‘It’s like... it’s me’: exploring the lived experience of clothing attachment during wear

Fleetwood-Smith, Rebecka, Hefferon, Kate and Mair, Carolyn (2019) ‘It’s like... it’s me’: exploring the lived experience of clothing attachment during wear. International Journal of Fashion Studies, 6 (1). pp. 41-62. ISSN 2051-7106

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Abstract

Clothing and its intimate proximity to the body and self have been widely explored, and yet there is little psychological research that explores the experience of wearing items of clothing imbued with personal meanings, memories and emotions. This novel study explores the experience of actively worn items of attachment clothing from a psychological perspective. Method: due to a dearth of literature within this area, a qualitative methodology was employed. Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) was used as the focus was to explore details of participants’ experience. A homogenous sample of five participants was used. Participants were asked to wear to the interview a garment that they felt emotionally attached to and was still in use. Semi-structured interviews were used, allowing for flexibility, thus ensuring the elicitation of rich data. Results: findings demonstrated that clothing attachment is a multifaceted and rich phenomenon. The garments were appropriated and imbued with a symbolic resonance that participants accessed through wearing the attachment garment. Conclusion: results link to and extend previous literature on possession attachment and provide nuanced findings that could impact areas within both fashion literature and psychology literature.

Item Type: Article
Identifier: 10.1386/infs.6.1.41_1
Additional Information: Copyright 2019 Intellect Ltd
Keywords: Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis; attachment; clothing; lived experience
Subjects: Fashion and textiles
Psychology
Depositing User: Rebecka Fleetwood-Smith
Date Deposited: 13 Jun 2019 07:44
Last Modified: 06 Feb 2024 16:00
URI: https://repository.uwl.ac.uk/id/eprint/6115

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