One dress, 100 days: Addressing pervasive conflict in wearer–clothing relationships

Abstract

Given the need to decrease current rates of clothing consumption and waste, it is important to understand what makes people use their clothes for longer and what prevents them from doing so. Adding to this line of inquiry, a study was conducted in an online community gathered around the challenge of wearing the same dress for 100 days to explore participants’ experiences with their dresses: with a grounded theory approach, it involved community observations and recruiting members to share their experience through a journal and two interviews that took place midway through their challenge and after completion. This article expands on the work of Neto and Ferreira, who argue that conflict occurs in wearer–clothing relationships, and it is the ways people deal with it (and their everyday role as wearers) that impact the longevity of those relationships. The findings show that, besides the mishaps that wearers may go through with any single item, there are other, more pervasive issues that prevent them from developing and sustaining sound relationships with various garments across their wardrobe and connecting with clothing more broadly. This article evokes Amartya Sen’s notion of freedoms to explain how these issues can be understood as symptoms of limited individual capabilities and limiting social arrangements. Nonetheless, as several challenge participants come to show, these issues can be overcome, providing clues for design to support people in enjoying their clothes for longer and curbing overconsumption.