Digital Fashion Competences: A Longitudinal Study

The fashion field is undergoing a period of digital transformation, further accelerated by the Covid19 pandemic. The evolution of digital fashion foresees a change in the required skills and competences, which should be mastered by employees of the sector. Moreover, the dynamicity of digital fashion also implies the need to constantly update academic curricula, which should be able to form the employees who will be entering the digital fashion job market. The research objectives of this study are twofold. Firstly, research the skills and competences needed in the current digital fashion market in order to identify whether there are any salient differences from a similar study conducted in 2017 by Kalbaska and Cantoni (Business models and ICT technologies for the fashion supply Chain. IT4Fashion 2017. Lecture notes in electrical engineering. Cham: Springer, 2019). Secondly, conduct such analysis during the Covid19 pandemic, a unique period for the job market, which has experienced major cuts also in human resources, while at the same time a dramatic increase of digital activities has been seen (e.g., eCommerce). To reach such goals, a study has been conducted on LinkedIn, a professional social network, from May 19, 2020, to June 2, 2020, to identify the number and the type of job listings, and the most required skills in the digital fashion domain in the EU and Switzerland.