“ I Still Love Them and Wear Them ”—Conflict Occurrence and Management in Wearer-Clothing Relationships

Ana Neto and João Ferreira
Additional contact information
Ana Neto: CIAUD, Research Centre for Architecture, Urbanism and Design, Lisbon School of Architecture, Universidade de Lisboa, Rua Sá Nogueira, 1349-063 Lisboa, Portugal
João Ferreira: UNIDCOM/IADE—Unidade de Investigação em Design e Comunicação, Av. D. Carlos I, 4, 1200-649 Lisboa, Portugal

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 23, 1-19

Abstract: The reasons why people use their clothes for longer are complex, but essential to understand how to promote longer clothing lifetimes. We conducted an online survey with open-ended questions, asking 170 female participants to write about one of their oldest garments still in use. When analysing our qualitative data, we found that many participants reported going through some mishaps with their item, a situation which is identified in existing literature as a reason for garment disposal. Following ongoing research which compares wearer-clothing relationships with human relationships, we analysed our qualitative data in the light of theory on interpersonal relationships to understand why conflict did not lead participants to dispose of their garments. The findings suggest that the way people manage conflict with their clothes is more critical for garment longevity than the conflict per se, which is bound to happen at some point in time. This paper presents different approaches to conflict in wearer-clothing relationships and illustrates them with testimonies from our survey. We discuss our findings through relevant literature and their implications to specific strategies for garment longevity.

Keywords: wearer-clothing relationships; conflict management; person-product attachment; clothing use; clothing longevity; sustainable fashion consumption (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/23/13054/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/23/13054/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:13:y:2021:i:23:p:13054-:d:687813

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().