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Essay: Math in Fashion: Why Numbers Matter in Design and Merchandising

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  • Published: 1 April 2019*
  • Last Modified: 23 July 2024
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  • Words: 1,339 (approx)
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  • Tags: Fashion essays

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Math is a broad, well-known subject around the world. Math can range from just adding numbers to studying Calculus. Different areas of fashion including design, production, and merchandising use math. Design requires math for garment measurement, which is measured in inches, centimeters, or fabric yardage. Production and merchandising need math for cost of goods, creating prices, and logistics. On the management end, math is used for accounts payable, receivable, keeping track of company expenses, and managing budgets. Fashion Designers use math for measurements, patterns, merchandise, angles, prices, and proportions. Most of them study algebra, geometry, and calculus to do their job. Math in fashion is needed for measurements, patterns, merchandise, angles, prices, and proportions.

Measurement is an essential part of fashion. It is needed to measure patterns, angles, the amount of fabric required, and the size of the clothing. Without measurements, the clothes people wear would not fit them correctly, and the designs would not be neat and precise. Patterns are used in a fashion designer’s line of work every day. They are one of the things that make clothes appear more attractive.

Fashion merchandising involves the production of fashion designs and distribution of the products to a consumer. Fashion Designers keep count of their merchandise, how much merchandise was sold, and what needs to be sold. Keeping track of merchandise consist of using large numbers with multiplying, adding, subtracting, and dividing. In fashion retailing, the visual merchandising team has the responsibility of managing the aesthetics of store displays and window displays. In fashion retail, merchandising refers specifically to the management, stock planning, and control process. This position requires well-developed quantitative skills, the natural ability to discover trends, meaning relationships and interrelationships among standard sales and stock figures. The goal of fashion merchandising is to earn a profit.

Fashion Designers who have their own clothing line need to come up with a price for their creations. Keystone Markup is a pricing methodology that multiples the cost base by a factor of two to determine the price for next item in the value chain. Keystone markup began as the simplest way to universally markup goods across the retailer at profitable level. The process for coming up with a price includes the amount of money it took to create the garment, the amount of money they and their employees would make, the number of people who will buy the clothing, what the economy is currently, and how much money people are willing to pay. Wholesale price is the price charged by the brand to the retailer for product that they have ordered and it is a fifty percent discount of the retail price.

Proportions are crucial to the designing of clothes. People have different sizes or dimensions. Finding someone’s portions involves measuring their clothes and their size. In most fashion drawings, the head fits into an adult’s body eleven times. This rule, usually called the headcount, illustrates one of the most significant differences between a fashion drawing and a figure drawing, it is the most responsible for an elegant look of fashion illustration. The headcount keeps a figure's head small to the figure's body, and it helps you to lengthen the arms and legs elegantly. In the real world, even though men are generally taller and broader than women, both men’s and women’s proportions are about the same. Men and women are eleven heads tall, but the height is distributed differently. Women legs are longer and men have longer torsos.

In fashion, outfits are cut in a specific way and designed for different body types. Certain models are selected to wear particular items based on their proportions in relation to the cut of the clothing. The measurements of the model and the clothing need to be aligned, and this is where using math comes in. Clothes come in basic sizes such as small and medium, or numerical sizes such as a zero or size ten. Shoes come in different sizes for different people as well. Numbers are a big part of the fashion world.

    Stores and businesses that sell clothing are required to do inventory. They use math to decide how many of each piece of clothing they want to sell in each store. They base this off of the amount of products they have as well as other factors. Inventory shows the amount of product sold, the amount of product on available, and the amount of each particular product item there is. This plays a major role in keeping the fashion industry alive and well in business.

    Math is used to calculate the costs needed to spend on fabric, hangers, thread and many other items needed in the fashion industry. Calculations also are made to determine production costs to make the clothing. This includes buying different patterns,  applique designs, and other detailing for both men and women clothing. Expenses are an essential part of fashion. Designers have to know the amount their spending to determine how much the item is worth and selling it at a price well enough to make a profit.

A specific part of math that designers use is geometry. Geometry is math dealing with lines and shapes. To sketch clothing designers usually start using basic shapes like circles, triangles, and rectangles. They use basic shapes along with lines and angles. Angles can make the clothes fit correctly on a person. Fashion Designers measure angles for people such as the neckline. Designers are required to use symmetry on things like shirts and pants. If they do not, items will be irregular and not proportional.

Without math, it would be nearly impossible to keep sizes consistent, and it extremely hard to blueprint a garment pattern or design. Also, it would be challenging to create trim pages. They are required to make a garment in order to know how much or how less fabric is needed. Numbers are used on those to tell the factory how many buttons or sequins to use on a pair of pants or a shirt. The factory must multiply the number of material by the number of items that are being made to order enough product. It is crucial when ordering because if you make a small mistake, you could end up with not enough or even too much product.

Fractions are sometimes an important part of the fashion world in certain situations. Knowing how to add fractions comes in handy every day.  Also, the area is important. If you are working on a garment, sometimes the size might be right, but the fabric is distributed in the wrong place. To fix it, you might have to keep your total area the same but shift it around to make it lay flat or to drape just the right way.

Patterns are another important piece of the fashion world.  A pattern can be a repeating set of objects. When a designer gets an idea for an item, he or she makes a sketch to show what they think the new design should look like. A sketch is a simple drawing. It’s usually not very detailed and shapes are clearly seen. A sketch shows the basic idea of how something should look. It can be drawn by hand or made on a computer.

In conclusion , without math, making clothes, shoes , and other fashion pieces would be almost impossible.  Clothing and shoes wouldn’t be proportional to body, height or weight. Designers wouldn’t even know how to sketch a design. They wouldn’t be able to calculate costs or know how much product they needed. Just about every aspect of fashion requires some kind of math. Math is crucial element to fashion design. It is used to measure sample items for fitting as well as to keeping sizes consistent. In addition, an understanding of geometry is needed when making a two-dimensional pattern that has to be designed to fit on a three-dimensional body. Math plays a major role in fashion and would be hard to create without it.

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