Creativity and Sustainable Fashion Apparel Consumption

Abstract

Because promoting sustainable fashion apparel consumption is a pressing contemporary problem, Generation Y participants in the Midwestern United States were challenged to a Fashion Detox, where they refrained from acquiring fashion apparel for ten weeks and blogged about the experience. Content analysis of blog entries for this exploratory study revealed expressions of creativity that were examined through the lens of the propulsion model of kinds of creative contributions. Findings revealed kinds of creative contributions stimulated by voluntary simplicity that satisfy the fashion apparel consumer’s need for novelty and change: expressions of creativity that follow a fashion-driven direction already established, called redefinition and forward incrementation, and those that take a completely different path but within the context of seeking novelty and change, or redirection. Examples of creative activities within these three kinds of creative contributions are, respectively, re-designing old clothes, shifting their focus to home décor instead of apparel, and turning away from fashion apparel altogether. Fourty-six percent of the participants left the 10-week activity feeling that their creativity had been enhanced and 54% expressed the intention to carry on the sustainable consumption lessons they learned. By cultivating expressions of creativity that lead to sustainable consumption through education and innovative business models, stakeholders may initiate a paradigm shift that fulfills the fashion apparel consumer’s need for novelty and change without sacrificing the planet s resources.

Clothing style confidence: The development and validation of a multidimensional scale to explore product longevity

“…In recent years, personal style has been more frequently cited in the sustainable consumption discourse. This research highlights how knowledge of and clarity about one's personal style, defined by Kaiser () as a distinct method of expression, may lengthen clothing life span and reduce waste by way of alternative habits in purchasing, use and disposal (Bly, Gwozdz, & Reisch, ; Cho, Gupta, & Kim, ; Fletcher & Grose, ; Lundblad & Davies, ; Ruppert‐Stroescu, LeHew, Armstrong, & Hiller Connell, ; Zarley Watson & Yan, ). Bly et al () argue that sustainability facilitates style and is an antithesis to mainstream fashion.…”

“…Slow fashion consumers carefully select clothing on the basis of identity and lifestyle (Clark, ; Zarley Watson & Yan, ), seeking timelessness, greater versatility with fewer clothing items, and quality over quantity (Zarley Watson & Yan, ). Researchers suggest that confidence in one's personal style may influence consumer practice that supports sustainability, such as reduced consumption, repair and maintenance, repurposing or redesigning, and other creative habits that can support the extension of the product life‐span (Bly et al, ; Fletcher & Grose, ; Ruppert‐Stroescu et al, ). Cho et al () recently extended this aspect of slow fashion with a method termed style consumption, a distinctive mode of dress that evolves slowly and is consistent over time.…”

Clothing Disposal System by Gifting

“…From a critical perspective, these behaviors are delivery and provision mechanisms-alternatives to the markets, leading to greater individual autonomy (Alvesson, 1994) and creativity (Ruppert-Stroescu, LeHew, Hiller Connell, & Armstrong, 2015); they thus should be encouraged. Nonetheless, the critical school of thought would see the interference of the clothing marketing system in the clothing disposal system by gifting as a cause for concern.…”

Integrating Creative Problem Solving into the Field of Fashion Education

“…Researchers in the field of fashion education have explored the concept of creativity as related to fashion design and development (Black, Freeman, & Stumpo, 2015;Ruppert-Stroescu & Hawley, 2014), to consumer motivation for reusing and repairing apparel (Lapolla & Sander, 2015), and to sustainable apparel consumption (Ruppert-Stroescu, LeHew, Connell, & Armstrong, 2015). Creativity has been seen as a source of fashion apparel consumers' need for novelty and change.…”