The purpose of our research was to examine how dress and textile collections or museums have explicitly and implicitly conveyed solidarity with social-justice efforts. This includes how institution...

Black people, especially Black women, have used dress to reject racism and discrimination and as a means for negotiating their Black and activist identities. Building on past work, we examine how B...

Student perceptions of a simulated store planning project set in a brick and mortar retail research lab were examined using the Concrete, Active, Primary-Abstract, Passive, Secondary Learning Poten...

The number of older Americans as well as those living with Alzheimer's is rapidly growing. Alzheimer's dementia is a disease that causes problems with memory, thinking, and behavior. The role of caregivers is important, as they are the individuals who assist those with Alzheimer's in completing not just medical tasks, but fundamental activities of daily living, such as selecting garments to wear and getting dressed. The purpose of this study was to understand how caregivers make such choices. Interviews with twelve caregivers of individuals with severe stage Alzheimer's were conducted in nursing homes in the United States. Four themes emerged: The Role of Proxy, Routine Selections, Gift-Giving for Loved Ones, and Triangular Relationships. In all cases, the recipient's preferences were important to caregivers’ choices. Further research on the outcomes of making choices for others is needed.

The Sri Lankan apparel industry is currently in transition from apparel assembly to manufacturing original designs as a value addition. Design teams work closely with Western brands, buyers and designers to offer advanced creative and technical design services. The purpose of this article is to investigate how Sri Lankan designers acquire personal, high-value fashion knowledge and design skills in this crucial time of industry transition. The study adopts a qualitative approach using semi-structured interviews conducted with 28 fashion design and product development professionals in the industry. Based on an inductive thematic analysis, the study finds that Sri Lankan designers’ acquisition of high-value fashion knowledge and skills comes primarily through their self-directed learning. This study proposes the Designers’ Self-Directed Learning Cycle to illustrate how designers’ learning happens and is applied in their professional practice. The findings are significant in understanding the designers’ practice in the export-oriented apparel value chain.

Self-sexualization is an emerging area of research relevant to clothing researchers as evaluations of sexual appeal often stem from specific items and uses of dress. Our research purpose was to systematically review the available research on self-sexualization. In our review we focused specifically on three topics: what precedes self-sexualizing? What outcomes are associated with self-sexualizing? And how has self-sexualization been operationalized? The time frame for this review was 2007–2020. To locate the 31 journal articles that supplied the data for this research, multiple data bases were searched using the following search terms: self-sexualization, self-sexualizing, and sexual self-presentation. Important precursors to self-sexualization include exposure to media and social media, self-objectification, internalization of sexualization, and desiring attention from others. Empowerment has been studied as an outcome of self-sexualization along with negative inferences concerning both young women and girls that self-sexualize. Operationalization of self-sexualization is varied and likely contributes to inconsistent findings.

To gain the competitive advantage, it has become essential for manufacturing industry to use its resources effectively, efficiently and economically. It is required to understand that such resources are based on 5 Ms (manpower, methods, materials, money, and machinery). In this study an apparel industry was selected to create a directorial plan by using the ideologies of resource management to improve the process efficiency. For this the data related to the product layout, operation plan, and process flow was collected. Time motion study was performed for aspect analysis. Information regarding operation, number of machines and efficiency of the production line was evaluated. The proposed plan successfully increase the efficiency up to 10%. It also shows an improvement in effective utilization of manpower and money.

Nowadays, more fashion companies have started to adopt various sustainability practices and communicate these practices through their annual public CSR reports. In this study, we aim to provide a holistic perspective of fashion companies’ sustainable development and investigate the sustainability practices of global fashion companies. A total of 181 CSR reports from 29 fashion companies were collected. A Dictionary approach text classification method, combined with Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA), a computer-assisted topic modeling algorithm, was implemented to detect and summarize the themes and keywords of detailed practices disclosed in CSR reports. The findings identified 12 main sustainability practices themes based on the triple bottom line theory and the moral responsibility of corporate sustainability theory. In general, waste management and human rights are the most frequently mentioned themes. The findings also suggest that global fashion companies adopted different sustainability strategies based on their product categories and competitive advantages.

Research in supply chain management focused on the buyer-supplier relationship (BSR) indicates that costing practices can impact relationship quality and performance. Yet, few studies have examined how the supplier’s costing methods affect the BSR. To address this gap, this study investigates the role of open costing in the BSR within the apparel supply chain. Open costing is a popular costing practice in which a supplier compiles an itemized list of costs rather than a fixed price. To examine the extent to which open costing is practiced as part of BSRs, interviews were conducted with 30 professionals operating as suppliers in China and Bangladesh. A thematic analysis of the interview data identified several factors important to open costing and the BSR, including Mutual Trust, Fairness, Flexibility, Efficiency, and Sustainability. Findings shed light on the mechanism and practice of open costing within the BSR, and specifically from the perspective of suppliers.

This paper focuses on the findings related to the second part of a continuing study of student impressions of the industry guest speaker experience in college fashion courses: student perceptions o...

Dress is used by transgender and nonbinary (TNB) individuals as a way to develop and maintain identity, whether to reinforce a binary gender code or disrupt social expectations. However, safety iss...

This study highlights use of the clothing taskscape (CT) to assess user needs, characterize design problems, and develop design criteria by considering relationships across people, their clothing, ...

The past 20 years have seen growth in exposure and academic outlets for design scholarship through new journals, special topics sessions and conferences, and PhD programs. Yet, there is a lack of strong published examples of design scholarship in textiles and apparel as designer scholars and administrators still struggle to understand how to conduct, document, and evaluate design scholarship. This issue, long overdue, looks at the current state of design research in our textile and apparel discipline and provides examples that begin to fill the gap in our shared understanding of a way forward.

Drawing upon the theory of human–robot interaction (HRI), this study examined the relations among perceived characteristics of fashion robot advisors (FRAs), consumers’ negative preconceptions towa...

Scholars in the fashion discipline have become more attentive to investigating how the fashion business can become more circular. In the past, many of the studies focused on identifying the supporting and/or hindering factors when creating a circular fashion (CF). Despite the insights these studies provide, their contributions are relatively limited in that many of them are exploratory in nature and skewed toward understanding CF from the stance of fashion companies who are situated at the supply side of the fashion economy. In contrast, little attention has been given to how consumers, on the demand side, perceive a CF. We employed a mixed-method approach using 332 respondents’ narrative data and empirically identified whether consumers attribute moral responsibility to fashion companies as well as to themselves for creating a CF and, if so, whether there are any nuanced differences in their perceptions of consumer versus corporate moral responsibilities for a CF.

At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, people from around the world made numerous homemade masks for themselves and their community due to shortage of medical masks as well as to stop the spread of COVID-19. The purpose of the current study was to conduct cross cultural exploration of the reasons for making masks, self-construal and wellbeing associated with masks making by collecting data from residents across US, India, and China. The finding of this study presented different reasons for making masks as well as self-construal, and wellbeing in people who made masks versus those who did not. Differences were also observed among three different cultural groups. This study offers a unique contribution to the public health research engaging in craft making related activities to gain a better perspective of the state of health of a population and the understanding of cross-cultural study of craft making behavior during the pandemic.

Knitting is an activity that generates well-being and that can be undertaken in a group. It is characterized by the creation of a final piece, which may have different purposes. The aims of this st...

Facemasks have become requisite amid the COVID-19 pandemic. We explore facemasking behaviors, preferences, and attitudes among emerging adults, a “distinct period demographically” within the lifespan. Public opinion polls conducted in May 2020 found that emerging adults were the least compliant when compared to other demographic groups. To understand why, we developed a survey instrument that was administered to a demographically representative quota sample of 1,005 participants. Demographic comparisons revealed that behaviors and attitudes differed significantly by political beliefs, gender, living situation, and race. An exploratory factor analysis revealed six underlying variables: (a) facemask avoidance; (b) concerned adherence (c) vexed faultfinding; (d) statement making; (e) fashion enthusiasm; and (f) hygiene adherence. All factors varied significantly by political affiliation, and in some cases by gender, race, living situation, location, and work/education status. Significant correlations were present between all factors except fashion enthusiasm and vexed faultfinding.

The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of the “virtual try-on” technology (AR) and the “3D virtual store” (VR) incorporated in an apparel retail website on purchase intentions. This study highlights the mediating role of cognitive elaboration in the process through which these technologies influence purchase intentions, and examines the way consumers’ shopping goals (searching vs. browsing) interact with the website technology and influence their responses. The two experiments demonstrated that, for browsers, the website with VR was more effective in increasing purchase intentions than were the website with AR or a regular website with no technology, while for searchers, both the website with AR and the website with VR were more effective than was a regular website. In addition, cognitive elaboration mediated the interaction between a technology and a shopping goal on purchase intentions for browsers, while such a mediating effect was not found in searchers.