Researcher: Ana Neto

Keywords: Sustainable fashion; clothing consumption; clothing use; wearer-clothing relationships; online community

Duration: since 2020 (ongoing)

Context: A US-based brand specialized in merino wool clothing challenged their customers to wear one of their dresses for 100 days, and created an online community where past, present and potential challenge participants can encourage, inspire and support each other. And thus emerged an opportunity to study the relationships developed between women and their dresses throughout 100 sequential days, and the role of the community throughout.

Goals: Designers are often asked to intervene in a situation (and devise solutions and courses of action to improve those situations) without the proper time to fully understand it. Therefore, this research was conducted from a design point of view refraining from action: it aims to contribute to knowledge in the field – that is, to improve the understanding of a situation – which may contribute to a better informed practice. In particular, this project aims to explore and explain how people relate with their clothes and, more specifically, how community can influence (i.e., how it may limit and benefit) these individual relationships and help them last for longer. The findings may have relevant implications for a potential fashion design practice within communities to support long-lasting wearer-clothing relationships, an important endeavour towards reducing clothing overconsumption.

Methodology: This study followed a grounded theory approach. Data collection occurred between 2020 and 2021, through community observation and participant interviews and journals. Due to the richness and quantity of the collected qualitative data, analysis and results are ongoing.

Results: Considering the community was created to gather challenge participants that could encourage, inspire and support each other, the first analysis sought to understand why participants actually needed inspiration, encouragement or support when going through such an endeavour. The first findings [1] addressed the occurrence of pervasive conflict in wearer-clothing relationships: that is, that besides the mishaps that wearers may go through with any single item, there are other, more pervasive issues that prevent them from developing and sustaining sound relationships with various garments across their wardrobe, and connecting with clothing more broadly.