Functional Clothing Design

Functional Clothing Design is a book about how and why clothing works. This interdisciplinary text introduces new ways to look at the human body, the environment, and clothing, exploring the relationships between them by examining how clothing achieves goals such as protecting the body, increasing health and safety, improving a worker’s efficiency on the job, or enhancing body function.

Watkins and Dunne present technical material using clear, simple language that can be readily understood by beginning design students with no science or engineering background. Building on the groundbreaking text by Watkins, Clothing: The Portable Environment, this book covers a full range of factors involved in designing functional clothing: protection from thermal, impact, and other environmental hazards; enhancing movement and visibility; increasing body function with smart clothing; designing clothing for people with disabilities; and creating protective clothing for groups such as the military, who face multiple hazards.

Functional Clothing Design focuses on the entire process of developing functional clothing—from analysis of user needs to choosing appropriate materials to design and design evaluation. The text includes case studies throughout, as well as new content on smart textiles and the latest developments in wearable technology. Designers and others seeking clothing solutions to problems in varied fields will find a common language linking several disciplines through which they can explore both challenges and solutions.