DESIGNING DERIVES OF EVOLUTION: LEADING FASHION BRAND EXPANSION THROUGH TECHNOLOGY INNOVATION AND SOCIAL BEHAVIOUR

: Fashion brands are moving into a new model of expansion processes: from fashion industry to lifestyle system, from fashion trends to new lifestyle tendencies. Starting from an historical research about processes of evolution, we analysed the exploration paths of fashion brands expansion, discovering a point of disruption in late 1990’s: various “leading impulses” have started to promote a diversified model based on what we will define in the paper as “derives impulses” of evolution. We observed two significant driving forces, technology innovation and social behaviour. Analysing design functions and disruptive attitudes, we identified an entropic system that provides new approaches for fashion brands expansion. These approaches are based on seeking new impulses, embracing “anomaly” that grafts new opportunities as drivers of the forthcoming evolutions. In conclusion, we support the ideas that: 1) creative enterprise should manage disruptive attitudes designing entropic systems able to adapt their identity to what we call exogenous impulses; 2) Technology innovation and social behaviour are two possible drivers for creative industries; 3) Fashion brands today could create a unique strategy based on different phases and “derives” impulses instead of following the traditional patterns.