The purpose of this thesis is to examine how Virtual Reality can be applied in the product development in the fashion industry. Therefore, the research focuses on potential areas of application as well as opportunities and challenges the implementation of Virtual Reality implies.

A narrative literature review is conducted, thoroughly investigating the topic of product development and presenting the four application areas, namely Virtual Training, Virtual Prototyping, Virtual Manufacturing, and Virtual Factory, as well as identified opportunities and challenges. For the empirical part, semi-structured interviews are executed with five product developers of the fashion industry who are chosen based on a snowball sampling approach. The gathered data is evaluated using a thematic analysis.

The findings of this study indicate that the areas Virtual Prototyping and Virtual Training were perceived as relevant for the product development in the fashion industry. However, Virtual Prototyping was regarded as most important, for instance, due to the decreased need for physical prototypes resulting in time and cost reductions. Further, the research shows that there are several opportunities and challenges when implementing the Virtual Reality technology in the product development in the fashion industry.

This thesis indicates the potential of Virtual Reality in the product development for the fashion industry by showing major opportunities at different stages for the product development process. Nevertheless, there are several challenges that have to be considered in the implementation and handling of Virtual Reality.