In this paper, the contents of knowledge base for clothing sensory design are defined as four parts: the clothing design elements, semantic expression, reflection between the former two and design rules. The character and contents of each part are discussed and analyzed respectively. Methods of interviewing, laddering, card sorting, analytic hierarchy process (AHP), Hierarchy structure, triangle fuzzy numbers, literature reviewing etc. are chosen for the knowledge elicitation and representation. The men’s suit is used as a case study to explain the whole procedure of knowledge base construction. The style design elements of the men’s suit are decomposed into 9 items and 28 categories. The semantic space of the sensory evaluation towards the men’s suit is modelled in the form of 4 word-pairs: formal- casual, classical- modern, gorgeous- simple and elegant- masculine. The triangular fuzzy numbers are introduced to quantify the 7-point scales of linguistic descriptions (extreme, very, rather, average, rather, very and extreme). And the reflection of the design elements space and semantic space is acquired and represented. The design rule of the men’s suit is obtained by the method of literature reviewing and interviewing. It includes both the basic rule derived from the beauty rule and the design principle based on consumers’ character such as body type and facial colour etc. All techniques and methods are not limited to men’s suit itself but can be extended to other garments or products. The conclusions of the paper will play an important role in realizing the goals such as clothing individuation, sensation, intellectualization and fashion etc.
