By Yuliya Klochan
Medill Reports
The global fashion industry reached $1.9 trillion in apparel and footwear retail sales in 2019, according to statistwith the US emerging as the largest clothing market. And what Americans wear has major consequences for both their physical and mental well-being.
“If you felt good in your dress, and you felt good about yourself, and that inner confidence was on, it’s that inner light that shines through my entire design process,” said Don O’Neill, eveningwear designer and to measure. bridal wear that has dressed celebrities like Oprah Winfrey, Meghan Markle and Carrie Underwood. “When you walked into a room in one of my dresses, I wanted people to say, ‘You look great,’ rather than ‘That dress was amazing.’ It was about you more than the dress.”
Here are four insights from the psychology of fashion to understand as the global apparel and footwear market surges toward a projection of $3.3 trillion annually by 2030, according to statist.
Secret #1: Can’t stop buying Prada? The psychology of brand addiction.
Brand addiction is different for luxury brands than it is for fast fashion. Those who follow fast fashion are motivated by the desire to stay current and “keep up with the times,” says fashion and marketing expert Mona Mrad. (Yuliya Klochan/MEDILL)
“One of the participants said: ‘Apple is like your wife. Can you divorce your wife?’” recalled Mona Mrad, an assistant professor of marketing at the American University of Sharjah.
Mrad and her colleagues conducted a series of focus groups to explore the concept of brand addiction (BA), and she has many stories to tell, some published in a later article. to study in 2018 in Business Research Journal.
A woman enrolled in college for a master’s degree so she could get a better-paying job to buy Chanel. The brother of another participant convinced everyone around him to buy Hugo Boss. And one man recalled how his friend, who ran out of clothes in the middle of a trip to Rome, convinced his group of friends to find a Ralph Lauren store with him, since he wasn’t ready to wear any. another brand.
BA is defined as “a psychological state that involves an emotional attachment to a particular brand, driven by compulsive impulses that generally bring pleasure,” according to research paper Posted by Mrad in Qualitative market research in 2018.
BA can activate the same brain area linked to other addictive behaviors such as alcoholism, but it is not the same as compulsive buying, although both conditions can coexist. In fact, the presence of BA, which gives people feelings of gratification when buying their favorite brand’s products, may weaken the negative effects of compulsive buying, according to a 2020 study. to study co-authored with Mrad and published in Business Research Journal.
One brand addict described her coat shopping experience as “‘This brand screams Emily,'” Mrad recalled. “You feel like it’s you, it’s who you are. And this is the reason why you become addicted to this brand, because it represents you. It’s giving you this kind of branding, this kind of positioning of who you are.”
Secret #2: What People Wear Influences How They Think and Feel
In a work-from-home environment, more people are opting out of combining tops and bottoms in favor of a “Zoom mullet.” (Yuliya Klochan/MEDILL)
The “Zoom mullet”, according to urban dictionary, it’s “business above, pajama pants below.” Many have adopted this outfit during the age of remote work, but what are the psychological consequences?
As of January 2022 to studypublished in Management Academy Discoveriesshowed that wearing full home clothes, top and bottom, increased workers’ authenticity and engagement, while neither full work clothes nor the “Zoom mullet” had these positive effects.
This experiment is one of many exploring the concept of “wrapped cognition,” coined in 2012 to describe how “what we wear can influence how we think, feel, and act.” In that first 2012 to studypublished in Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, the researchers found that wearing a doctor’s lab coat increased people’s attentiveness. They did not see this improvement when participants were given the same garment but told it was a painter’s smock.
A multi-university research team was unable to replicate the lab coat study with a larger sample in 2019 experimentBut since other studies of involved cognition exist, the 2019 experiment did not completely discredit the theory.
More recent experiments, in addition to the Zoom mullet, reveal new ways in which people’s clothing influences their behavior. in a 2022 paperpublished in Trends in Psychology, wearing anti-COVID-19 face masks made people more willing to be spontaneous, at least in imagined social interactions. in a 2019 to studypublished in Psychological ReportsResearchers showed that participants wearing police uniforms were more likely to shoot unarmed targets in a first-person video game simulation.
Secret #3: Painful Heels and Restrictive Skirts: The Role of Gender in Fashion Choices
Studies have shown that wearing heels can increase perceived attractiveness, but also the risk of chronic muscular and skeletal problems. (Yuliya Klochan/MEDILL)
“My mom always said, ‘Vanity knows no pain,’” recalled Kathlin Argiro, an evening wear designer and instructor at the Fashion Institute of Technology. “It’s a very old saying, but I wouldn’t say I prescribe that.” Argiro has sold her collection to Neiman Marcus, Saks Fifth Avenue and Bloomingdale’s.
“If you don’t feel comfortable and confident in what you’re wearing, you won’t have fun and it will show,” Argiro said. But not all designers agree, and people continue to wear clothing that can be uncomfortable and even physically taxing.
The burden falls primarily on women, who are much more likely to wear clothing or shoes that fall into one or more of the categories that are painful, restrictive, or self-distracting. These results, collected before the pandemic, were published in a 2021 investigation paper in sex roles. The starkest contrasts were gender differences in shoe comfort: women were up to 10 times more likely to wear painful shoes. As many as 55% of women, but only up to 12% of men, said they had worn clothes that left “red marks or welts” on their bodies.
Secret #4: How the COVID-19 pandemic affected fashion choices
Retail stores have an average inventory turnover ratio of nearly 11, according to Investopedia. This means that stores, on average, replenish their entire stock more than 10 times a year due to high demand. (Yuliya Klochan/MEDILL)
“What (the pandemic) has done is realign a lot of values that people have and what they’re looking to get out of clothes and other fashion-related items,” said Michael Solomon, a marketing professor at Saint Joseph’s University. “Probably the biggest change is awareness about sustainability.”
Solomon said the lockdown gave people time to reflect on their values, prompting them to rethink fast fashion and buy from companies that have failed to express their social responsibility.
O’Neill shared a similar sentiment: “I think there’s been a global awareness of where your clothes come from,” he said. Designers who graduate from fashion school know the origin of their products and the manufacturing process, striving to make it ethical and renewable materials.
Customers are also catching up. “I feel like the pandemic has shed a great light on sustainability and environmental fashion, responsible sourcing and responsible fashion,” O’Neill said. Today’s customers also demand transparency.
“It’s not that we stopped buying,” Mrad said. “We will continue to buy, but we will buy differently.” Consumers tend to buy products intended more for comfort than ostentation. Hard goods, those fashion pieces like Rolex watches and luxury handbags, that last longer, outsell soft goods, as people think of their new products more like investments. “I would prefer to buy a bag that is going to have value even after a few years, instead of buying an outfit that I don’t know if I will use or not. And then after a year, it won’t be trending anymore,” Mrad said.
Argiro isn’t planning his next collection yet, but he has some ideas about what he could change post-lockdown: “I would probably do a really glamorous nightwear combo, but I would also have some things that were a little more athleisure.” In the end, “people would want a bit of fantasy” after being in sweatpants for so long.
Yuliya Klochan is a graduate student in health, environment, and science at Medill. You can follow her on Twitter at @YuliyaKlochan.
Source: news.medill.northwestern.edu