideration by organizations, the fashion industry, and educators.