Analyzing relevant words and phrases from fashion reviews makes it possible to identify a network of influence among major designers, say researchers.
This work also lets them track how those style trends moved through the industry,” says Heng Xu, associate professor of information sciences and technology at Penn State.
“Data analytics, which is the idea that large amounts of data are becoming more available for finding patterns, establishing correlations, and identifying emerging trends, is very hot these days and it is being applied to many industries and fields—from health care to politics—but what we wanted to see is if data analytics could be used in the fashion industry,” says Xu.
“We were drawn to the question of whether or not we could really trace a hidden network of influence in fashion design.”
