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Abstract
The aim of this article is to discuss the importance of managing the tangible and the intangible dimensions of brands as a whole, introducing a design perspective on branding in the fashion sector, and highlighting the opportunity of dynamically connecting the operative and the strategic levels of the brand identity management.
The article focuses on Italian fashion brands, analyzed as paradigmatic cases and compared to the practices of other industrial sectors, to draw insights on the specificity of the fashion sectors. The article hypothesizes that design can play a relevant role in the construction and the management of brand identity, assuming both a generative and an interpretative perspective. In this frame, the design function should develop the capacity of building an overall strategic coherence of the elements of expression of the brands, overcoming some of the limitations and inefficiencies of established practices. In particular, the article highlights how in the case of Italian fashion brands the tangible dimension is in many cases inextricably connected to the manufacturing and craftsmanship background of the companies, that becomes one of the drivers and the constraints that the designer might assume to express the identity of the brand.
This hypothesis is discussed by: (i) building background knowledge through a literature review in the fields of design and brand management, highlighting the limits of the current practices and introducing the knowledge that underpins the new integrated perspective; (ii) analyzing different cases of Italian fashion brands, to derive empirical evidence and key findings; (iii) commenting on the findings and connecting the theoretical framework with the empirical evidence coming from the cases, to build new knowledge and to stimulate future studies.