Merging technology and users: Applying image browsing to the fashion industry for design inspiration

Archives are increasingly important to creative industries, especially the fashion sector, which often relies on historical collections for design inspiration, product-development, and market strategizing. As these collections are digitized and catalogued their accessibility becomes more complex and their usefulness restricted to those skilled in navigating through the metadata. Content-based image retrieval (CBIR) offers only a partial solution to this dilemma. Requirements of the fashion sector necessitate a tool to enhance the browsing experience for creative applications beyond retrieval. This paper highlights limitations of CBIR for applications in creative industries such as fashion. It briefly reviews relevant literature, highlights some research questions, and outlines the approach we are adopting to integrate the requirements of users with the appropriate technology. Examples from Fashion and Apparel Browsing for Inspirational Content (FABRIC), a collaborative 3-year pound1.4 M Technology Strategy Board project, sponsored by the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills (DIUS), provide a real-world application.