Shaping the Identity of Italian Fashion Brands: The Role of Design between Tangible and Intangible

AbstractThe 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 ...