The fashion industry has some of the highest return rates in e-commerce, up to 28.8%. Studies show that 53% to 79% of apparel returns are due to size or fit issues of the clothes.  Estimates suggest a 10-15% loss on the original value per returned item. Beyond the returned item itself, retailers lose money on processing returns, including shipping costs. Players in the fashion space have been exploring technology to address these losses.

This challenge is what inspired Henrietta Agboola, the Head of Faculty at Fashion and Art Academy, to hold a workshop on Computer-Aided Design for Digital Pattern Making under the Tech Meets Fashion (TMF) series.

Henrietta told Vanguard that patterns are the building blocks of garment manufacturing, and getting pattern-making right will greatly reduce poor fitting and hence returns on clothes purchased or made for a customer. She informed that she created the Tech Meets Fashion series of workshops as a corporate social responsibility initiative of Fashion and Art Academy, the skills transfer division of House of Henri, to address the knowledge gaps she has seen in the Nigerian fashion sector. Tech Meets Fashion (TMF) is a series of workshops for fashion designers that spotlight and demonstrate current technologies that are shaping and transforming the fashion industry.

The goal of these workshops is to inform, inspire, and empower players in the fashion sector to upgrade, upskill, and embrace the new and enhanced methods and practices that technology provides. According to Henrietta Agboola, fashion designers in the country are not embracing technology sufficiently in their work, either because of limited knowledge and exposure or because fashion tech is generally considered to have a steep learning curve and is expensive to engage. Henrietta says she desires to do her bit in closing the gaps of knowledge by exposing fashion practitioners to some of the latest technology trends that can enhance their work.

This first workshop, tagged Digital Patterns Made Easy, was held on 7th April 2024 at the Signatures Suites at Opebi, in Lagos. During the workshop, Henrietta gave an overview of the emerging trends in Computer-Aided Design for digital pattern-making. Participants were introduced to the opportunities in digital pattern-making in different industries including apparel, automotive, aeronautics, and furniture. The workshop highlighted some pattern design software for fashion that can be used to create digital patterns from scratch, or employed to modify preloaded pattern blocks. Henrietta informed the participants that with Computer-Aided Design, pattern makers can save time by cutting off the repetitive activities in the process of physical pattern drafting. She also revealed that pattern-making software adds precision to the creation of patterns and by extension the making of clothes, improving fit and reducing returns and customer dissatisfaction.

The use of two pattern design software was demonstrated during the workshop session. One software was for creating digital patterns from scratch, while the second was for generating digital patterns from preloaded pattern blocks. A practical session on how to generate customer avatars that capture the customer’s vital measurements and body shape was also demonstrated at the event. This was followed by the demonstration of the drafting of the pattern of a simple skirt and the rendering of the skirt on a sample customer avatar for fit.  

The workshop concluded with an interactive question and answer session with Henrietta Agboola by the participants. At the end of the seminar, participants were armed with very enlightening information on how they can adopt and utilize pattern design software and applications in their design and pattern drafting work as practitioners in the fashion industry. According to Henrietta, the fashion sector in Nigeria cannot take its pride of place globally and make the mark it is capable of if the players do not raise their standards to match global practices. She informed Vanguard that future workshops of Tech Meets Fashion will discuss and carry out practical demonstrations of other transformational technologies shaping the global fashion industry.