A modern solution to fashion bias – Ziwei Qu

A modern solution to fashion bias

– How can we reduce consumer bias in the fashion industry?

Introduction

This project aims to discuss how to reduce the “inherent bias” in clothing in the future. Clothing consumers have many consumption motives, such as vanity. Such consumers usually care about clothing brands, origin, reputation and so on. Many, but not all, use fashion as a statement of their wealth and social status. Thus, how can we shift the current trend of luxury brands and recognisable logos, to promoting brands that support environmental awareness?

The phrase “inherent bias” refers to the effect of underlying factors or assumptions that skew viewpoints of a subject under discussion. From my personal experience, I can understand that it is necessary to wear clothes required for different occasions under different circumstances. But looking at those past dress standards, some are indeed outdated and have obvious connotations to class and race. I want to break people’s inherent prejudices against dress standards.

I want people to pay more attention to sustainable fashion, environmental protection and ecological environment development in the field of clothing. Instead of blindly following the brand effect, price and so on, let the clothing become the only standard for each other to judge each other.

Methodology

Most of my secondary research centred around finding articles that link social class to dress codes.

The article discusses how it became a custom in Europe in the late 13th century for people to show off their wealth by wearing clothes. Because clothing is considered a means of expression and a powerful means of asserting social status, it is often used to gain advantage in class warfare (Social Class and Clothing). This chapter suggests the need for a contextual requalification of concepts such as original, copy, imitation and copyright, and argues that these categories have been played against each other, but they are in fact interdependent (Re-Framing Fashion: From Original and Copy to Adaptation). This article describes how haute couture was born and played a role in establishing Paris as an international fashion capital, which many experts believe is the most glamorous and competitive fashion capital (The History and Significance of Haute Couture). Often imposed on women, sartorial codes and sumptuary laws have aimed to create a sense of status or uniformity, but may also hinder one’s self expression (A Timeline of Dress Codes).

I conducted a survey (quantitative) in which I had invited four interviewees for this experiment: a Russian, Greek, and Canadian male; and a Chinese female. Based on the feedback they gave me, I concluded that an individual’s attire has significant influence on their mood, cognition, and sense of self. One weak point of the experiment is that an individual’s state of mind fluctuates day by day, meaning that the same attire can influence an individual in opposing ways depending on pre-existing conditions, such as their mood.

Additionally, I also conducted an interview with four experts: a trained psychologist, a fashion buyer in Selfridges, a fashion stylist, and a fashion designer.

Then, I conducted a research survey on consumer psychology behaviour across all ages in various countries. So far, more than 100 people have participated in it, and this work is still in progress. The purpose of this test was to analyse their clothing consumption behaviour through different aspects, summarising their clothing consumption behaviour and characteristics of personality. The survey took the form of questionnaire survey, and the participants came from different regions and different majors. The sample size of the survey was 100 people, all the questionnaires were returned and the effective response rate was 100%, which met the requirements of mathematical statistics on the sampling number.

Gender distribution: 44 male participants and 56 female participants
Age distribution : 60 people aged 18-28 ; 25 people aged 29-35 ; 15 people aged 36-60

According to the analysis results in Q1, when people buy clothes, they pay more attention to the style, fabric, price and durability. Among them, style accounted for the highest proportion, inheritance value accounted for the least proportion. According to the analysis results and data in Q2, people imagine that when they buy clothes in 50 years, they will pay attention to such aspects as style, fabric, environmental protection and artificial intelligence. Among them, style still accounted for the highest proportion, political culture accounted for the least proportion.

As part of my intervention, I built a website that records my intervention on this topic. I organised a pop-up show room and invited 6 people (all from the previous questionnaire of 100 people). I prepared different type of clothes, so that each of them was able to choose whatever clothes match their individual style. In this showroom, all clothing labels are taped. The goal is to get people to put aside their prejudices and only choose clothes they like. Everyone can take photos, rate and write about their experiences and feelings on social media. Finally, the person with the best rated outfit will receive that same outfit for free. In the future, I will use social media to publicize and promote this project to shopping malls. From the perspective of clothing production, clothing brands can use some clothes with small flaws to do this experiment, which can save resources and play a certain sustainable role.

Reflection and Analysis

By delving into the issue development of this topic, I learned how to summarise suggestions, comments and feedback from stakeholders. I discussed some difficult problems with professionals and find a new direction. Using various methods such as investigation, questionnaire, test and experiment, we repeatedly excavate the relationship between main problems and secondary problems from various angles and determine the final trend. I also learned about the democratisation of fashion, social class goods and clothing, the history and significance of dress codes and dress requirements for different

occasions, the future trend of the fashion industry, the importance of AI in the fashion field for the future, and how fashion brands attract consumers to pay more attention to environmental protection and sustainable clothing.

It is impossible to completely eliminate prejudice, because human beings have inherent prejudice since ancient times. Therefore, the show room I set up only plays a minor role. What I can do is to let everyone realize how biased they usually look at clothes through this platform of blind selection of clothes. The more I study prejudice, the more I realize that we can only try to reduce prejudice, not eliminate it. With the further advancement of the project, I think the gap between this topic and feasibility is becoming larger and larger. If I had more time, I would set more details in the preliminary questionnaire to find a new perspective to interpret similar questions.

My stakeholders are people who buy and sell clothes. The purpose of this project is to garner attention from my main target market: the buying company and the buyer. I will send this official website link to them and let the mall hold similar activities. The remaining sample clothes or defective clothes every year can be displayed at a reduced price at clothing outlets, so that everyone can also participate in the experiment when shopping at ordinary times. My goal is to promote sustainable environmental fashion and make the world a better place.

Based on the feedback they gave me, I conclude that an individual’s attire has significant influence on their mood, cognition, and sense of self. One weak point of the experiment is that an individual’s state of mind fluctuates day by day, meaning that the same attire can influence an individual in opposing ways depending on pre-existing conditions, such as their mood. Among the intervention participants, there was a trend that skewed towards luxury clothing. After participating in the intervention, however, many had a change in opinion and decided to explore vintage and independent brands.

My questionnaire specifically shows that age is not one of the elements of psychological characteristics, but it determines a person’s values, world outlook and aesthetic concept. People of different ages have completely different understanding and interpretation of clothing consumption, which is particularly obvious among consumers. People born in the 1960s tend to be more frugal, so they tend to choose durability rather than style. However, for people born in the 1970s and 1980s, clothing is a symbol of their social status and occupation. Therefore, they tend to emphasize clothing in line with their social status. They find it difficult to accept novel fashion and have higher aesthetic requirements for clothing. Therefore, in the future, the sustainable environmental problems I want to promote may be more obvious in the new generation of young people.

As a result of the intervention, five of the six participants expressed an increased desire to diversify their taste from luxury to other brands. Since this was a survey, I used descriptive research to extract data. The survey conducted assigned quantitative variables (price, style, fabric etc.) which were then answered by a sample size of 100 people. No other inferences were made that were not based on the variables given.

Conclusion

I’ve found that most people prefer to buy niche brands with moderate prices. They believe that there is a positive correlation between price and quality, and that cheap clothes do not pass industry standards of quality. They puts less emphasis on brand name, so long as the clothes are of good quality.

This project pushed me to learn more about environmental awareness and how it relates to the fashion industry. It allowed me to further explore my knowledge about how brands in the fashion industry strive to enforce environmental protection policies, while also pushing me to research aspects that I was previously unfamiliar with. For instance, I learned about the significance of the Industrial Revolution on modernising and facilitating accessible clothing for everyone, which in turn significantly reduced (but not entirely eliminated) fashion-based bias.