Assessing the impact of design strategies on clothing lifetimes, usage and volumes: The case of product personalisation

This article, co-authored with my PhD supervisors, has been recently published at the Journal of Cleaner Production.

Abstract

Product lifetimes and obsolescence have been central points of discussion in the fashion field. In this context, design researchers and practitioners have proposed a variety of strategies to enable slower cycles of product replacement, leading to smaller volumes of clothing production and consumption. A previous review of these strategies, however, revealed that there is no empirical evidence of their efficacy in terms of lifetime extension or environmental sustainability. Therefore, this research takes a first step in covering this knowledge gap. It proposes methods to assess the impact of such approaches and applies them to the specific case of “product personalisation”, the strategy most frequently mentioned in literature.

Clothing has characteristics that are not present in other product categories common in lifetimes studies. These characteristics enable comparative analysis of products, diachronic studies over relatively short periods of time, and estimations of the environmental benefits of lifetime extension. Taking advantage of such particularities, the article evaluates the environmental gains of personalised products by comparing their performance with ready-made garments in terms of age, usage, influence on new product demand, and waste. The research is based on a series of wardrobe studies and company interviews.

The outcomes of these studies question the environmental benefits of product personalisation. When compared with ready-made garments, personalised garments were not kept for longer time, nor were they used more frequently. Moreover, no evidence of their contribution to reductions in new product demand and waste was found.

These findings confirm the need for more empirical research to understand the effect of this and other design strategies aimed at delaying clothing obsolescence and reducing production volumes and waste. Such enquiries can provide relevant feedback to practitioners developing creative solutions. In that way, empirical research and creative practice can benefit from each other's input and build iterative cycles that ensure effective actions. The methods advanced in this study aim at supporting this valuable line of research, leading to a more environmentally-sound apparel sector.

On paradigm shifts and industrial revolutions: tracing prevalent dressmaking practices and apparel production systems in the Netherlands and northwest Europe (1850-2016).

My paper On paradigm shifts and industrial revolutions: tracing prevalent dressmaking practices and apparel production systems in the Netherlands and northwest Europe (1850-2016) was recently presented at the 19th IFFTI (International Foundation of Fashion Technology Institutes) conference in Amsterdam. The article got the first price for the category Postgraduate/Research students. See the abstract and download the full paper below.

ABSTRACT

Personalization, production on-demand, and flexible manufacture facilities are growing within the European apparel sector, supported by national and regional public policy. These developments seem to embody a much waited “paradigm shift” in the fashion industry; a shift from global to local scale, from quantity to quality and from standard products to personalized services. Such values, however, are far from new, and scholars have already pointed out the similarities between emerging and pre-industrial systems of production and consumption. This article argues that in order to understand current developments in historical context, we should return to the process of industrialization of the apparel industry during the turn from the 19th to the 20th C, taking into account aspects of production as much as mediation and consumption. With this aim in mind, the article traces the rise of ready-made garments in the Netherlands and northwest Europe, and the associated decline in custom- and home-made garments in the region. Although available statistical data is insufficient to accurately map these phenomena, secondary sources suggest that both processes were not simultaneous and therefore there was not a straightforward substitution of custom- and home-made clothing by ready-mades. While availability and trade of mass-produced ready-mades was escalating since the early 19th C, it was not until mid 20th C that custom- and home-made clothing declined among the middle class. In this study, such a gap is explained by a steady increase in the amount of clothes acquired per person: an expanding culture of consumption during the period under consideration may have enabled these different systems to flourish all together. A parallelism of the findings above with current developments suggests that we should not regard emergent industrial formats as substitutionary of established ones, but as complementary. We may then reevaluate to what extent does the rise of the flexible factory enable a “revolution”, a shift from a problematic present to a contrasting and desirable future. This historical overview indicates that, on the contrary, emerging product-service-systems manufacturing personalized garments on-demand must be considered in relation to – and in coexistence with- traditional industrial models.

On Paradigm Shifts and Industrial Revolutions: tracing prevalent dressmaking practices and apparel producti... by Anonymous E0kieBtX on Scribd

RESPONDENTS NEEDED FOR WARDROBE STUDIES

As part of my PhD research I am conducting a wardrobe study of people having 10 or more personalised garments in their wardrobe (men and women, any age). With “personalised garment” I mean clothes that have been made upon request with participation of the wearer in the process, for example made-to-measure clothes, self-made clothes, clothes made by family members or friends upon request, customised clothes, etc. This excludes ready-made clothes adjusted after purchase. 

I hope some of you (or other people in your network) are able to help me. Please contact me for more details at:

+31(0)650451478 

i.maldini@hva.nl

Please share this request with others. Thank you!

Article The Perfect Dress and its Making presented at ICDHS conference in Taipei

The Perfect Dress and its Making: A Comparative Study of the Sartorial Habits of Amsterdam Women (1950s-2010s)

Authors: Irene Maldini and Ragna Luciana Manz

Abstract

The shift from home and custom-made clothing to mass-produced ready-mades in 20th-century Europe has been the subject of studies from multiple disciplines and across various locations. Contributing to this field of studies, and extending the analysis until the present day, a group of female consumers living in Amsterdam in the 1950s and 2010s were interviewed about their sartorial habits. The study identifies a discrepancy between common manufacturing processes and values related to identity as a central cause of this shift. Furthermore it explores how such a discrepancy can be found again today, arguing that this divergence is leading to the re-emergence of customized production.

Keywords
dressmaking, mass production, customization, craftsmanship, identity

This article was presented last October at the 10th ICDHS conference in Taipei and published in the conference proceedings. In this edition, the topic of the conference was Making Trans/National Design Histories. In this context, a variety of articles on fashion history were presented in the conference. The intercultural connections among East Asian countries and between Asia and Europe in relation to dress were central for most of these articles. See article here.

Mass Customization and Sustainability

Is it more sustainable to produce and consume customized goods manufactured by a flexible factory than traditional mass-produced goods? This discussion (extremely relevant today) has been approached by many scholars from different fields. Engineering, management, marketing, consumer studies, are some of the backgrounds of researchers approaching this question. See this literature list for a preliminary overview:

Bettoni, a et al., 2013. Integrated product and supply chain design: bridging the gap towards networked environment for effective implementation of a sustainable mass customized solution. International Journal of Engineering, Science and Technology, 5(2), pp.65–78. Available at: http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=cookie,ip,shib&db=awn&AN=ijest-86050&site=ehost-live\nhttp://www.ajol.info/index.php/ijest/article/view/86050.

Boër, C.R. et al., 2013. Mass Customization and Sustainability, Available at: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/978-1-4471-5116-6.

Brunø, T.D. et al., 2013. Sustainability Evaluation of Mass Customization. In APMS. pp. 175–182.

Chin, A.R. & Smithwick, D., 2009. Environmental Impacts of Utilizing Mass Customization : Energy and Material Use of Mass Customization vs . Mass Production. Mcpc 2009, pp.1–24.

Jovane, F. et al., 2008. The incoming global technological and industrial revolution towards competitive sustainable manufacturing. CIRP Annals - Manufacturing Technology, 57, pp.641–659.

Medini, K. et al., 2015. Investigating mass customization and sustainability compatibilities. International Journal of Engineering, Science and Technology, 7(1), pp.11–20.

Osorio, J. et al., 2001. Design for Sustainable Mass-Customization : Design Guidelines for Sustainable Mass-Customized Products. In 20th ICE Conference on Engineering, Technology and Innovation.

Value creation by toolkits for user innovation and design: the case of the watch market

Study of the value (measured in WTP) of personalized products created through toolkits. Findings indicate that participating users attribute a high value increment to their own design activities.

Authors: Nikolaus Franke and Frank Piller

Year: 2004

Article