Digital fashion product–service system: the reconfiguration of apparel design, user participation, and platform value

Digital fashion is reshaping clothing and apparel research by changing how garments are designed, represented, experienced, and circulated across physical–digital environments. Existing studies have examined digital fashion through technological innovation, virtual garments, consumer experience, sustainability, and platform branding, but these perspectives remain fragmented. This paper argues that digital fashion should be understood as an apparel product–service system (PSS) in which design processes, user participation, platform infrastructures, and mediated value creation are increasingly integrated. Drawing on an integrative conceptual review and a structured illustrative scan of selected fashion enterprises, the study develops a relational framework for interpreting digital fashion transformation. The analysis shows that digital technologies reconfigure apparel design into adaptive and feedback-driven practices; users participate as operant resources through styling, sharing, remixing, and feedback; and platforms coordinate garments, digital assets, interfaces, data, content, and commercial interaction. The paper contributes by reframing digital fashion as a platform-mediated apparel PSS.