Fashion, unsustainability issues, from consumer identity to sustainable fashion consumption and brand design Master’s Thesis

Nguyen My Linh Aalto University School of Business International Design Business Management Fall 2020

Aalto University, P.O. BOX 11000, 00076 AALTO www.aalto.fi Abstract of master’s thesis Author Linh My Nguyen Title of thesis Fashion, unsustainability issues, from consumer identity to sustainable fashion

consumption and brand design. Degree Master of Science in Economics and Business Administration Degree programme International Design Business Management

Thesis advisor(s) Ville Eloranta Year of approval 2021 Number of pages 143 Language English

Abstract

Starting from the 00s, fashion industry has caused severe damage to the environment, the society

and the people working in the industry. To stop the unsustainable behaviours from consumers and

unethical fashion companies, awareness must be raised among the public to put pressure to the

production side.

Many fashion brands were built based on the concept of sustainable development and many large

fashion companies are making sustainable-oriented adjustments in their businesses. However, with

the rising concern about sustainability issues, many companies claim their effort toward

sustainability as a marketing tool without real work contributing to the sustainability, which leads to

consumers’ confusion about the trustworthiness of the information provided by the fashion

companies. As such, this study aims to determine the motivations of consumers in fashion

consumption, and from those results, investigate what could be effective practices for building

attractive sustainable fashion brands with integrity and for helping consumers to understand,

demand, and consume sustainable products.

This research follows quantitative research approach of grounded theory; to understand these issues,

semi constructed intensive interviews were conducted with relevant stakeholders including fashion

researchers, fashion designer, fashion marketer and fashion consumers. The data analysis is

performed through coding, memo-writing, sampling, saturation and sorting.

Keywords sustainable fashion, consumer identity, consumer behaviours, branding, fashion

brandings, sustainable fashion brand design, sustainable fashion branding, sustainability

branding, sustainable consumer behaviours

2 Table of Contents 1 INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................................ 5

1.1 RESEARCH OBJECTIVES/QUESTIONS .......................................................................................................... 8 1.2 STRUCTURE OF THE STUDY ...................................................................................................................... 8

2 LITERATURE REVIEW ..................................................................................................................... 9

2.1 CONSUMER CULTURE THEORY ................................................................................................................. 9 2.2 CONSUMER IDENTITY AND CONSUMPTION BEHAVIOUR ............................................................................... 10

2.2.1 Imagination process .................................................................................................................. 10 2.2.2 Identity and consumption in Consumer Culture Theory ........................................................... 14

2.3 BRAND IDENTITY ................................................................................................................................. 20 2.4 IDENTITY BRAND PRISM FRAMEWORK .................................................................................................... 21 2.5 LUXURY FASHION ................................................................................................................................ 24

2.5.1 History of luxury fashion ........................................................................................................... 24 2.5.2 Luxury fashion branding............................................................................................................ 27 2.5.3 Key luxury fashion brand characteristics .................................................................................. 27

2.6 SUSTAINABLE FASHION ........................................................................................................................ 30 2.6.1 The history of sustainable fashion ............................................................................................ 30 2.6.2 Sustainable fashion issues and direction .................................................................................. 31

3 METHODOLOGY ......................................................................................................................... 32

3.1 GROUNDED THEORY RESEARCH .............................................................................................................. 32 3.2 DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS ........................................................................................................... 35

3.2.1 Personal research about sustainable fashion ........................................................................... 35 3.2.2 Simultaneous data collection and analysis process .................................................................. 37 3.2.3 Coding ....................................................................................................................................... 38 3.2.4 Intensive interviews with experts .............................................................................................. 39 3.2.5 Memo writing - Clustering ........................................................................................................ 47

3.3 TRUSTWORTHINESS OF THE STUDY ......................................................................................................... 48

4 FINDINGS ................................................................................................................................... 50

4.1 FASHION FORMATION .......................................................................................................................... 50 4.1.1 Fashion and the social aspect ................................................................................................... 51 4.1.2 Fashion is one form of self-identity expression ......................................................................... 52 4.1.3 Fashion is one art-expression form with craftmanship ............................................................ 55 4.1.4 Fashion is a meaning creation system and reflection of the society ........................................ 56

4.2 THE CHALLENGES OF SUSTAINABLE FASHION TRANSITION ............................................................................ 57 4.2.1 Environmental issues ................................................................................................................ 59 4.2.2 Economical design problem ...................................................................................................... 59 4.2.3 Social issues ............................................................................................................................... 65 4.2.4 Dilemma between economic growth and environmental and social cost ................................ 68 4.2.5 Unsustainability issues from consumers ................................................................................... 69

4.3 SOLUTIONS FOR SUSTAINABLE FASHION TRANSITION .................................................................................. 76 4.3.1 Sustainable transition directions for different consumer segments ......................................... 77 4.3.2 Key factors for building a sustainable brand ............................................................................ 87

5 DISCUSSION ............................................................................................................................... 99

5.1 FASHION FROM DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVES .............................................................................................. 100 5.1.1 Tangible form .......................................................................................................................... 101 5.1.2 Symbolic meaning ................................................................................................................... 101 5.1.3 Identity expression .................................................................................................................. 103 5.1.4 Society reflection ..................................................................................................................... 104

3 5.2 SUSTAINABLE TRANSITION IN FASHION FOR CONSUMERS AND FASHION BRANDS ............................................ 104

6 CONCLUSIONS .......................................................................................................................... 108

6.1 PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS ................................................................................................................... 110 6.2 LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY ................................................................................................................ 111 6.3 SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER RESEARCH ................................................................................................. 112

REFERENCES ...................................................................................................................................... 113

APENDICES ........................................................................................................................................ 119

4 LIST OF TABLES Table 1. Opinions about imagination’s characteristics (Schau, 2018, p.21-26) 13 Table 2. List of interviewees in the three rounds of interviews 40 Table 3. Initial code structure 41 Table 4. Restructured code structure 43 Table 5. Final code structure 45 Table 6. Fashion formation code structure (from final code structure) 51 Table 7. Fashion industry problems code structure (from final code structure) 58 Table 8. Fashion consumption motivation code structure (from final code structure) 78 Table 9. Sustainable fashion brand code structure (from final code structure) 88 LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1. Reprint of the imagination formation process (Schau, 2000, p.50-56) 14 Figure 2. Synthesized interrelation between identity and consumption 17 Figure 3. Brand identity prism (Kapferer, 2012, p.158) 22 Figure 4. Factors in sustaining luxury fashion positioning (Fionda & Moore, 2009, p.359

28 Figure 5. Reprint positive feedback loop (Fletcher, 2008, p.65) 32 Figure 6. The grounded theory process (Charmaz, 2006, p.11) 35 Figure 7. Demonstration of topics studied before expert interviews 36 Figure 8. Simultaneous data collection and data analysis process 37 Figure 9. Fashion industry problem mapping 76 Figure 10. Fashion consumer types - problems – solutions 79 Figure 11. Snail shell graph of fashion formation elements 100 Figure 12. Lotus Diagram - The sustainable fashion brand design principles 105

5 1 INTRODUCTION The fashion industry is often referred as the apparel sector because apparel is the main element of the fashion industry (Priest, 2005). However, fashion industry is also used to refer to companies operating on other products, such as leather goods, shoes, accessories and jewelry (Brun & Castelli, 2008). A number of characteristics are typical for the fashion industry: short life cycle, a large number of variations in products, high level of uncertainty in demand and supply, complicated procedures and high impulse purchasing behaviour (Şen,

2008). At $2.5 trillion annual revenue globally, fashion is one of the largest industries in the world (McKinsey, 2020). According to Statistic of Fashion United, as cited in Wen et al., 2019), the fashion apparel market surpassed global value of three trillion US dollars which is approximately 2% of worldwide Gross Domestic Product (GDP); the industry in total generates 115.6 million employment opportunities by 2014. Based on those facts, it is claimed that the fashion industry does contribute to the growth of the economy. However, what is the real cost for the economic gain? Would this still be a gain after paying for the cost to the environment, society and the mankind? Fashion industry ranked as the second most polluting industry which accounts for 20% of all industrial water pollution worldwide and 10% of global carbon emission – higher than the combination international flights and marine transport. If nothing changes, by 2050, 25% of the world’s carbon budget will be spent by the fashion industry (UNEP, 2018). The fashion industry negatively contributes not only to the environmental cost but also human cost: textile workers are forced to work overtime in unsafe conditions with exploitative wages (UNEP, 2018). Environmental and social issues are becoming increasingly critical which requires the transformation toward sustainability from fashion companies and fashion consumers. The increasing concerns on ethical problems create enforcements for companies to be sustainable-oriented (Chen & Chang, 2013). Many sustainable-oriented fashion brands have been established to provide consumers with sustainable products with the purpose of solving unstainable production and consumption issues. Sustainability has become important in

6 marketing strategy for companies in order to satisfy multiple stakeholders (Chen & Chang, 2013). However, the greenwashing phenomenon, which refers to the dishonest and misleading statements from an organization about its environmentally friendly products or service, has become an issue in the fashion industry (Parguel et al., 2011). The consumers are being bombarded with a huge amount of information when there is an increasing number of sustainable brands claimed in the market. This phenomenon causes confusion from the consumer side about the validity of the sustainability information (Pomering & Johnson, 2009). The mistrust from consumers leads to the loss of the market segment of the real sustainable fashion brands (Peattie et al., 2009). As such, sustainability management and sustainability marketing are worldwide issues that are especially relevant in well developed industrialised nations (Wasik, 1996). Sustainability and marketing are connected closer than it might appear (Baldassarre & Campo, 2016). Ottman (1993 as cited in Kärnä et al., 2001, p.60) specifies that marketing related to the environment requires thinking about “how we define green, how we develop green products

that customers will like, and how we communicate our commitment and initiatives with credibility and impact”. Meaning that to encourage more consumers to consider the criticality of empowering and supporting sustainable-oriented brands, the branding from those fashion brands should be able to persuade and satisfy the customers by demonstrating and taking actions according to the brand’s sustainable values. This should be done through creating experiences representing their sustainable values in product design, production, business model design and brand design. On the other hand, the excessive constantly changes in fashion trends created by fast fashion companies encourages consumers to buy more, use less and throw away more. As such, for real sustainable fashion brands, it is important to understand how to communicate real sustainable values to consumers to raise awareness, inspire and build trust with them and thus, encourage consumers to enjoy fashion responsibly and sensibly. There are many approaches to fashion analysis: fashion as a tangible product with functions, fashion as an intangible concept with social meanings and fashion as a tool for an individual

7 self-expression. According to Blumer (1969 as cited in Brun et al., 2008, p.555) , the word “fashion” means

“the trend which spontaneously affirms themselves in accordance with the Zeitgeist, i.e., the spirit of the age prevailing at a given moment.” In the past, apparel such as clothing was considered by most people as a necessity; hence the apparel production mainly had a functional purpose (Brun & Castelli, 2008). However, clothing also includes the “fashion”

aspect in it as the quality of fabrics, the design and the combination of accessories have always indicated the wearer to be of certain social class (Okonkwo, 2007), meaning that fashion is more than just a tangible product with functions but also has social meanings. Regarding the intangible aspects of fashion with the social meanings, Kawamura (2005) started Fashion-ology which is the study of fashion that is not about clothing but about the sociological aspect of fashion concerning the concept of fashion. Fashion-ology sees “fashion as a belief that is manifested through clothing.” (Kawamura, 2005, p.1). It is believed that fashion is a collective activity and fashion creation involves everyone but not by an individual (Kawamura, 2005). A style of clothing cannot become fashion until it is adopted and recognized by a large group of people in a society and emphasizes the clothing has to be labelled as fashion before it is consumed (Kawamura, 2005). From Kawamura's (2005) point of view, everyone who are wearing clothes have the wishes or want to believe that they are consuming fashion but not just merely wearing clothing. The socially constructed idea of fashion creates the belief that: what people are wearing is fashion but not just clothing (Kawamura, 2005). As a result, the social beliefs existing in people mind influences “the production, distribution, diffusion, reception, adoption and consumption” (Kawamura, 2005, p.1). On the other hand, from the consumer perspective, the purchase decisions in developed countries depend more on what they want rather than what they need (Jones & Hayes, 2002). As such, material, design and functional innovation emerge as differentiation points within a product segment (Bruce et al., 2004).

8 1.1 Research objectives/questions

As there are different approaches in analysing and defining fashion but there was no fashion definition was proposed by the investigation from different perspectives of fashion creation stakeholders, it is essential to explore the relationship among various stakeholders with fashion as a foundation to understand fashion consumers purchasing behaviours and to come up with sustainability transformation for fashion companies and fashion consumers. Therefore, this thesis aims to research the motivations of fashion consumers, the challenges of fashion brands and consumers in the sustainability transition and the solutions for consumers and fashion brands in sustainable consumption and production transformation. With a shift in consumer behaviour towards increased demand for sustainable products and services, the production and distribution systems in the fashion industry are more motivated and supported in the sustainable transformation (Fletcher, 2008). For that reason, in this thesis, my primary research was about gaining insights on:

• How can fashion brands and consumers facilitate sustainable fashion production and consumption?

In order to answer the primary research question; I used the two sub-research questions as follow:

• How fashion is defined from different perspectives? • What makes sustainable transition in fashion challenging?

1.2 Structure of the study The structure of this thesis starts with literature review which covers three main topics: (1) Consumer Culture Theory: the definition and characteristics of CCT are presented, followed by an explanation of the relationship between identity project, social relation and the marketplace. (2) Brand Identity: the introduction of brand identity prism framework by Kapferer (2012). (3) The history and branding strategy of luxury fashion and sustainable

9 fashion. The next section of this thesis is methodology which contains two parts. The first part presents Grounded Theory approach; the second part describes the data collection and data analysis processes. The third section covers the analysis and demonstration of relevant findings to answer the three research questions which are grouped as fashion formation, the challenges of sustainable fashion transition and solutions for sustainable fashion transition. The next section is the discussion which provides the synthesis and comparisons of the findings with the literature framework. The succeeding sections are the summary and conclusion of this research which are followed by practical implications of the findings and suggestions for further research of this thesis. 2 LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Consumer Culture Theory Instead of referring to a single theory, Consumer Culture Theory (CCT) refers to the umbrella of theoretical perspectives which target the interrelation between consumer behaviour, the marketplace and cultural meanings (Arnould & Thompson, 2005). Consumer behaviour research has studied consumption from several perspectives such as sociocultural, experiential, symbolic and ideological perspectives of consumption (Arnould & Thompson, 2005). CCT researchers share the same point of view in cultural research in which instead of looking at culture as a homogenous system consisting of the common meanings, way of life and the shared values among members of a society, CCT approaches heterogeneous distribution of meanings and the multiplicity of overlapping cultural groups which are formed in the “sociohistorical frame of globalization and market capitalism” (Arnould & Thompson, 2005, p.869). Therefore, consumer culture indicates that the social arrangement of the relationship “between lived culture and social resources, and between the meaningful ways of life and

the symbolic and material resources on which they depend, are mediated through market”

(Arnould & Thompson, 2005, p.869). CCT has clarified the symbolic, embodied and experiential aspects of acquisition behaviours

10 (Fischer and Arnold, 1990; Joy and Sherry, 2003; Otnes, Lowrey, and Shrum, 1997; Sherry, 1990; Thompson, Locander, and Pollio, 1990 as cited in Arnould & Thompson, 2005) and the sociocultural complexity of exchange behaviours and relationships (Belk et al., 1988; Belk and Coon, 1993; Deighton and Grayson, 1995; Penaloza and Gilly, 1999 as cited in Arnould & Thompson, 2005). The pursue of research questions in CCT is often done across the topics of acquisition, consumption and disposition.(Arnould & Thompson, 2005). CCT has helped to gain insight into four sociocultural processes and structures central to consumer behaviour: “(1) consumer identity projects, (2) marketplace cultures, (3) the socio-historic patterning of consumption, and (4) mass-mediated marketplace ideologies and consumers’ interpretive strategies” (Arnould & Thompson, 2005, p.871). 2.2 Consumer identity and consumption behaviour Globalization and technological development provide channels and means for information exchange among people around the world, which enforces shared ideas, sub-cultures, ideologies or any schools of thought among people regardless their nationality, race, religion or geographical location. Therefore, heterogeneous culture analysis brings deep understanding of consumer behaviour. Due to the increasingly number of heterogeneous culture consumer groups, it is important to investigate consumers’ behaviour based on how they identify and express themselves according to their identity in a social context through consumption. In order to understand how the market enables consumers to represent themselves in a social context, it is essential to understand the process of how an identity is defined.

2.2.1 Imagination process Philosophers state that identity is established through the process of imagination (Schau, 2018). This term is defined and analysed from different aspects: philosophy, anthropology, political science and cultural studies (Schau, 2018). The ability to create and communicate knowledge is the fundamental skill that set humans

11 apart from other animals (Schau, 2018). Humans have the ability to understand themselves, understand the surrounding environment and to transfer this knowledge from one to another. Because we usually understand ourselves as separate from the environment and can communicate this, we have identities (Schau, 2018). The way humans form their identities is through the process of imagination. (Schau, 2018). There are several schools of thought regarding the imagination process and meanings. See Error! Reference source not found. for summary of opinions about imagination. The term “imagination” appears first in the ancient Greek philosopher Plato’s dialogue

called Theaetetus as “a synthesis of sensory perception and rational thought resulting in

knowledge.” (Schau, 2018, p. 21). Later, philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724 – 1804) stated that human experience is constructed through imagination (Kant, 1956 as cited in Schau, 2018). Building on these theories, Benedict Anderson, a pioneer in applying imagination to consumption, highlights that imagination is a part of forming community. The nurturing a sense of national communities was made possible by the development of the print capitalism which enabled a broader coverage of written material (Anderson, 2006). Schau (2018) supports this theory by looking at what is currently happening in media, which she describes as media capitalism. In the context of consumption, two aspects of theories of imagination are relevant: imagination connects our physical sensations and thinking to form knowledge, and formulation and expression of identities and experiences realities occurs through imagination (Schau, 2018). My thesis will focus on the latter part of imagination. According to Anderson (2006), the components of imagined identities are ideas, images and ideologies. The print capitalism facilitated the formation unified imagined national communities in language communities through reading. In Andersons theory, the emergence of new identity configurations and social realities is the result of consumption of written text (Anderson, 2006). This relationship can be applied in our modern world: the global media has made it possible to communicate and exchange information in bigger quantity, in faster speed and internationally. Another relevant phenomenon resulting from the development of technology is the formation of global imagined communities around commercial brands

12 through Internet. (Muniz & O’Guinn, 2001; Muniz & Schau, 2005; Schau, 2018; Schau et

al., 2009). The communication through internet enables the creation of practises related the community of the brand which both strengthens the sense of community and creates value for the brand. Building on Andersons theories, Appadurai presents imagination as an ordinary and, by its nature, socially process. Appadurai believes humans visualize potential experience and its limitations though cognitive handling of symbols, signs, commercial products, and their meanings. This process is used to derive meaning from our experience and build both identities and imagined communities. (Appadurai, 1996 as cited in Schau, 2018). Through the process, everyone uses imagination to form their own identity projects and plan possible acts that help in actualizing these projects (Schau, 2018). Social media has given an opportunity to actualize identity projects through association with branded symbols, by displaying consumed products, and this way connecting the meanings of the products to our identity with symbolic appropriation (Jensen Schau & Gilly, 2003). Social media and culture in general, also significantly influence and shape our imaginations. Imagination is also where cultural fantasies, often important part of identity projects, are processed (Illouz, 2009). Imagination together with the habits that support our sense of space, objects, self and other, creates social possibilities such as communities and social infrastructures. Based on the sense of self and community, materialism is formed and constantly maintained in imagination. Therefore, humans don’t define themselves in a

vacuum separate from their environment but in their relationship to it, in a way using the objects of the environment and their perceived meanings as reference points. (Schau, 2018)

13 Table 1. Opinions about imagination’s characteristics (Schau, 2018, p.21-26)

Field

Author

Year

Opinion

Philosophy

Plato

424/423 –

348/347 BC • “Imagination is a synthesis of sensory

perception and rational thought resulting in knowledge.”

Philosophy

Aristotle

384-322 BC

• “In sensing, the object itself is presented to the senses, while in imagination sensation is prolonged past the experience of the object. In other word, sensation is what we do when confront with a stimulus and imagination is where we attach meaning to a stimulus so it can remain in our minds after the stimulus disappear.”

Philosophy

Rene’ Descartes

1955

• “Imagination is solely in bodily realm, and not essential to self because the abstraction created by the imagination originates within the physical realm.”

Philosophy Immanuel Kant 1956 • “Imagination defines and shapes human experience”

Philosophy

David Hume

1962

• “Imagination is the central of intellectual endeavour. Imagination is grounded in sensation and limited”

Political Science

Benedict Anderson

1983

• “Imagination is premised on the act of consuming (buying and deciphering written texts) which leads to new identity configurations, new industries, new markets and new social realities”

Anthropologist

Arjun Appadurai

1996

• “Imagination is the way in which ordinary people derive meaning and create identity and community.”

14 To conclude, in the process of imagination, knowledge and understanding are created from abstractions and conceptual. This knowledge and understanding forms our experience of perceived identity and reality. The formation and maintenance of identity is a two-way process between the environment and our imagination. Today, products provide a way to actualize our identity projects into reality. See Figure 1. Reprint of the imagination formation process (Schau, 2000, p.50-56) for the reprint of imagination formation process by Schau (2000, p.50-56).

Figure 1. Reprint of the imagination formation process (Schau, 2000, p.50-56)

2.2.2 Identity and consumption in Consumer Culture Theory

Earlier, researchers have worked on analysing the association between identity and consumption through the lens of Consumer Culture Theory. One of the fundamental foundations of Consumer Culture Theory is the link between consumers’ identities and their consumption behaviours. Changes in the identities can have significant implications for the consumption habits (Jenkins & Molesworth, 2018). Along with the formation of identity, the expression of identity leads to set of actions from the consumers. Analysing consumption from Consumer Culture Theory perspective, consumption is not only a form of economic exchange but is essential for “the construction and the expression of individual and collective identities” (Schau, 2018, p.29).

15 The imagination of consumers is strongly influenced by their composition of information exposure; therefore, expanding the “sense data” with the constant interactions with

advertisements and by living within a social group, consumption has been embraced strongly in the identity formation process of consumers, which Anderson (2006) agrees with by stating that consumption is now an integral part of identity. Similarly, Campbell (1993 as cited in Schau, 2018) acknowledges that consumers consciously use consumption by possessing items that support them in accomplishing their pre-defined concept about their selves. Consumers are active actors in forming and sustaining a social structure. Consumers are believed to strategically arrange and use “ideas, symbols and commercial products” to

construct and present their identity projects (Schau, 2018, p30). Illouz (2009) states that the symbolic value of consumed products is often more important than the practical value. Schau (2018) observes that consumers, individually and collectively, are motivated to position themselves within their socio-material world. Meaning that consumers have the motives to adjust their identities to be aligned with particular materials and practices, at the same time, differentiating their identities from others (Schau, 2018).The marketplace provides consumers with symbols, products, practices or even social contexts to make their imagination tangible and present their identities. (Schau, 2018) On the other hand, consumers identities are not merely about consuming to present their identities but also to include the intangible personal preferences (Schau, 2018;Jenkins & Molesworth, 2018). Consumers sometimes purposefully avoid some types of consumption, for example, for health or religious practices (Schau, 2018). Sometimes, consumer identities also indicate the sign of limited resources, as there are people who cannot afford to buy items that could reflect their desired identities (Schau, 2018). Also, consumer identities can demonstrate the state of refusal as there are people intentionally choosing not to show some aspects of their identities (Schau, 2018). Meanwhile, there are cases in which consumers’ identities cannot be expressed visibly

16 because of the complexity and multi dimensionality of the identity (Schau, 2018). Therefore, humans’ identities cannot be completely expressed or presented through consumption not only due to the complexity but also because consumers strategically choose to show some facets of their identities whereas hide some other facets (Schau, 2018). According to Schau (2018, p.19), identity consists of four components. To understand the interrelation among those four components, see Figure 2.

(1) “Personality: the set of features that comprise a given person’s character, which

is thought to be relatively stable and scaffolded by genetically determined traits;”

(2) “Self-concepts: a collection of beliefs one has about one’s self;”

(3) “Identity project: the strategic configurations of objects, symbols, scripts and practices to claim specific identity position; and”

(4) “Self-presentation: the performance of an identity project within a social

context.”

17

Figure 2. Synthesized interrelation between identity and consumption

As mentioned by Schau (2018), imagination is the foundation for identity formation and identity consists of four elements. Starting with the first element: (1) personality; it is believed that personality is partly (about 40%) affected by genes (Bouchard, 1994); however, there has not been a concrete conclusion regarding the influencing factors on personality. Nevertheless, as we all experience, personality is considered to be unique from person to person (Roberts & Jackson, 2008); in this research the personality factor will not be addressed further. The second element of identity is (2) self-concept. Referring to the imagination process (Figure 1), which starts at sense data being transmutated to a feeling of sensation which creates physical experience. From those physical experiences, humans start forming

18 abstractions and concepts about the world to form knowledge and understanding (Schau, 2018). Through the sustained knowledge and understanding of different stimuluses, human identity and reality takes shape (Schau, 2018). Therefore, identity is constructed through the process of imagination which involves the conceptualization of data starting from sensing the data. The concept of imagination has been developing since ancient period BC when the means for knowledge transferring was very limited and not available for everyone; therefore, the knowledge formation was described mainly through the sensation and physical experience (Schau, 2018). Before, identities were simpler and relative stable, for example, a person could identity as a hunter for his or her entire life (Kellner, 1992 as cited in Shankar et al., 2009). However, print capitalism enabled concepts, ideas, beliefs to be shared more easily to a larger group of people (Anderson, 2006). And now with the internet and technology, speed of knowledge transfer and information exchange has improved dramatically. As such, the amount of “data” that a person can “sense” today has significantly grown and the “data” is

not only in the form of sensations or physical experiences but also direct forms of concepts, ideas and events which stimulate the human mind directly. Consequently, the identity and reality are gradually changed with increasing pace within a person’s self-concept. As such, I would argue that an individual’s self-concept is strongly influenced by his or her social/culture context and the composition of information exposure for example through reading books, news, watching movies or being in conversations with other people. Schau (2018, p. 21), presents this connection the following way: “identity evolves over time, taking on new challenges and editing scripts, or set of behaviours, actions and consequences that are expected in a particular situation.” The third part of identity is (3) identity projects. To understand identity projects, first of all, is to understand social roles. Social role is stated by Schau (2018, p.20) as “a set of

connected behaviours, rights, obligations, beliefs and norms people inhabit in a social situation.” An individual carries many social roles, for example one person can be a son/daughter to his or her parents, at the same time be a colleague to his or her work team

19 member or be a boyfriend or girlfriend to his or her partner (Schau, 2018). A person often has to be in different social contexts with different social roles which indicates that the relationships between one-self and other people vary depending on the particular circumstance (Schau, 2018). Therefore, for each social context, an individual can have a corresponding set of behaviourss based on how he or she wants to be, which are called as his or her corresponding identity projects. Identity projects, according to Schau (2018, p.20), “are sets of actions and affiliations performed daily and affected by social context”. A good understanding of identity projects helps to understand the principles of how the marketplace facilitates identity projects and how self-presentation is constructed by identity projects (Schau, 2018). Schau (2018, p.30) proposes that consumers as active entities make sense of identity projects through the act of “(re)configuring ideas, images, symbols and commercial goods”. People intentionally and constantly formulate, change and present their identities across their social contexts (Schau, 2018). In other words, people purposefully try to present their identity projects. An addition of a new identity can also significantly change an already formulated identity (Shankar et al., 2009). The combination of all of the person’s identity

projects form his or her (4) self-presentation (Schau, 2018). The market offerings support humans in presenting and performing their identity projects, thus supporting their self-presentation (Schau, 2018). Schau (2018, p.21) summarizes the interrelation of social roles, identity projects, self-presentation, self-narrative and market offerings as follow:

“Social roles drive identity projects and identity projects are supported by and

performed with marketplace offerings. Taken together, identity project and self-presentation form self-narrative and self-narrative organize identity projects and performances into relative cohesive, holistic identity.”

All in all, through the lens of our own personality and self-concepts, we establish how we want to represent ourselves (self-presentation) in a particular social context (identity project)

20 and we use the material world to support the way we want to represent ourselves. (Schau, 2018). In some contexts, such as sustainability, the identity can also present as an absence of consumption (Jenkins & Molesworth, 2018). Soron (2010) suggests utilizing consumer identities for sustainable practices that do not rely on feelings of obligation. Weinberger and Crockett (2018, p. 72) summaries the relationship between identity and consumption as follow: “Consumers are agentic in many ways. They carefully use consumption to construct identities, and carefully use marketplace resources (e.g., identity representation) to communicate them.” 2.3 Brand Identity According to Kapferer (1986), brand identity is a collection of the brand’s tangible and

intangible characteristics. Similarly, De Chernatony (2010) describes brand identity as a moral image with the aim and values that together create the principle of brands’ signature features while differentiating the brand (De Chernatony, 2010). All in all, brand identity is defined as the uniqueness and the core values of the brand (Aaker, 1997; De Chernatony, 2010; Kapferer, 2008). Brand identity covers two main functions: aspirational and enduring (da Silveira et al., 2013). Brand identities offer customers with values that help them to differentiate and entice themselves on a functional and emotional level (Fionda & Moore, 2009). The identity of the strongest brands covers emotional benefit, which helps strengthen the relationship between the brands and consumers. In terms of the aspirational aspect, brand identity is a long-term distinctive guideline for the brand development. Brand identity is also a tool to represent the goals and ways of action that are signature from the brand (D. Aaker & Joachimsthaler, 2000). Aaker and Joachimsthaler (2000) indicate that goal of brand identity is to develop and sustain the relationship between a brand and a consumer. The enduring aspect of the brand identity is controversial as when the environment or the social context changes over time, it will be challenging to meet the needs of customers or the new emerging trends of the market. It has been suggested that the brand should have its own identity which is long-lasting and relevant (Kapferer, 2008). In addition, Aaker and

21 Joachimsthaler (2000) notes that brand identity is a set of associations, that for the purpose of brand strategy, have to be intentionally directed and maintained.. However, the brand should know how to manage the balance of the brand identity with the changes in the market. Interbrand (2007) has suggested to apply a 70/30 principle for global branding which means that 30% of the brand can be flexible. All in all, the enduring factor should embrace the dynamic market change with the target of building the constant identity of the brand but at the same time give some space for the brand to evolve to the market (da Silveira et al., 2013). Comparing with the definition of brand identity in the past, which strictly suggested the essence of keeping a long-lasting brand identity, there was a shift to emphasize on the interaction between brand identity and the consumers (da Silveira et al., 2013). The new definition of the brand identity can be stated as “a milieu where marketing management and

consumer commitment coexist” (Stephen Brown et al., 2003, p.29).

2.4 Identity Brand Prism Framework The concept of brand identity was started by Professor Jean-Noel Kapferer in 1986. Kapferer (2012) states that a brand should have its own traits which support consumers in exploring their own identities. Furthermore, Kapferer (2012) sees the similarity between goals of communication theory and brand identity, which are about the alignment between the one who communicates (the brand) and the one who receives the message (the consumers) (Kapferer, 2012). In the context of brand communication, the content of the message is about the products of the brand; as such, the brand is the representer for its products, service and satisfaction (Kapferer, 2012). For that reason, I would argue that, by understanding and designing the brand identity, the brand would gain the distinctive design guidelines for their products, services as well as for designing the communication strategy which can strongly resonate with and effectively reach their target customers. Addressing the topic of brand identity, Kapferer (2012) has developed the brand identity prism framework which consists of six aspects: physique, personality, culture,

22 relationship, reflection, and self-image (Figure 3).

Figure 3. Brand identity prism (Kapferer, 2012, p.158)

Physique constitutes of the physical distinguishing facets of a brand. To explain the role and values of brand physique, Kapferer (2012) used the metaphor of comparing brand to a flower, physique would be the stem; without the stem, the flower will not survive. In other words, physique is the tangible aspects of a brand providing the physical form as well as the visual characteristics of the brand. (Kapferer, 2012) Brand personality represents the style of communication a brand uses consistently to deliver messages to consumers that overtime build up the signature characteristic of the brand (Kapferer, 2012). The role of brand personality is to satisfy the psychological function which enables consumers to identify with it (Kapferer, 2012). Therefore, brand personality is established based on traits of human’s personality; meaning that a brand would communicate

23 to its customers in the way as if a person with the target personality would do (Kapferer, 2012). Brand culture, which is considered the most essential part of the brand identity prism framework, is the brand’s ideology or brand’s vision and missions (Kapferer, 2012). Brand

culture is sustained and applied over time to guide the development of the brand (Kapferer, 2012). Kapferer (2012) acknowledges of the importance of building emotional bonding between the brand and consumers. He emphasizes the crucial presence of “meaningfulness”

in the brand culture because consumers are more aware that the possession of physical products will not bring them happiness (Kapferer, 2012, p.160). Therefore, brands have to take the lead to be culture heroes, to actively cultivate meaningful ideas, mindsets or lifestyles to consumers. Because this way a brand can connect deeply with consumers and add meaningful value beyond the product itself (Kapferer, 2012). Brand identity also includes which types of relationships brands use to symbolize the way they interact and connect with their customers (Kapferer, 2012). Kapferer (2012, p. 161) takes an example of Mouliex which has chosen position as “the friend of women” to build

the relationship with their target customers or how Nike uses a Greek name to present the relation to Olympic Games to depict the relationship of human’s effort to strive for glory

(Kapferer, 2012). Brand reflection is the reflection from the eyes of consumers toward a brand (Kapferer, 2012). Consumers do not only perceive brands’ characteristics as separate elements, but they also link those brand traits to a particular persona, for example, a car’s brand is for fathers

(Kapferer, 2012). On the other hand, the personality or relationship that a brand tries to build through their strategy is not always perceived as intended by consumers (Kapferer, 2012). Consumers represent their identities through brands; therefore, the brand reflection is essential for creating value for consumers (Kapferer, 2012). A brand represents a type of consumer’s self-image (Kapferer, 2012). Self-image, which indicates the internal relationship of a person with his or her self; the brand’s self-image is about how consumers feel and perceive themselves when using a brand (Kapferer, 2012).

24 Brands want to be able to create the self-image that aligns with the customer’s reflection and

avoids creating a negative self-image for consumers (Kapferer, 2012). Communication is the tool brands need to exist and develop as without the interactions with customers through communications or through the products and services used by consumers, brands will become out of date (Kapferer, 2012). Building a brand identity is similar to the act of communication in which brands are the sender and consumers are the receivers (Kapferer, 2012). The key element in effective communication as well as the success of brand identity creation is the mastery of creating the image, the characteristics of the sender (brand) along with a deep understanding of the receivers’ (consumers’) perceptions and desired self-image (Kapferer, 2012). The brand identity prism sheds light in identifying and analysing the two sides of the communication: the picture of the sender by the physique and personality aspects and the picture of recipient by the reflection and self-image aspects (Kapferer, 2012). The two aspects relationship and culture act as a platform to connect brands and customers (Kapferer, 2012) Vertically, the brand identity prism framework also includes the division between external part (physique, personality, and culture) which focuses on the tangible brand expression to outsiders and internal part (relationship, reflection, and self-image) which concerns with the intangible inner values of the brand (Kapferer, 2012) (See Figure 3). 2.5 Luxury fashion

2.5.1 History of luxury fashion The modern industry of luxury products was started when more entrepreneurial opportunities for high-end products that represented the high class lifestyle emerged in the European industrial revolution in the 19th century (Brun et al., 2008). Tracing back to the history in the civilizations of the ancient word: luxury goods are related to wealth, exclusivity and power; in other words, luxury was defined with “the satisfaction of non-basic necessities” (Brun et al., 2008). The origin of the term “luxury” comes from the Latin word

25 - “Luxus” meaning “soft or extravagant living, sumptuousness, opulence” (from the Oxford

Latin Dictionary in Dubois et al., 2005 as cited in Brun et al., 2008, p.555). The development of industrialization created the market for exceptional products representing the elitist lifestyle of the time (Brun et al., 2008). Observing the fashion industry’s polarization, two main groups of businesses can be classified: companies which operate in the mass market, selling affordable products, making them accessible to a large number of consumers and the luxury companies which offer exclusive and high-priced product to an elitist group of customers (Brun et al., 2008). Because of the low growth capacity in the local market, the luxury companies needed to scale up their business to outside the local borders for a larger number of customers (Brun et al., 2008). This explains the current international luxury companies (Antoni et al., 2004 as cited in Brun et al., 2008). As a result of the large global distribution, the concept of luxury has shifted from brands based on product categories to brands defined by the conceptual and symbolic dimension, identified by values which are related to the cultural factors that were defined by the society in a specific period inherent to the brand (Brun et al., 2008). The concept of luxury is not merely based on the high prices of the products, but is a combination of several characteristics: reliable premium quality, heritage of craftsmanship, unique style and design, exclusivity, emotional connection, international brand reputation, involvement with the country of origin and lifestyle of the producers (Nueno & Quelch, 1998). Silverstein et al. (2003) presented the change from old luxury to new luxury. Old luxury was about the design, quality, features of the product and especially the exclusiveness and symbolic value derived from status and prestige (Silverstein et al., 2003). The new luxury focuses more on the customer’s point of view: the luxury experience in the product and services which is separate from the ownership (Brun et al., 2008). Luxury products should communicate and deliver emotions and experience to the customer. As such, the branding of luxury is about completing the luxury fantasies of the customers (Danziger, 2002).

26 When the consumer base grows, the groups in the elite class are extended in quantity and characteristic (Brun et al., 2008). Therefore, the brand image and characterization are becoming one of the most important parts for luxury positioning in the market (Brun et al., 2008). In addition, according to Brun et al., (2008) customers are seeking products which are designed with reliable performance and perfect attention to details along with emotional involvement consisting of a whole shopping and product usage experience (Brun et al., 2008). The crucial factors of luxury brands, regardless of what products or services, are the ways to provide customers with the fulfilment in the emotional and physical domain (Danziger, 2004). Reddy and Terblanche (2005) divide luxury brands into two categories: brands that are mainly recognized for the technical functionality and those that are strongly related to symbolic value; luxury fashion falls into the second category (Brun et al., 2008). Nowadays, luxury consumers are adopting the “fewer, better things” principle which is

included in the values of sustainable fashion (McKinsey, 2020). As a result, the fashion market expected an increase in second-hand and rental channels; however, due to the fear of Covid191 virus spreading, many customers will likely instead target finding items which are high-quality, minimalist and last-forever pieces. This is called “cautious consumption” by

Mario Ortelli, managing partner of luxury advisors Ortelli &Co, meaning the consumers will take more time and effort to make a purchase decision (McKinsey, 2020). The definitions of luxury are based on either a consumption point of view or a role of a product branding device (Fionda & Moore, 2009). From consumption perspective, luxury was analysed as serving a symbolic function which exists within individual and social level (Fionda & Moore, 2009). Therefore, the concept of luxury is rooted on the psychological values (Vickers & Renand, 2003), concept of status symbols (Nia & Zaichkowsky, 2000) and the strong association with consumers’ self-concepts (Vigneron & Johnson, 1999). In turn, as a product or service, luxury brands relate to high-quality, high transaction values, distinctiveness, exclusivity and craftsmanship (Kapferer, 2008; Nueno & Quelch, 1998).

1 COVID-19: coronavirus disease 2019 is a contagious disease caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 which led to a global pandemic

27 According to Jackson (2004, p.158), the critical features of luxury products are “…exclusivity, premium prices, image and status which combine to make them more

desirable for reasons other than function”.

2.5.2 Luxury fashion branding Brand name and identity are considered to be the most important attributions in creating luxury positioning (Dubois & Laurent, 1994; Jackson, 2004; Okonkwo, 2007). In order to build and sustain a luxury brand, a relevant, clear and well-defined marketing strategy is necessary (Chevalier & Mazzalovo, 2012; Phau & Prendergast, 2000). The marketing strategy supports brand status and awareness by developing global reputation and presence of the brand (Chevalier & Mazzalovo, 2012; Phau & Prendergast, 2000). Besides marketing strategy, product and its design hold an important position in creating a luxury brand, this includes quality, craftmanship, innovative, creative and unique products (Fionda & Moore, 2009). Bruce and Kratz (2007) stated that iconic products are built on the authenticity, quality and exclusivity characteristics that are aspirational.

2.5.3 Key luxury fashion brand characteristics Luxury brands account for a significant percentage of fashion consumption. According to Fionda and Moore (2009), there are nine crucial attributes to the success of a luxury fashion brand: clear brand identity, marketing communications, product integrity, brand signature, premium price, exclusivity, heritage, luxury environment and experience and culture. (Fionda & Moore, 2009).

28

Figure 4. Factors in sustaining luxury fashion positioning (Fionda & Moore, 2009, p.359) Marketing communication is crucial for all luxury brands and the most common marketing communication tools are fashion shows, advertising, PR, direct marketing and celebrity endorsement (Fionda & Moore, 2009). Product is also an important attribution for creating luxury brands, as if the product cannot represent itself then all branding efforts will not work. The key feature of luxury fashion product is high-quality, craftmanship, attention to details and, in the past, the scarcity of the material, for example fur. The uniqueness of the product design also contributes to the position of the brand. (Fionda & Moore, 2009)

29 Bruce and Kratz (2007) emphasize that iconic coveted products, which are created by the authenticity, quality and exclusive characteristics that are aspirational, are essential for the luxury product portfolio. Those products often represent the brand’s signature or brand’s DNA (Nueno & Quelch, 1998) as they are the tangible form of the brand creators’

personalities and values (Bruce & Kratz, 2007; Okonkwo, 2007). High-profile designer increases the attractiveness of the products as well as the relevancy of the products in the market (Bruce & Kratz, 2007; Jackson, 2004). Not all products with high price are necessarily luxury; however, luxury products often demand a premium price compared with other products that belong in the same category. (Erickson & Johansson, 1985; Jackson, 2002; Kapferer, 2008) Other characteristics of a luxury brand are exclusivity which is built through the limited production (Dubois, 1995; Groth & McDaniel, 1993; Jackson, 2004; Kapferer, 2008; Nueno & Quelch, 1998). The experience created through the service and atmosphere are essential for the luxury propositioning strategy (Fionda & Moore, 2009). Creating a great customer experience while shopping is essential for luxury brands as this is a strong indicator for wealth and exclusive experience to the luxury consumers; the brands use the great architecture inside the luxury stores to demonstrate the sense of glamour (Bruce & Kratz, 2007). Beverland (2004) and Moore and Birtwistle (2004) highlight that brand heritage is one of the key features for luxury brand as a long history adds the authenticity and credibility of the brand. At last, the company culture is essential because the people who design and create products must be able to represent the values and signature design of a brand (Arnault as cited in Kapferer, 2008) . With the long history of establishment and development of luxury businesses, fashion luxury is a great demonstration of the use of brand identity to attract consumers; however, sustainable fashion branding is still in the process of building strong identity.

30 2.6 Sustainable Fashion

2.6.1 The history of sustainable fashion The history of sustainability fashion can be tracked back to the Industrial Revolution (1760 – 1840) as the development of tools transformed the whole society. (Macy & Johnstone, 2012). The growth of production pace and the development of technology at that time are considered to be the starting points of an intensive effect to natural resources (Weart, 2008). Fashion started to become popular thanks to magazines in the early 1850s (Wallinger, 2014). On the other hand, the invention of sewing machine in the late 1700s improved the speed of garments production, and as a result, enabled innovative interpretation of fashion at home (S Brown et al., 2012). Fashion in the past was a visible sign showing social class as the world was deeply divided by classes (Wallinger, 2014). The sociocultural norms on what clothes should be worn by whom were very strict which provoked the rebellion from some groups of people in the society (Wallinger, 2014). The raise of open culture such as “celebration of simplicity, back-to-the-land sloganeering, and endorsement of savvy consumerism” (Morozov, 2014, p.1) against the sociocultural norms became popular in the 1960s and 1970s society of the America (Wallinger, 2014). The counter-cultural activism such as The Bloomsbury Group during World War I (1924 -1918) was one of the first signs of sustainable fashion which is about a ‘lifestyle that

voluntarily embraced an ethos of consuming and producing less without sacrifice of style’

(Wallinger, 2014, p. 153). The collaboration among social activism, art and fashion was spread out more broadly in the 1900s leading to the evolution of multi-industry partnership related to sustainability in fashion (Wallinger, 2014). One of the most critical social milestones of sustainability in fashion was in 1999 when anti-globalization NGOs, labour unions and concerned citizens protested multinational

31 corporations at the World Trade Organization’s meeting in Seattle, Washington (Wallinger, 2014). The protestors demanded for fair-trade, sustainable development and attention to human-rights issue (World Trade Organization, 2011 as cited in Wallinger, 2014). This event connected ethical issues with sustainability in fashion which was summarized by Professor Marsha Dickson as “sustainability is the ultimate goal of successful socially responsible practices. It improves our lives of workers, and the health of the environment in which they live for the future” (Dickson et al., 2009 as cited in Wallinger, 2014, p.155)

2.6.2 Sustainable fashion issues and direction The fashion industry has a lack of enthusiasm and determination in dealing with the dilemmas concerning the environmental and human costs in its effects on society (Beard, 2008). The average consumer rarely asks how the clothes are made and who made them, therefore, few companies have felt the importance of communicating the information about production processes and the sources of the fabric (Beard, 2008). The consumers’ limited concern about the origins of their clothing is because the effect of clothes on health is not significant or is rarely noticeable compared with, for example, food or cosmetics (Petit, 2007 as cited in Beard, 2008). However, consumers are getting more and more concerned about the sustainability impact of their purchasing decisions on both the environment and on human (Beard, 2008). The challenge of sustainable fashion brands today is “how is it possible to capture public’s imagination on ethical fashion without

becoming overzealously dictatorial or indeed exploiting consumer’s anxieties unnecessarily?” (Beard, 2008, p. 448). At the same time, consumers are often confused about the trustworthiness of the information provided by the fashion companies because of the greenwashing phenomenon (Chen & Chang, 2013). This polarization in behaviour could be explained by the fact that there is increasingly diverse usage of terms “ethical”, “eco” and sustainable” that fashion companies use excessively in their branding and marketing strategy (Beard, 2008).

32 In terms of branding and marketing of eco-fashion, phraseology is perhaps one of the most important components in the interaction between the fashion brands and their target consumers (Beard, 2008). The terms such as “ethical”, “fair trade”, “organic”, “natural”,

“sweat-shop free”, “recycled” are used in persuading customers to believe that the fashion products they purchase are environmentally friendly and ethically sound (Beard, 2008). Therefore, in order to deal with sustainability issues in the fashion industry, it is essential to raise awareness and understanding about the environmental, social and greenwashing problems in the consumer side. As an increasing number of consumers concerned about those issues leads to an increasing number of fashion companies interested in producing sustainable products (Fletcher, 2008). Conversely, the growth in sustainable product attracts more interests from consumer side. The loop continues and gradually improves the market (Fletcher, 2008) (Figure 5).

Figure 5. Reprint positive feedback loop (Fletcher, 2008, p.65)

3 METHODOLOGY

3.1 Grounded theory research Grounded Theory was developed by two sociologists Barney G. Glaser and Anselm L. Strauss and was first introduced in their book The Discovery of Grounded Theory in 1967, which advocated for creating theories from research grounded in data but not from deducting

33 examinable hypotheses from literature (Charmaz, 2006). Grounded theory approach has gained more popularity in many research fields including social sciences, business research and especially in the field of consumer behaviour in which the method has helped to gain deep understanding of the researched phenomena in consumer market behaviour studies (Eriksson & Kovalainen, 2008). Based on those characteristics, Ground Theory is a suitable fit for my research approach which is aiming at understanding the fashion consumers’

complex purchasing behaviours, the diverse values of fashion companies and motivation in designing their business ethics and operations. The difference of Grounded Theory approach compared to other qualitative methods is the continuous intersection and interplay between data collection and data analysis phases which is given in certain steps and formal form (Eriksson & Kovalainen, 2008). The deep understanding and long interaction with data provides fundamentals for gaining insight, building a hypothesis or deciding on research questions. (Strauss, 1990, 1987 as cited in Eriksson & Kovalainen, 2008) Eriksson & Kovalainen (2008) emphasize that the grounded theory research design procedures are applied to generate theories during the study progression but there is no pre-commitment from the researcher to use any set of data or particular theoretical frameworks. Therefore, grounded theory approach is not simply a methodology for qualitative research or empirical analysis but is an approach toward developing theory. Having that in mind, even though I have studied the literature regarding sustainable fashion industry before starting the data collection process; I did not choose any specific framework or school of thought to follow during the initial data analysis process but studied only to understand the historical overview of the situation and current situation of fashion industry. This approach has been emphasized by the founders of Grounded Theory: “the researcher does not approach reality as tabula rasa (that she or he) must have a perspective to see relevant data and abstract significant categories from it” (Glaser and Strauss, 1967 as cited in Eriksson & Kovalainen, 2008, p. 6).

34 According to Charmaz (2006), grounded theory approach is a set of systematic but flexible guidelines for collecting and analysing qualitative data to construct theories emerging in the data itself. Grounded theory research consists of the methodology design and the systematic process to build a theories from the empirical data (Eriksson & Kovalainen, 2008). It is essential to understand that Grounded Theory does not simply develop theories through inductive reasoning but consists of many aspects of inquiry including inductive reasoning, deductive reasoning and even verification (Eriksson & Kovalainen, 2008). Eriksson & Kovalainen (2008) describe Grounded theory as an approach for systematically generating ideas which comprises a series of specific, formally named and defined processes. These processes are the crucial factor in developing theories of social phenomena with empirical data analysis. For Glaser and Strauss (1967), one of key elements of Grounded Theory approach is about linking data for theory formation but not for the most repetitiveness representation (Charmaz, 2006). The series of processes by Charmaz (2006) is demonstrated in Figure 6. The formation of theories in Grounded theory research is performed by analyzing the potential relationships between the concepts and sets of concepts and further analysis of the formed tentative theories through gathering additional data or deeper analysis of existing data (Eriksson & Kovalainen, 2008).

35

Figure 6. The grounded theory process (Charmaz, 2006, p.11)

3.2 Data collection and analysis

3.2.1 Personal research about sustainable fashion With the understanding that sustainability in fashion is a wicked problem, which consists of many issues, I started my research process by reading academic resources from journals and books to get the big picture of what are the different issues in this field. To make sure I was able to capture the overview of sustainability in fashion, I created a research profile by using

36 Scopus engine with keywords: sustainability, sustainable and fashion industry. The results were filtered in two ways: cited highest and newest. I chose articles that provide many perspectives about what sustainable fashion is and explored the results with minimal bias. As I was planning to do interviews with experts, I wanted to gain some background knowledge on sustainable fashion to be able to understand experts’ point of views better. However, tried not to influence interviewees’ opinions, I kept myself open minded by asking open ended questions. Figure 7 summarizes all the topics related to sustainability in fashion that I read before the interviews and the possible directions for sustainable changes that the studied literature suggested.

Figure 7. Demonstration of topics studied before expert interviews

37 3.2.2 Simultaneous data collection and analysis process

The essential element in Grounded Theory research process is the back-and forth between data collection and data analysis (Eriksson & Kovalainen, 2008); accordingly, I designed my data collection and data analysis into three rounds which consisted of 11 intensive interviews with relevant experts (See Table 2). The simultaneous data collection and data analysis process is demonstrated in Figure 8 below.

Figure 8. Simultaneous data collection and data analysis process

38 3.2.3 Coding

The analysis process of Grounded Theory starts with coding which requires researchers to pause and ask analytic questions about the collected data (Charmaz, 2006). According to Eriksson & Kovalainen (2008), coding is the essential element of Grounded Theory methodology. This process includes open, axial and selective coding. Eriksson & Kovalainen (2008) refer that: “coding is the term for conceptualizing data”. Strauss (1990 as cited in Eriksson & Kovalainen, 2008) defines coding as the process of asking questions and offering provisional answers – hypotheses about themes and their interconnections. Strauss and Corbin (1998) conclude that the data connection to form theory in Grounded Theory approach is based on how emerging themes from open coding link to each other conceptually but not descriptively. The data analysis takes place in two levels: (1) the words used by the interviewee (when interview data is used) and (2) the researcher’s

conceptualization of those words, which is her or his interpretation of the events described in the data. Line-by-line coding I applied line-by-line coding method for the data analysis; in total 147 pages of interview transcript were line-by-line coded. This was a considerable amount of work, but it was valuable as it helped me to deeply know the data and be able to explore the data from many perspectives. Fresh data and line-by-line coding facilitate objective analysis supporting researchers in seeing different layers or tones of meanings in the data (Charmaz, 2006). The coding process consisted of two main phases respectively : (1) initial coding and (2) focus coding. (Charmaz, 2006) Initial coding Initial coding is the first coding phase in Grounded Theory approach which concentrates on naming each word, line or segment of data. The purpose of the initial coding is to explore

39 the research topic (Charmaz, 2006); therefore, I analysed the data based on answering the following questions which are suggested by Charmaz (2006, p.47) in her book “Constructing

Grounded Theory”.

• “What is this data a study of?” (Glaser, 1987:57; Glaser & Strauss, 1976 as cited in

Charmaz, 2006, p.47) • “What does the data suggest? Pronounce?” (Charmaz, 2006, p.47) • “From whose point of view?” (Charmaz, 2006, p.47) • “What theoretical category does this specific datum indicate?” (Glaser, 1978 as cited

in Charmaz, 2006, p.47)

The summary of the initial coding phase can be found in Table 3 and Table 4, respectively. Focus coding After the initial coding phase, focus coding is the second main phase in Grounded Theory approach which consists of the selection, categorization, synthesisation and organization of the most significant codes from the initial coding (Charmaz, 2006). In this phase, I made decisions to choose and focus on relevant codes from initial codes. Thanks to this process, I was able to analyse data relevant to the research questions but from a broad view which enabled me to compare and contrast data across different interviews.

3.2.4 Intensive interviews with experts According to Charmaz (2006), intensive interviews allow an thorough investigation on a specific topic with a person who has the related expertise or knowledge. For the aim of understanding the sustainability issues in the fashion industry from different stakeholders deeply, I chose intensive interviews with experts as my data collection method. With intensive interview, participants are enabled to express their analysis of their experience (Charmaz, 2006). As an approach of grounded theory study, the structure of the interview was designed with open-ended questions (Charmaz, 2006) including topics such as fashion

40 definition, problems in fashion industry, roles of fashion industry shareholders in sustainability of fashion, what are the challenges in enforcing sustainability in fashion industry, what are the possible directions for building sustainability in fashion industry. In this research, there were in total 11 interviews in the three interview rounds (See Table 2) Table 2. List of interviewees in the three rounds of interviews

41 a. Interview round one

The purpose of interview round one was to explore different issues of fashion industry, form research questions from the data collected, and identify what additional data is needed for the second interview round. The first round of interviews aimed at experts or researchers in sustainable fashion. The reason I chose researchers as the focus in the first interview round because they have been researching sustainable fashion and have knowledge about different issues related to the industry and also have relevant experience in the field. In the first round of the interview process, I carried three interviews of which two were with experts in academic field and one with an expert who has worked in the fashion industry for 15 years. The form of interview was in-deep interview in which the duration was from 45 to 70 minutes. The interview was semi-structured to ensure the openness and objectiveness of the interview. As the purpose of the first-round interviews was to explore, the interview questions were designed based on the background expertise of the interviewees. After the first round of interviews, the collected data was coded along with writing memos to build the initial code structure and identify information needed to be studied and collected. See more details of the initial coding structure in Table 3 below. Table 3. Initial code structure Fashion formation logic

Social acceptance

The shared knowledge among a group of people The mass agreement Need of a social context to make sense Belonging (dressing up for others)

Constance changes The development of fashion vertically Fashion consequences Environment issues Overuse textile products

Too much waste

42 Burn unsolved items

Social issues Exploiting workers Impulsive buyer - Overbuying without using

Economy issues Need of production activities in developing countries Wicked problem Need of balancing act between production and consumption

Fashion industry problems

Political economic mindset

The political economic system seeks for economic grow and resource input Using GDP as the measure of success is not indicative The decoupling from resource consumption economy is not possible

Fashion brands issues Fast fashion – ways of production, environmental impacts Lack of fully understanding of sustainability Greenwashing

Fashion consumption motivation

Social status expression Symbolism value of fashion Status consumption Intangible values

Self-identification

Human are made to believe that they are realizing ourselves when we consume Dressing up for yourself Individual identity expression Consumerist value-based society

b. Interview round 2 After analysing data from the first interview round, there was still additional data needed to be collected from more stakeholders in the fashion industry. The purpose of interview round two is to continue exploring the set of issues of the fashion industry, explore possible directions toward a more sustainable fashion industry and to expand the interviews to experts of more diverse background.

43 In the second round of the interview process, I did three interviews of which two are with fashion designers who have expertise in fashion design but also have an understanding of the whole fashion industry. Additionally, one interview was with a sustainable-oriented fashion consumer. As in the first interview round, intensive interviews were applied, in which the duration of the interviews was ranging from 41 to 58 minutes and the interviews were semi-structured to ensure the openness and objectivity of the interviews. As the purpose of the second-round interviews was to continue exploring, questions were formulated based on the results of the first round’s data analysis, and some questions were set according to the background expertise of the interviewees. With the data analysis from the first interview round, the three formed research questions were: 1. How fashion is defined from different perspectives?

2. What makes sustainable transition in fashion challenging?

3. How can fashion brands and consumers facilitate sustainable fashion production and consumption?

With the additional data from the interview round two, I added more codes and restructured my initial code structure. See Table 4 below for the updated code structure. Table 4. Restructured code structure

Fashion formation

logic

Social

acceptance

The shared knowledge among a group of people The mass agreement Need of a social context to make sense Belonging (dressing up for others)

Constance changes

The development of fashion vertically Fashion trend circulation

Lifestyle External influences Personal interests, hobby

Art Craftsmanship Identity expression

44

Fashion consequences

Environment issues

Overuse textile products Too much waste Burn unsolved items

Social issues

Exploiting workers and employers Impulsive buyer - Overbuying without using Consumer's lack of understanding about real values of

garments Economy issues Need of production activities in developing countries

Luxury fashion brands follow fast fashion business model

Fashion industry problems

Wicked problem Need of balancing act between production and consumption

Economic design mindset

The economic system seeks for economic growth and resource input

It is not indicative to use GDP as the measure of success Decoupling from resource consumption economy is not

possible Fashion brands

issues Fast fashion – ways of production, environmental impacts Lack of fully understanding of sustainability Greenwashing

Fashion

consumption motivation

Social status expression

Symbolism value of fashion Status consumption Intangible values

Self-

identification

Human are made to believe to realize oneself through consumption

Dressing up for yourself Individual identity expression Consumerist value-based society

Experience-oriented Buying for fun, for the temporary excitement

c. Interview round 3

The purpose of interview round three was to ensure that the data set is sufficiently reliable by strengthening the depth and the scope of the data as beside the usefulness, data set needed to be suitable and sufficient (Charmaz, 2006). In addition, in the third round of interviews,

45 the collected data was tested, compared and contrasted with the data collected in the previous rounds (Charmaz, 2006). Therefore, in the third interview round, I invited and interviewed five relevant experts who represent three main groups: fashion designer, fashion consumer and fashion researcher. As in the previous rounds, intensive interview method was used. The length of the interview varied from 40 to 72 minutes. The interview remained semi-structure design to ensure that the scope of the data is not limited. The interview questions were formulated open-ended but directed (Charmaz, 2006) and adjusted according the expertise backgrounds of the interviewees which ensured that the reflected experience is relevant to them (Charmaz, 2006). With the additional data from the interview round three combined with clustering and constant data comparison, I finalized my code structure. Check Table 5 below for details. Table 5. Final code structure

Fashion

formation

Social aspects

The shared beliefs among a group of people Social status Symbolic value

Self-identity expression

Self-expression through the choices of clothes External influences - personal interests Express personal life values

Tangible form Craftsmanship Art expression Aesthetic design

World reflection Assign and reassign of meaning system Changes along with the social changes Constant change

Fashion Industry problems

Environment issues

Overuse of textile products Overproduction, waste management Burning unsolved items

Social issues

Exploiting workers and employers Lack of diversity in political identity Distorted beauty standards create unhealthy self-evaluation

46

Economy design issues

The economic system seeks for growth and resource input Lack of clear sustainability measurement and regulations The ecological production infrastructure is not ready Operational challenge in allocating resources for sustainability

transition practice

Wicked problem Need of balancing act between production and consumption Dilemma between economic growth and the cost to society and

the environment Fashion brands

issues Fast fashion – ways of production, environmental impacts Lack of fully understanding sustainability Greenwashing

Consumer behaviour issues

Humans are made to believe to realize oneself through consumption

Lack of understanding about quality and values of garments Impulsive buyer - Overbuying without using Avoiding information about sustainable issues due to stressfulness Financial limitation Lack of unity in sustainable consuming and unified definition of

sustainable fashion

Fashion

consumption motivation

Social status expression

Symbolical value of fashion Status consumption Individual identity expression Consumerist value-based society

Experience-oriented Buying for fun, for the temporary excitement

Price-sensitive Financially struggling, do not have resources and energy to care about sustainability

Conscious consumption

Aware of unsustainability issues and consumes responsibly to reduce the harmful social and environmental impacts

Sustainable fashion brand

design solutions

Integrity Fashion companies be honest and do business aligned with their commitments

Product High quality, long-lasting Sustainable material Attractive design

47 Production Minimize waste

Reduce the number of annual new collections Transparency Information transparency

Sustainability embraced as internal value and consistent Brand

authenticity Build appealing and distinguished brand to attract even

unconscious consumers Need differentiation factors when sustainability becomes a norm

Be relevant Culturally sensitive Socially relevant

Customer-centric and sustainability

design

Good service with sustainability-oriented mindset Good story, finding good balancing between sustainable

information and inspirational story Creative approach Visually appealing not only in product but all marketing material

or in all customers interaction points

3.2.5 Memo writing - Clustering Memo writing was performed during the whole data analysis process in different phases along with the coding processes. According to Charmaz (2006), writing a memo throughout the research process keeps researchers actively emerged deeply into the analysis and increases the abstractness of the ideas. Writing a memo helped me to keep track and remember different appearing ideas I had which contributed as one type of resourceful material for me to review when I wrote the final draft. In terms of memo writing method, I used free writing and clustering which Rico (1983 as cited in Charmaz, 2006, p.86) indicates as a “non-linear, visual and flexible” method to

understand and connect data. I normally free wrote after the coding of each interview and after finishing the coding for each interview round. After the data collection phase, I did a lot of clustering with pen and paper and sometimes, with PowerPoint, to test different combinations or connections among the data which is described by Charmaz (2006) as a creativity liberation method. After that I moved to theorical sampling and diagramming to formulate the final theories.

48 3.3 Trustworthiness of the study Trustworthiness of a study implies the review of credibility, dependability, conformability, transferability and authenticity (Elo et al., 2014) of the research. Credibility refers to the quality of the data being used to answer the research question(s) (Polit & Beck, 2012 as cited in Elo et al., 2014). The creditability of the study is strongly affected by the selection of the research method (Graneheim & Lundman, 2004 as cited in Elo et al., 2014); therefore, researcher(s) should choose the most suitable methodology according to the research question(s) (Elo et al., 2014). The research problem of this thesis is defined as a wicked problem. Wicked problems that are problems that are rooted in many complex issues, which cause serious problems in a large scale. (Sun & Yang, 2016). As wicked problems require the understanding of problems from perspectives of various stakeholders; Grounded Theory is a suitable approach. Glaser & Strauss (1967) indicates that the advantages of Grounded Theory research is that instead of being completely indifferent with the theory creation procedures like in the logico-deductive approach which is extremely insensitive with real-life issues by only testing theory with hypothesis setting, Grounded Theory allows data to be analysed in more dimensions because of the process of constructing theory through the constant interplay between data analysis and data collection. This advantage of Grounded Theory supports my research in gaining deep understanding about the motivations as well as the root problems causing unsustainable practices from fashion companies and fashion consumers. Additionally, using Grounded theory can avoid creating hypothesis setting which is not feasible for such complicated issues of sustainable fashion industry. Dependability implies the stability of data; therefore, it is essential to design the sampling strategy well (Elo et al., 2014). The sampling strategy and data saturation also indicate the sufficiency of data which measures the validity of the research (Whittemore, Chase, & Mandle, 2001 as cited in Elo et al., 2014). In my research, I applied the purposive sampling which is a strategy to design the sampling with related, knowledgeable and skillful participants (Elo et al., 2014). I selected participants who are experts in field that were related

49 to my focused research topics to support the reliability of the data (see Table 2). Even though the sample size is small, there were many signs of data saturation in the collected data in the form of repeated codes across the interviews. As the saturation of data is the measurement for the ideal sample size (Guthrie et al., 2004; Sandelowski, 1995a as cited in Elo et al., 2014), it indicates that my sample size is relatively adequate. Conformability signifies the objectivity of data interpretations which means the data is honesty shown and analyzed (Elo et al., 2014). To ensure the transparency and objectiveness of the data collection and interpretations, I recorded and transcribed all of the interviews with an online platform during the interviews (with the permissions from the interviewees), and then relistened to all of the interviews to ensure the accuracy of the transcripts. I applied line-by-line coding (see page 36-37) in the data analysis process which helped me to minimize my subconscious bias and maximize the objectiveness in data interpretations; I present the different stages of my coding process providing transparency of the data analysis (see page 38 and the appendix). Additionally, in my findings section, direct quotes were provided with the interpretations to increase the reliability of the results (Polit & Beck, 2012; Sandelowski, 1995a as cited in Elo et al., 2014). Transferability indicates the possibility of transferring the findings to other settings or contexts (Elo et al., 2014); the trustworthiness of the findings is improved if from the presentation of the findings, readers can find other interpretations (Graneheim & Lundman, 2004 as cited in Elo et al., 2014). As the transferability cannot be evaluated by the researchers but by the readers (Graneheim & Lundman, 2004 as cited in Elo et al., 2014), I cannot evaluate this research’s transferability myself but I demonstrated the findings in detail, including the code structure, direct quotes and the open code list (in the appendix) to facilitate readers in evaluating my research’s transferability. Authenticity signifies the honesty and fairness of the researcher(s) in showing “a range of

realities” (Lincoln & Guba, 1985; Polit & Beck, 2012 as cited in Elo et al., 2014, p.2). The authenticity evaluation is “reflection and self-criticism” of the research during the research process (Pyett, 2003; Thomas & Magilvy, 2011 as cited in (Elo et al., 2014, p.8). I am aware that my knowledge and skill might be a limitation in analysing the data (Elo et al., 2014).

50 However, I carefully and systematically designed research process from preparing, organizing and reporting my research and was disciplined in the following the research design and methodology to strategically improve the objectivity and quality of the research. 4 FINDINGS The findings section will discuss the emerging themes from the data analysis which answer the three research questions. Accordingly, the three main parts are (1) the insights of different expertise backgrounds about the definition of fashion (2) the challenges in sustainable fashion transition and (3) suggestions on how consumers and fashion brands can facilitate sustainable consumption and fashion production.

4.1 Fashion formation How fashion is defined from different perspectives? In order to understand the consumption and production of the fashion industry, it is important to understand the relationship between consumers and fashion. The concept of fashion was investigated through interviews with participants from different backgrounds including fashion researchers, fashion designers, fashion industrials and fashion consumers. The definition of fashion in this thesis is the combination of different points of views of participants from all relevant backgrounds as the goal of this study is to use the understanding of the relationship between consumers and fashion to gain insight on how each shareholder can improve their fashion-practices toward sustainability. This thesis will not argue which opinions are more correct than the others. The findings in this part are the synthesis of all perspectives to ensure all stakeholders find value in the results.

51 Table 6. Fashion formation code structure (from final code structure)

Fashion

formation

Social aspects

The shared beliefs among a group of people Social status Symbolic value

Self-identity expression

Self-expression through the choices of clothes External influences - personal interests Express personal life values

Tangible form Craftsmanship Art expression Aesthetic design

World reflection Assign and reassign of meaning system Changes along with the social changes Constant change

Strongly emerging from the findings is the statement that fashion is the combination of two forms: physical form and symbolic form. Fashion always exists in a visible form. On the surface, everyone has a need for wearing clothes for coverage and keeping warm; therefore, fashion exists in a form of a product. Physical forms of fashion are clothes and accessories with various of styles, material and colours or patterns of the garment. A physical or a visible form is a necessary condition for fashion to exist.

“Fashion is something that, in category wise, relates to like clothing and accessories, but it's not only about the product; it's more about the whole meaning that the product kind of carries.”

Interviewee 1, Fashion Researcher

4.1.1 Fashion and the social aspect Fashion is not purely just a product, and it has meaning underneath that is accepted by a social group, as such, fashion needs a social context for creating its appealing to consumers.

52 In other words, the creation of fashion takes more than one person, it needs a sense of acceptance among a large group of people in a society.

“It (fashion) needs the context, the situation and to attract people to become (fashion), otherwise, it is just a product.”

Interviewee 1, Fashion Researcher The symbolic form of fashion is an agreed intangible meaning among a group of people. The tangible aspect in fashion is assigned a meaning through fashion industry. The tangible aspects, or signs, are for example the styles, colours, materials and patterns of clothes.

“Fashion is the way, for example, through which different signs become coded with

different types of meanings that like, certain items become coded as old or young or new, or sexy or something like that.”

Interviewee 7, Fashion Industry Researcher 4.1.2 Fashion is one form of self-identity expression

On the other hand, the findings show that fashion is a form of self-identity expression. When asked about “how do you define fashion in your own terms?”, most of the interviewees mention that fashion is one of the ways for an individual to express themselves, to show who they are. Fashion not only creates certain meanings that are accepted in a social context, but also carries a certain meaning toward an individual as a form of individual identity expression in its tangible form.

“Personally, it (fashion) is also at the individual level. So, it is more than just

functional value. There's symbolic value in it, that I found, has symbolic value towards myself or towards others.”

Interviewee 1, Fashion Researcher

53 Everyone has a connection with fashion whether they are aware of it or not. Everyone wears clothes and everyone has a taste in choosing what they want to wear and feel comfortable wearing it.

“I will say everyone actually is in this fashion industry. But sometimes people didn't notice because fashion is like the ecosystem”

Interviewee 10, Customer Relationship Expert

“I consider fashion as a way of self-expression and, showing your identity so it all comes down to that in the end like, what people choose to wear , again, not everybody cares that much. But the people that do that they really want to express themselves and everybody expresses themselves even though they claim that they won't care. My second-hand cashmere sweater is a statement even though it's black and basic.”

Interviewee 4, Fashion Designer and Marketer In addition, the findings also indicate that expressing identity does not mean that it must be loud and full of colours or from a certain brand, but it could be the fashion choice that is muted and simple. It is simply about the choice of how the person wants to dress.

“It's self-expression, you can stand out from the crowd, if that's what you want, or you can blend in, if you like, by following trends. But it's just showing that I am who I am.”

Interviewee 5, Fashion Designer Interestingly, the data from the findings also showed that self-identity is strongly linked to one’s personality and beliefs which are affected by his/her surroundings. The surroundings include people they interact with face-to-face or virtually, the information they encounter by reading, listening or watching and the school of thoughts that they resonate with as well as all sort of activities they enjoy doing. As such, fashion reflects a way of living.

54 “Fashion is, I think a lifestyle, not just something you wear. That’s something that

defines I think, your personality, and perhaps your friends who you surround yourself with, what you watch in your free time and hobbies you do.”

Interviewee 5, Fashion Designer Another dimension demonstrated in the findings regarding individual expression through fashion is that self-identity is strongly connected with one’s values in life. Fashion as well as consumption behavior are one types of silent language that a person can use to convert their life’s values to a tangible form.

“I symbolize something like, I want this silent language true to my requirements or ideals, for example, my own self-identity. So, I've seen the inside and then build myself.”

Interviewee 1, Fashion Researcher On the other hand, the findings also indicate that you could create your identity through what you wear if you want to. Fashion can be the tool to help a person to appear to be any identity. Humans, consciously or unconsciously, have the tendency to create an image of themselves when interacting with other people. As such, fashion is also about making an impression or a statement about oneself. As fashion plays a significant role in expressing an identity to others, the social meanings or the symbolic meanings of fashion have a power to influence the perceptions of people through fashion signals.

“Fashion is about identity, first. It's about making a statement in events, when it comes to interaction with people. You will be giving an imagery of yourself through everything you're wearing goes from the shoes, bags, clothes, and so on. That will make you appear, you're not going to be, but you're going to appear that identity. It's interesting because you could change your identity actually as much as you want.”

Interviewee 11, Creative Director and Sustainable Fashion Expert

55 4.1.3 Fashion is one art-expression form with craftmanship

Next emerging finding is the role of aesthetic design, which indicates that fashion is the art of design and craftmanship through for example the silhouette, material, design, cuts and sewing technique of clothes.

“I consider fashion as an art. Absolutely at the highest scale, all the beautiful designs and tailoring and that's art.”

Interviewee 4, Fashion Designer and Marketer From this perspective, there is a significant difference between daily clothes and clothes which are fashion because fashion products have the unique identity from the fashion designers, which is different from the fast fashion products, that are mass-produced with low quality. As such, daily clothing is not fashion. The art of fashion relies on the visual design, the material, colours, the craftmanship and most importantly the inspiration and ability of the fashion designers to turn that inspiration into its tangible form as clothes. At the same time, the aesthetic of fashion does not only rely on the design of the fashion designer but also on the people wearing the clothes in a way that represents themselves and their personalities.

“There's like a huge gap between, the modern fast fashion crap that is popular. I don't even consider that fashion. Fashion holding new and exciting and an aesthetic experience and way to show your personality and identity. So, all the fast fashion and the things we wear on a daily basis is more like clothing. There's a difference between fashion and clothing.”

Interviewee 4, Fashion Designer and Marketer Fashion designers are people and their designs are also the reflection of their identities. From that point of view, fashion is a form of reflection of an identity in which one expresses oneself as a form of art.

56 It is undeniable that clothes have their functionality in people’s lives, as fashion needs a tangible form, which are clothes and accessories, to exist. Moreover, the intangible values of fashion as an art of expression offer inspiration for everyone to appear as their desired identity.

“I would say fashion combines art with functionality in a way that everybody needs

clothes but, at the same time, it is a fuel for inspiration and self-expression. And fashion is a great tool for that; it is just not about being worn, but actually being able to express oneself.”

Interviewee 9, Luxury Fashion Specialist

4.1.4 Fashion is a meaning creation system and reflection of the society The findings indicate that fashion is a system that creates the symbolic indicator for a society. The ability to assign a symbolic meaning to a tangible form of fashion is based on interconnection between the processes of the creation and consumption of fashion.

“Fashion is a system of meaning creation and assign manipulation, I would say.” Interviewee 7, Fashion Industry Researcher

Additionally, fashion changes constantly. The constant change is driven parallelly by the fashion creation and the change of the world. The effect of these factors works two-way on each other.

“Fashion is also the power structure through which these meanings get assigned and

reassigned and valued and revalued and devalued and such.” Interviewee 7, Fashion Industry Researcher

Fashion reflects the relationship between an individual with oneself and the relationship among diverse groups or classes in the society. This means that the popularity of fashion not only develops from the higher classes to the lower classes (vertically) but also inside the same class (horizontally). Therefore, fashion is a form of reflection of the society.

57

“Fashion is not just like clothing or products. It is something that becomes alive. It's something we basically consume, but it becomes somehow aligned to what other people in society are giving it some kind of meaning, somehow, they acknowledge it, and it becomes fashion when it's not necessarily trickled down but trickled across”.

Interviewee 1, Fashion Researcher Based on the data analysis, the findings demonstrate that fashion development is the result of people around the world and through that reflects what is happening as well as what are the problems in the society. By understanding and analysing the fashion industry, you understand the historical development and current state of the world. The inspiration of fashion comes from what is happening in the society; therefore, fashion is changing along with the change in the society and as such, is the reflection of the society.

“I really think that fashion often really catches the main problems that are happening

in the world and reflects them.” Interviewee 8, Fashion Sociology Researcher

All in all, the synthesis of the data from 11 intensive interviews with diverse backgrounds, including people who consume fashion, people who create fashion products and people who observe and research fashion, shows that fashion needs a physical form to exist, but that physical form embraces a symbolic meaning that is agreed on among a social context and at the same time resonates with an individual’s identity. The four main emerging elements of fashion are tangible form, symbolic meaning, identity expression and society reflection. 4.2 The challenges of sustainable fashion transition

What are the challenges for fashion industry to transition to a sustainable industry?

There are many challenges in the sustainable fashion transition in different aspects; each

58 stakeholders have their own issues in making changes toward sustainable fashion production and consumption. An overview understanding of those obstacles is the fundamental to design suitable solutions. See the code structure for fashion industry problems in Table 7. Table 7. Fashion industry problems code structure (from final code structure)

Fashion Industry problems

Environment issues

Overuse textile products Too much waste

Social issues

Exploiting workers and employers Lack of diversity in political identity Distortion beauty standard creates unhealthy self-evaluation

Economy design issues

The economic system seeks for economic growth and resource input

Lack of clear sustainability measurement and regulations The ecological production infrastructure is not ready Operational challenge in allocating resources for sustainability

transition practice

Wicked problem Need of balancing act between production and consumption Dilemma between economic growth and the cost on society and the

environment Fashion brands

issues Fast fashion – ways of production, environmental impacts Lack of fully understanding of sustainability Greenwashing

Consumer behaviour issues

Human are made to believe to realize oneself through consumption Lack of understanding about quality and values of garments Impulsive buyer - Overbuying without using Avoid information about sustainable issues due to stressfulness Financial limitation Lack of unity in sustainable consuming and unify definition of

sustainable fashion

59 4.2.1 Environmental issues

Fashion industry is one of the most polluting industries in the world. This issue needs to be addressed as soon as possible to avoid the destruction of the environment and damage to humankind.

“Sustainability is one of the biggest problems, because this is one of the most polluted industry in the world after probably oil and so that's a huge problem.”

Interviewee 8, Fashion Sociology Researcher The amount of waste that the fashion industry creates from production process to the afterlife of the products is problematic. The number of textile products present in our lives is overwhelming.

“Fashion is one of the biggest polluters in the world. So, from the environmental perspective, that's one of the biggest harms we have. And it's because everyone is using textile product, whether it's clothing, but in your homes, you have a lot of textiles. So that's basically the negative impact in that level.”

Interviewee 1, Fashion Researcher

4.2.2 Economical design problem In terms of the economy, the fashion industry is operating within the economy that is designed to grow mainly through material inputs.

“The political economic system that we are currently operating under or within it

calls for economic growth and (growing) material throughputs.” Interviewee 2, Sustainability Researcher

The economy was born and developed with a strong emphasis on profit gain. Now the economy is strongly attached with the growth which prioritises increasing sales. Meanwhile, there is a lack of measurement for growth in social well-being. As a result, the operation and the goals of our current economy are still strongly driven by GDP growth.

60

“A political economy is, you know, the growth mindset of the economic system.

And the indicators that it uses to measure success, such as GDP being a very faulty measure.”

Interviewee 2, Sustainability Researcher With the constant growth-driven mindset in the economy, the goal of businesses is to increase the sales of their products or services. Along with the increase in wealth of consumers, we see a significant increase in consumption leading to the consumerist value-based society.

“In the West, there's a huge problem with and consumerist value-based society because there's an attachment to the idea of economic growth being necessary, growth being measured as material throughput or GDP throughput, none of these being good indicators of societal or individual well-being.”

Interviewee 2, Sustainability Researcher

a. Lack of sustainability measurement and regulations Because of the severe consequences to the environment and the society due to the profit-driven economy, there is increasing discussion about sustainability transition; as a result, the concept of circular economy has been taken into development in many industries more seriously including the fashion industry. However, there is still a lack of clear and strong understanding about sustainability among fashion brands and consumers, which significantly slows down the sustainable transition in fashion. As result of the pressure from the media and conscious consumers, and the effort required for significant changes in the production, many fashion companies change only a small part of their production process or release one “sustainable” collection and claim to be

sustainable, which generates confusion for the consumers.

“Marketing communication, how brands are communicating sustainability means so many different things that the brands are currently saying that they are sustainable,

61 although they are doing only one thing that can be regarded as sustainable. Like, that's basically creates the confusion for the consumer as well.”

Interviewee 1, Fashion Researcher When considering the idea of encouraging consumers to buy only from sustainable brands, we need to take into account the various types of brands claiming sustainability. Besides fashion companies that really create their business to follow sustainable fashion practises, there are many fashion brands claiming to be sustainable based on different criteria such as timeless design, using organic cotton, or trading second-hand items. Hence, with all the statements and claims about the concept of sustainability in fashion, consumers are confused about what sustainable fashion is. For this reason, it is even more difficult for sustainable fashion brands to stand out, be seen and trusted by consumers.

“Because what does then the sustainability actually mean when all the companies

are saying that we are sustainable... Then, from the consumer perspective, it's like, so are all these brands sustainable or not? or what does sustainability mean? So that's when the sustainability the content itself means so many things, and companies and brands are using it in their marketing communication in different ways. That's why it creates maybe more confusion than clarity.”

Interviewee 1, Fashion Researcher

b. The unreadiness of ecological production infrastructure In addition, because the current infrastructure is built with the priority to gain profit, even if the businesses want to transition to sustainable production, the large-scale infrastructure of the ecological production for the fashion industry is not ready. The production processes of the fashion industry involve many steps and stakeholders which range from material production by farmers who grow the first material of the garment, for example cotton, to clothes manufacturers who take orders from fashion companies. Hence, the sustainable transition in the production needs significant effort from fashion companies and garment manufacturers to make changes in production processes. Effort should especially be targeted to alternative materials which are environment-friendly, require less resources to produce, and do not generate waste such as CO2 or contaminated water from dying chemicals.

62

“There are so many different points in the whole life circle of this fashion circle, I

don’t think that there are the assets yet to create the fabrics for that level (the

sustainable level), but can we do it ecologically? Probably not yet.” Interviewee 3, Fashion Marketer

The idea of closing the loop of production with no waste is currently impossible. The number of clothes as well as garment products produced is so large and rapidly increasing that for fashion industry to be able to reach 100% sustainability will take time and innovation along with the reduction in production and consumption. All of this should be done without severe damage to the economies in the developing countries.

“If we close the loops, we can decouple material throughput. The argument is, if we reduce resource extraction and close the loops, we can decouple that economic activity from environmental impact, but then there's research that argues against that that it's not possible to do decoupling to the extent that's necessary.”

Interviewee 2, Sustainability Researcher

“At the moment, there are no sources to do mass market products out of like recycled

material, it's just simply impossible. The production is not there yet.” Interviewee 3, Fashion Marketer

c. Operational challenge in resources allocation

Another challenge for fashion companies in transitioning to sustainable businesses is that they must allocate the resources to maintain the current business and concurrently work on planning and executing the transition plan. First, they must operate within the existing supply chains and production systems; and if they are making the changes, those are still in the process of transition. Secondly, building the strategy toward sustainability requires changes in company’s culture, values and business model to create innovation, which would take time and collective effort from different departments within the company to adapt and make changes together.

63 “Companies at the moment are facing this challenge of having to operate within the

existing system while strategizing to be viable in an alternative system, and also taking an active role in making that change happen. So, it's a challenging situation for established companies because they have to resource both their normal business and the strategy making and rethinking and business model innovation, and then feeding that back into the productive development function.”

Interviewee 2, Sustainability Researcher

d. Greenwashing phenomenon Furthermore, greenwashing has been a big issue in the fashion industry recently, meaning that many fashion companies have claimed their actions as sustainable and called themselves sustainable brands, but they have not done what they have communicated with the consumers. Because of the pressure from media and activist group critics, there has been an increase in consumer awareness and as a result, sustainability is becoming increasingly important for the survival of fashion businesses.

“It's difficult to know how much of these (sustainable) practices are actually true

and how much is greenwashing.” Interviewee 4, Fashion Designer and Marketer

“They always use almost always use something, some parts of that sustainable

branding, but at the same time, if you look at the processes and the companies, they can be very problematic.”

Interviewee 8, Fashion Sociology Researcher

The greenwashing problem creates trustworthiness issues to consumers. The act can result in backlash, damaging the brand significantly as consumers turn away from the brand and may never come back because of the bad impression.

“I think for me, right now, it's kind of hard to believe in any brands anymore, because all of a sudden, like everyone is trying to claim this social responsibility and so on.”

Interviewee 6, Sustainable Fashion Consumer

64

“Regarding sustainability if something feels a bit shady, I'm like, I'm not sure if this is greenwashing or is this really sustainable? That's something that I get when I get really annoyed with greenwashing. That's definitely a turnoff.”

Interviewee 9, Luxury Fashion Specialist

On the media, there are many articles revealing the unethical actions of greenwashing fashion brands, consequently, this creates doubt from conscious consumer's side about the trustworthiness of all fashion brands regarding their sustainability actions, especially the actions of big fashion brands.

“I do appreciate that they are trying to make effort in that direction, but do I

completely the believe it all the time? No. Unfortunately, no. So, I think a more local fashion system would be more sustainable. So, in that way, the big global businesses, they don't really fit into that.”

Interviewee 6, Sustainable Fashion Consumer On the other hand, information about unsustainability issues can be hidden and controlled by the big fashion brands if their names are mentioned in the media in a bad way. This creates more obstacles for consumers to get the information about what is happening behind the glamorous front of the fashion industry.

“The only problem is that very quickly, those big brands that have power and could actually buy and even like hide information.”

Interviewee 11, Creative Director and Sustainable Fashion Expert In the big picture, the world development is directed by the profit-driven economy that prioritises profit gain but does not prioritize the balance among the economy, the environment and the society. As such, the regulations which concern this balance are still lacking and businesses have the freedom to choose the balance according to their principles.

e. Fast fashion model problem

65 With the possibilities of the mass production and the profit-driven economic environment, fast fashion business model has had the conditions to thrive, making the scale of environmental and social consequences from fashion industry significant. Fast fashion companies try to maximize the efficiency and minimize the cost to increase profit margin by selling a large number of products. They apply the selling strategy of offering low price products with high frequency of new collection releases to catch the weak spot in consumers’

purchasing behaviours; therefore, they can sell a significant number of products.

“Fast fashion is very easy to catch people's purchase habits, because the idea there

is, it's cheap and you can buy many things, and you can buy often.” Interviewee 2, Sustainability Researcher

4.2.3 Social issues

Unfair treatment of employees

Fashion industry might appear appealing, but on the other side of the fashion industry exists an unhealthy working environment. The production of fashion industry includes variety of processes starting from production of raw material such as cotton or wood, to processing the raw materials into garments and finally into clothes. There are serious problems of unfair treatment, underpaying and unsafe working environments for workers in different stages of the production process.

“For the long supply chains, it's not only about the working conditions of the last

manufacturing pace, but also whole steps from the raw material sourcing from the cotton field to the end product and what's happening in the whole product lifecycle.”

Interviewee 1, Fashion Researcher Besides exploiting garment workers who directly produce the garments and the clothes, fashion companies has also shown signs of exploiting employees, for example students who are studying or just graduated, at the entry level of careers by paying small or even no salary for internship positions in.

66

“It is really hard to start a career in fashion industry. Most big brands, for their

internship, or entry-level, the salaries are really bad. For interns, basically all of them have no salary and no compensation. Those are based in Finland have the law regulation, so it's better, but if your track the fashion house in Paris, Copenhagen, Sweden, or a lot of big names, they don't have salary at all. They feel like the experience they give you is the salary; I think is really kind of sick if you used free labour in this industry.”

Interviewee 10, Customer Relationship Expert

The high level of hierarchy in the fashion industry has resulted in a dominant leadership style. The high workload, the fast-changing pace and the unhealthy leadership style also exploit employees working in all levels of the companies including fashion designers.

“There's huge social issues in the fashion supply chain. People at every level are overworked and pushed to their limits. There is not very good leadership in many of these companies that are well known to the world. For example, as a designer, you can be bullied. If you're not executing your work as a way that somebody at the upper level wants you to do it.”

Interviewee 4, Fashion Designer and Marketer

The workloads for people who work in fashion industry in all levels are problematic and when combined with the dominant leadership styles, it is highly likely that significant portion of employees in the industry might suffer from exhaustion.

“The industry should be a place where people can be happy and healthy to work for

time and not like, end up burnout after a few years.” Interviewee 4, Fashion Designer and Marketer

Lack of diversity in representative

67 The diversity issues in the fashion industry have been discussed for a long time but the issues are still relevant in our society. In terms of representation in media, for example in commercials, magazines or fashion shows, there is still limited representation of various body types. Additionally, there are concerns regarding the health of the models in fashion industry when they are required to be very skinny. Furthermore, racism towards people of colour is not uncommon in the fashion industry. There have been many incidents related to the discrimination regarding body types and skin colours in the fashion industry.

“It's really limited still, like, the how people look like. I'm like the stereotype. I'm white. I'm women, I'm skinny. So, it's really narrows. For example, I have friends, people of colour, and they've faced so much racism.”

Interviewee 9, Luxury Fashion Expert

One of the core problems causing the continuous racism and discrimination in the fashion industry is the lack of diversity in back office. It is challenging for the whole industry to be more inclusive without the diversity representatives in the board of people who have the power to make significant decisions.

“The diversity issue of how fashion takes into account what we call in sociology, identity politics... not only on the commercial side, but also people who are employed with companies in the back-office, CEOs.”

Interviewee 8, Fashion Sociology Researcher

Social distortion of the definition of beauty.

The lack of representation for people of colour or various body types in the media of fashion world distorts the social definition of beauty. This distortion results in the unhealthy self-perceptions among people who have different body types or skin colours from what the fashion industry tries to promote in all forms of media.

“There after a couple of years, because the Chinese market, especially regarding the

luxury markets, is huge, and it's growing. So that pushed the brands to use Chinese

68 models, but it was always like two models or one model. And I find that really problematic that it's only the kind of what's view as a beautiful and you used to see stuff on too similar people.”

Interviewee 9, Luxury Fashion Specialist

4.2.4 Dilemma between economic growth and environmental and social cost The problem of sustainability in fashion industry is a wicked problem. Fashion industry generates a considerable amount of waste due to the overproduction and overconsumption. At the same time, to reduce the production costs, some big fashion brands take advantage of the developing economies in developing countries when moving production to these countries and gaining the bargaining power to underpay fashion production workers. Therefore, there is a need for balancing the economic activities and the impact on the environment and the society.

“It is indeed a massive, wicked problem. And systemically those two need to be balanced in transitioning to a production consumption system that is not harming the environment so badly and exploiting humans, but also not taking livelihoods from people. Now, there needs to be a balancing act.”

Interviewee 2, Sustainability Researcher The wicked problem in fashion industry is due to the dilemma between the need of reducing consumption, production, and the need of creating economic activities for people in developing countries where most of the fashion production takes place.

“We have to reduce consumption. We cannot continue consuming resources with this pace and creating the waste with this pace. But radically reducing that we also need to think about the production and fashion production, majority of it is being done in non-Western countries. In countries that are developing they need that kind of economic activity.”

Interviewee 2, Sustainability Researcher

69 “The COVID19 has also showed that if we stop consuming it is basically good thing for the environment. But if we stop consuming to companies or to economic pillar, they cannot pay money for the supply chain; meaning that people in the beginning of the supply chain end up being unemployed; that's the worst-case scenario… That's why we need the companies, and we need to consumers, and we need economic pillar, but we need also the social and environmental. So that is the challenge. ”

Interviewee 1, Fashion Researcher

4.2.5 Unsustainability issues from consumers The fashion consumption behaviour from the consumer side significantly contributes to the severe environmental and social consequences of the fashion industry. Due to the relationship between supply and demand of the market which keeps adjusting itself to reach the equilibrium point, consumers’ purchasing behaviours strongly influence the fashion companies’ production decisions. Hence, it is important to understand fundamental causes of unsustainable consumption habits as a foundation to find solutions for sustainable fashion.

a. The concept of consuming to define oneself The personal assumption that consumption is attached to how you define who you are is problematic. With this assumption, consumers are drawn to buy more to define themselves.

“The values and worldviews are more personal, and it is about us feeling that we are realizing ourselves, when we consume, that's what we are made to believe.”

Interviewee 2, Sustainability Researcher

When consumers shop for new items, a temporary feeling of satisfaction is generated within the buyer which is why consumers keep buying more. As the satisfaction is temporary, consumers have the desire to buy something again in order to feel satisfied even though they do not necessarily need those new items.

“I don't know if there is need but it's the desire of the consumer to just wear

something new and then somebody's always doing it.”

70 Interviewee 3, Industrial Expert

The findings indicate that we have less need for new items than we believe. The society full of advertisements and various types of image-making narratives prime us to feel like we need more items. However, less can be more as it is beneficial for the environment and additionally, for the consumers. The consumers will have more peace of mind when they have less options to choose from and more time to focus on activities that matter more. Even though there is an increasing number of consumers aware of this phenomenon, there is still much work to be done.

“And then how much we need, actually? The vast fashion phenomenon has created a feeling that more is more, although actually less is more is the thing because of the sustainability discussion, the less is more, it's kind of now racing a bit.”

Interviewee 1, Fashion Researcher “It's waste if you buy it and you don't wear it. So, I would change this habit in fashion consumers that they just need to buy, buy, buy.”

Interviewee 5, Fashion Designer

b. Lack of understanding about quality and values of garments With the availability of cheap clothes due to mass production, people are not required to make clothes themselves anymore, at least to the extent it was required in the past. For that reason, people do not understand how much effort and resources are needed to produce garments. Therefore, they do not appreciate the true values of garments.

“The main problem is, and this is something that I have experienced first-hand is that people don't value the, just like people in general, they don't value the effort that goes into producing a garment because obviously, you have the mass production factories where it costs so little to make a pair of trousers.”

Interviewee 5, Fashion Designer

71 One consequence of fast fashion is that it promotes the purchase choices based on style and the trendiness but not based on the material or the quality of the product. As such, consumers pay less attention to quality, spend less effort to learn about garments or what are the processes to produce garments and the real labour work to produce clothes. Consequently, consumers underestimate the price of ethically produced clothes.

“I believe that we don't even understand anymore about what quality is. Or what is

high quality? What is the actual price? How long would it take to kind of produce something if you hand make everything? And that means, how the price can be such cheap, if you buy enough, if you need to think about the material to production, and then all the work the brand is taking the marketing side as well. So fast fashion has created after misconception and misunderstanding about quality and price, especially, but then also the speed of what does it mean to be fashionable.”

Interviewee 1, Fashion Researcher The actual process and labour to create a piece of clothes is expensive due to the long process requiring considerable resources and effort to create a complete wearable item.

“If I go find a fabric and design the patterns and cut it out and stitch it and

everything, then it can be like three days of work. And then when you try to do the costing and you add up the price of the fabric and the working hours and everything else, then it is all of a sudden 300 pounds and no one wants it for 300 pounds.”

Interviewee 5, Fashion Designer Therefore, the real price for a piece of clothes is quite high but many consumers do not understand that and are not willing to pay the price while there are cheaper options provided by the fast fashion companies.

“The problem is that it is so easy to get cheap clothes because of fast fashion. And people just have this thing in their head that okay 20 euros or 30, 40 euros for trousers”.

Interviewee 5, Fashion Designer

72 On other hand, another consequence from lacking the knowledge about the quality of the clothing items and accessories, consumers can often pay more than quality of the clothes warrant. As such, it is useful for consumers to have an understanding about the quality of the clothes in order to be able to value the fashion products that are not necessary from a particular brand name.

“The price and quality are not always the same. High price does not mean high quality all the time. But as a consumer, you can expect more.”

Interviewee 1, Fashion Researcher

c. Unsustainable consumption habit In addition to the lack of understanding about clothing production and quality, consumers generally prefer aesthetically pleasing products with cheap price, and which are conveniently available. This is challenging for sustainable fashion brands because producing sustainable products requires higher cost which leads to a higher price.

“They (normal consumers) mostly care about the looks and the price and the availability of the products. And so that is also a challenge for sustainable brands, is the pricing, obviously, because it's costs more to be sustainable.”

Interviewee 4, Fashion Designer and Marketer There are cases where consumers have heard about the consequences of fast fashion manufacturing and cost saving strategies but continue buying from the fast fashion brands because of the affordable price and convenience. With these consumers, it is difficult to change consuming behaviour toward sustainable consumption choices.

“Many consumers are more willing to choose the cheaper option, even though they

would know something about the horrors of the industry of still, it's so much easier and cheaper to go to H&M or Zara and not care. So that's a super difficult challenge to actually make the customers care enough.”

Interviewee 4, Fashion Designer and Marketer

73 For conscious consumers, abstaining from buying mass produced fashion can be challenging because of its lower price and better availability.

“I try to buy less and less from the big brands. But, of course, sometimes it's just

easier and cheaper and more convenient.” Interviewee 6, Sustainable Fashion Consumer

d. Avoidance of unsustainability issues

The problem from the consumer side is the lack of understanding about the how clothes are made or the actual cost to the environment, society as and people caused by the fashion industry. At the same time, the real big picture of the fashion industry is stressful, therefore, there is potential that consumers do not want to know too much.

“Consumers oftentimes fail to understand the whole big picture, because when you start realizing it, it's actually very stressful and feels like it brings anxiety and it's like too much information.”

Interviewee 1, Fashion Researcher

e. Financial limitation One of the hardest obstacles for sustainable fashion to grow is the pricing of products. As there are consumers who are very price-sensitive, if the price of the clothes increases because they are sustainably produced, a number of consumers cannot afford to buy the clothes. Therefore, the act of balancing the price for price sensitive consumers is challenging when the other side of the equation is to ensure clothes are sustainably produced with sensible production cost. However, this is not impossible. With sensible adjustment and the advancing of the technology, the transition to sustainable fashion can be smooth for all the relevant stakeholders.

“That's a problem with sustainable fashion. Somehow, they need to figure out to either bring up the prices of the fast fashion, or bring down the price, because people

74 are not going to buy especially if they do not have money. They are not going to buy sustainable clothes just because it would be nice for the environment. If it was close to the same price, then yes, but you cannot make it the same price because the cheap clothes are made in horrendous environment.”

Interviewee 5, Fashion Designer

f. Lack of unity in sustainability attitude Consumers play a role in shifting the fashion industry toward a more sustainable operation, however, the reality of how strong the consumers effect is, depends on how consistently consumers as a group act toward their fashion consumption choices. However, there are many types of consumers, and their consumption habits are different from one to another.

What makes them (the consumers) not strong enough is that consumers are very heterogeneous, like you have athlete consumers, you have poor consumers, highly educated consumers, not very highly educated consumers, motivated consumers, less motivated consumers. So, consumers are not a unify mass by any means. So that is part of the problem in many ways that by all indicators, consumers will not be unified in their demands.”

Interviewee 7, Fashion Industry Researcher In addition, fashion has many issues in the production process in which consumers do not have the power to influence, as such, there is a need for enforcement from regulatory agencies globally.

“Consumers can produce signals, They can create indicators for marketers that these kinds of changes are wanted, but they can't really drive the change. The change has to come from the government, because these kinds of cysts like the problems are so much about the way we produce, for example, our clothes and such. So, these are things those regular consumers have no power over. So, it has to come from the government or like the European Union and such. That's the only way forward, I'm afraid that it's so.”

75 Interviewee 7, Fashion Industry Researcher

All in all, the challenges for sustainable fashion transition come from many sides (Figure 9) which can be grouped into three main domains: environment, economy and social. The environmental issues are related to the large amount of waste generated from garment and clothes production and the no-longer-used clothes from the overbuying and underusing by consumers. These result in consequences such as contaminated water, soil and air, which negatively affect the health and survival chance of all living creatures including humans. The economic root problem is the economy design that priorities profit gain but neglects to pay the attention to the social and environmental cost. The environmental and social consequences of profit-driven economy are becoming increasingly dangerous to the survival of humans and the whole ecosystem. The concept of circular economy is being established with increasing number of research conducted about its applications in all industries. This is positive development; however, the possibility of transforming the whole economy is still controversial and the process of transitioning from the current economy to circular economy will take time and effort from the government, the enterprises and all consumers in changing the mindset and building technology and infrastructure required for the changes. Companies have to maintain the business and transition to the new business model at the same time, which is challenging. Therefore, there is still a big gap between the theory and the reality. In terms of social issues in the fashion industry, there are two main problems: the unfair treatment of fashion workers and the lack of diversity and gender equality. With fashion consumers, the problem is the overbuying of low-quality products.

76

Figure 9. Fashion industry problem mapping

4.3 Solutions for sustainable fashion transition

How can consumers and fashion brands start to transition towards a more sustainable

consumption and operation? Although the solutions for sustainable fashion require the involvement of regulatory agencies, changes are also needed from consumers and fashion brands. This part of the findings will focus on the possible actions that the consumers and fashion brands can take in order to achieve a more sustainable fashion industry in the future.

77 4.3.1 Sustainable transition directions for different consumer segments

In terms of what should be changed from the consumer side, several possible actions were mentioned in the interviews. What needs to be clear is that even though overconsumption is harmful for the environment, we cannot stop consumption completely as it is the base of the economy and in the fashion industry, workers from raw material production to garment and clothes production would be affected significantly. As such, the fashion industry needs a slow transition to ensure the livelihood of workers in the supply chain. In order to create the pressure for fashion companies to choose and increase their effort in sustainable production and business practices, it is necessary for the consumers side to demand sustainable products and consume sustainably. It is essential to educate consumers about the consequences of the fashion practices and their power to affect fashion companies to take real effort toward sustainability.

“From the big picture, we need consumers, we need that people are consuming, but

we need people and consumers to consume more sustainably, prefer more sustainable materials and production. So, we as consumers can push the companies to prefer the sourcing decisions and things like that.”

Interviewee 1, Fashion Researcher

“The distance between the consumer and the brand has become shortened because of the social media. So, then you can easily have response on social media and the brands, they can contact consumers on social media. So, in that sense, consumers have more power to push the brands in the direction that they want. They can push that agent.”

Interviewee 8, Fashion Sociology Researcher On the other hand, the definition of sustainability from sustainable brands is still varied and does not have a unified definition; therefore, the first step to change fashion industry to be more sustainable is to create a unified understanding about sustainability.

“How brands are communicating sustainability means so many different things that the brands are currently saying that they are sustainable, although they are doing

78 only one thing that can be regarded as sustainable… what should first happen that we should somehow create a clear understanding what does sustainability actually mean?”

Interviewee 1, Fashion Researcher

To build more trust and at the same time create more clarity with the unified definition of sustainable fashion, for consumers and fashion brands, there is a need for a reliable international measurements and regulations for the fashion industry.

“To be reliable, they would need some international measurements and regulations

that are clear to consumers.” Interviewee 4, Fashion Designer and Marketer

Table 8. Fashion consumption motivation code structure (from final code structure)

Fashion

consumption motivation

Social status expression

Symbolism value of fashion Status consumption Individual identity expression Consumerist value-based society

Experience-oriented Buying for the fun, for the temporary excitement

Price-sensitive Financially struggling, does not have resources and energy to care about sustainability

Conscious consumption

Aware of unsustainable issues and consumes responsibly to reduce the harmful social and environmental impacts

As mentioned earlier, consumers are a heterogeneous group, and the individuals have different interests in solving sustainability issues in the fashion industry; this thesis investigated different types of fashion consumers to understand the challenges preventing them from consuming fashion sustainably and suggests potential solutions accordingly (Figure 10). From the data analysis and synthesis, four main types of fashion consumers are differentiated: conscious consumers, social status consumers, experience-oriented consumers, and price-sensitive consumers.

79

Figure 10. Fashion consumer types - problems – solutions

a. Price sensitive consumers

Price-sensitive consumers are consumers who have limited resources and therefore, are likely to not have a strong concern about sustainability as they have other higher priority concerns. Not all fashion consumers have choices in terms of finances to decide which range of price they will accept.

“If you think about some people already struggling financially, they don't have the energy to care about where their clothes are made that much.”

Interviewee 4, Fashion Designer and Marketer

80 As such, the price-sensitive consumers might see sustainability as a threat because the price of the clothes could increase to a range that they could not afford and would have to spend more money on clothes or have less clothes as a result. Both the environmental cost and challenges for price-sensitive consumers require attention.

“For some people cheap clothes is a blessing because that allows them to save money basically. So, for them, sustainable fashion can also be a threat almost. And we shouldn't forget about that. In that sense, if we want to say we prioritize the planet, we need to prioritize the environment, we need to take into account that for some people, it will mean, for example, more expensive clothing, or it will mean less clothing that they previously loved. And that is an issue that deserves also some sort of attention or acknowledgement.”

Interviewee 7, Fashion Industry Researcher The number of new items produced, and the number of clothes no longer used by consumers are considerable. This has opened growth for second-hand clothes industry, and this is an effective way to deal with the wasted items which still have great usage value. As the items are pre-owned, the price is lower, and the quality can be almost the same. Therefore, this is an alternative for the price-sensitive consumers to consume fashion more sustainably. Furthermore, second-hand clothes are not only the sustainable solution for price-sensitive consumers but also for all types of consumers.

“From the sustainability perspective, (because of Covid 19) people being home a lot makes the boom in second-hand markets. People are cleaning their wardrobes or having more time of checking what they have and what they haven't worn, and they are putting on sale or the second-hand market. But then people are also now buying more second time because they have maybe different wait time or then they have realized that now people are cleaning the closets.”

Interviewee 1, Fashion Researcher

b. Social status consumers

81 Social status consumers are consumers who have strong motivation and desire to buy from brands with high symbolic social status values, which are often luxury brands, to show their desired status, for example being wealthy. Also, those consumer groups can have different preferences in different countries.

“For the customers with the luxury brand, they wanted to buy status or wanted to buy to demonstrate their wealth being, for instance. It's also it depends on the country. So, consumers are different in the countries, and I can stereotype a little bit like in Russia, for instance, consumers, they like Louis Vuitton, because it's expensive, and it's a symbol status.”

Interviewee 8, Fashion Sociology Researcher As the main purpose of purchasing clothes for the social status consumers is the brand names for social status, the problem is that they do not care about the sustainability of the clothes, and they do not actively search for information about the sources or the production processes.

“But still the normal customer doesn’t really care that much, they are not willing to dig that information from somewhere.”

Interviewee 4, Fashion Designer and Marketer This consumer group mainly cares about the look or the style of the clothes but nothing else, including sustainability. This information was from an interview five years ago but there are still consumers who purchase in a similar way.

“I remember five years ago, I was talking to a person, and she was really laughing on that idea of sustainability, that's all I (she) need is the design. So, I (she) don't buy because it's sustainable. I (she) would buy from some brand, which is not sustainable, but I (she) like the design.”

Interviewee 8, Fashion Sociology Researcher

Moreover, even conscious consumers will not buy a product simply because it is sustainably produced but they also consider the style and the material. Therefore, the sustainable fashion

82 brands, in addition to ensuring the products are produced sustainably, must have attractive designs for success.

“I have one problem that I've experienced is that I don't usually like the sustainable brands, I don't like their style. Like, for example, the Finnish brands that I see, I don't like them.”

Interviewee 6, Sustainable Fashion Consumer It is challenging to persuade the group of social status consumers to think and act more toward sustainability; therefore, the role of sustainable brands in focusing on design and branding is critical. On the other hand, as this group can have the financial capability to buy from luxury brands so even though their intention was to buy for the social status, the prices often prevent them from buying too much. Furthermore, what they bought is high quality products and they are likely to use what they bought, in that sense, buying luxury items could be a sustainable consumption practice.

“Maybe that's what's good about luxury, because if you can really afford it and you have a lot of money, then your wardrobe is not going to be huge, it's going to be a lot of staples and good quality and long-lasting items.”

Interviewee 5, Fashion Designer “The normal consumer, who are not millionaire, for example, save money to buy a luxury branded product and then use it long and maybe sell it further. So basically, that's not the brand's aim, but that somehow something that consumers are organically doing.”

Interviewee 1, Fashion Researcher

c. Experience-oriented consumers Experience-oriented consumers are consumers shopping for clothes to experience the enjoyment of shopping, of getting something new. Consequently, this group of consumers has the tendency to overbuy products without using them to the full potential usage.

83 “In the UK, people have a very bad habit of news buying, buying when they don't actually need stuff.”

Interviewee 5, Fashion Designer On the other hand, consumers are repeatedly exposed to information through advertisements in all forms of media. This information exposure creates the constant desire for new items and makes consumers frequently crave for something new and accessible to consume.

“Fast fashion companies have created as an urgency. So, the need for, all the time, something new, so the speed has been speeding up even more.”

Interviewee 1, Fashion Researcher As consumers begin to buy clothes that they do not necessarily need to meet the current trends which are set by the constant new releases from the fashion companies, the purchased products are not used to their end of life. As a result, there is an enormous amount of waste from unused items.

“We do not usually anymore, have consumer clothes in a way that they are wear and tear. They are like, you cannot use them anymore because they are done. From fashion perspective, they are done because they are so last season. But from the material wise, they could have some life left.”

Interviewee 1, Fashion Researcher The solution for this issue would be to change the mindset of the consumers to help them stop the impulsive buying when they see attractive items in the shop and take a moment to think about the impact of their purchasing decisions. In addition, it could be helpful for them to look at their wardrobe to see how much they have and how much they actually use. The shift in the consumption behaviour reduces the demand and will lead to the decrease from the supply side.

“It's requires the customer to shift their minds outside of their self, to also the whole

environment.”

84 Interviewee 4, Fashion Designer and Marketer

“I would change the mindset of people that they don't need new stuff just because it's in the shop. And if you buy less, the shops will produce less, and it will be less harmful.”

Interviewee 5, Fashion Designer

d. Conscious consumers Conscious consumers are consumers who are fully aware of unsustainability issues in the fashion industry and actively manage their purchasing behaviour to pursue a more sustainable fashion lifestyle. Buying from truly sustainable fashion brands is one characteristic in their buying decision process; as such, they are strongly motivated to find and read information about fashion brands and their supply chains to evaluate if the products are sustainably produced.

“The customers that are truly conscious and educated on these issues are also

motivated to read the information and make sure that the supply chain is transparent.”

Interviewee 4, Fashion Designer and Marketer

Conscious consumers avoid impulsive buying by specifically planning what they need and want to buy. For long-lasting items, conscious consumers care about the quality of the products and prefer sustainable materials, for example natural materials or recycled materials. In terms of supply chain, they have more trust on brands that have their production facility in areas they are more familiar with and have better history in sustainable practices. Even though having the production located in such areas in the Europe, for example, is not very common nowadays.

“I really want to find some specific items; I usually want quality materials or fabrics. I really like natural fabrics, also, I would like it to be produced in Finland or in the European area. And even that is very unusual to actually find that.”

Interviewee 6, Sustainable Fashion Consumer

85

“What's very important for me there is this company called Talar and they are using recycled fabrics and it's all sustainable and they also use bottles to make some leggings and I think that's really cool. So, I really enjoy that. It's like a new take on fitness”

Interviewee 5, Fashion Designer

“It's easier for me to trust like more smaller brands than the large companies. Because I know that the reality of the production still, how it is. And even big luxury brands, it's even hard to trust them. Also, because they going to be like producing the same basically the same factory as any other brand. It's kind of hard to navigate because no one you can trust really.”

Interviewee 6, Sustainable Fashion Consumer Conscious consumers are also willing to pay more for sustainable products with the requirement that they are high quality and sustainably produced.

“With specific items I do try to shop a bit higher price, for example a coat or some boots that are better quality and not cheaply made in cheap shops.”

Interviewee 5, Fashion Designer

Interestingly the findings show that conscious consumers perceive strong emotional rewards when they buy from sustainable brands. As opposed to the stressful feelings that conscious consumers might have experienced when consuming unstainable fashion, there is a rewarding feeling when they invest time and money to ensure that they buy from ethical and sustainable fashion brands. As a result, they do not experience the shame of consuming unsustainable products which could be produced from exploiting people somewhere else.

“It makes me feel good to wear ethically and sustainably sourced clothes.”

Interviewee 5, Fashion Designer

86 On the other hand, the feeling of guilt will in the long-term condition the consumers to not want to buy fast fashion anymore. In the long-term the fast fashion business model may not be profitable.

“How the fast fashion is working, that is a business model is going to die. Even if they are still making money, people feel ashamed when they're buying (from fast fashion), that's the problem. And this is not going to last you know, this is a bad quality, that it hasn't been done, not only in China anymore, but in Southeast Asia where people are getting like crappy paid and more and more people are actually sensitive to that.”

Interviewee 11, Creative Director and Sustainable Fashion Expert Moreover, looking from the economic perspective, everything needs to be produced sustainably for the business to survive: the environment is increasingly polluted; there is an increasing number of consumers who are aware of the unsustainability and unethicality issues and will not continue consuming unsustainably produced products or overbuying items that they do not use. Supported by the pressure from media, many activist organizations are actively spreading the message and taking actions to improve the fashion industry. At the same time, there are more and more sustainable fashion brands with real effort to provide consumers with sustainable choices. Therefore, in the future when there are more available and applicable technologies, innovations and business model designs following sustainability principles, sustainability could become a less distinctive factor among brands. In that sense, fast fashion business model may not survive if they continuous to operate as currently.

“From the general public's point of view, sustainability will be like indivisible a background that at some point, you just kind of take it for granted that these have to be made in a sustainable way. Because that's just the economic reality.”

Interviewee 7, Fashion Industry Researcher

“And they are looking at it and ask do I want to buy a T shirt that is 9.99 that is made by girls who are 15 years old, and getting $1 per day, or do you want to pay maybe

87 20 and then you'll have like an organic cotton or recycled material. And it's made maybe in the same country but at least they'd get a better pay rate. Those are questions that we know needs to brand needs to be presented that to the customers.”

Interviewee 11, Creative Director and Sustainable Fashion Expert

Even though there is considerable amount of work and time needed for sustainable fashion transition, the unified actions from consumers would contribute to a significant change in the market. As such, conscious consumers and activists are the ones who start the changes towards sustainability by drawing more attention to sustainability and put the pressure on the regulation system to make sustainability practices in fashion industry official requirements enforced by laws. For that reason, in addition to practicing sustainable consumption, conscious consumers can spread out the message to other consumers and requests transparency information from fashion brands.

“It's waste if you buy it and you don't wear it. So, I would change this habit in fashion consumers that they just need to buy, buy, buy.”

Interviewee 5, Fashion Designer “They'll like the notion of water sustainable keeps moving all the time, the expectations become higher and higher. Clothing that we would call sustainable 20 years ago, now is barely the industry norm. So, these things change all the time, the definitions keep changing all the time.”

Interviewee 7, Fashion Industry Researcher

4.3.2 Key factors for building a sustainable brand The effort from fashion brands is crucial in fostering sustainable fashion as they are the ones who decide how the final products are made, which means they have significant influence on the supply chain of clothes manufacturing.

88 Table 9. Sustainable fashion brand code structure (from final code structure)

Sustainable fashion brand

design solutions

Integrity Fashion companies are honest and do business in alignment with their commitments

Product High quality, long-lasting Sustainable material Attractive design

Production Minimize waste Reduce the number of annual new collections

Transparency Information transparency Sustainability embraced as an internal value consistently

Brand authenticity

Build appealing and distinguished brand to attract even unconscious consumers

Need differentiation factors when sustainability becomes a norm Be relevant Culturally sensitive

Socially relevant

Customer-centric and sustainability

design

Strong service with sustainability-oriented mindset Compelling story, finding a balance between sustainability

information and inspirational story Creative approach Visually appealing, not only in products, but all marketing

material and in all customers interaction points

a. Integrity The fundamental element for a fashion company to build a sustainable brand and survive in the market is integrity.

“Brands actually have to work, and they have to have their actions representing their

communication to avoid the greenwashing issue. Interviewee 4, Fashion Designer and Marketer

89 In other words, fashion companies must do the actions they have promised to consumers in their communication channels and embrace sustainable values into their internal working cultures and their business goals.

“There is a concept in marketing that is called brand activism. So, what important is that when the company's not just communicating the sustainability agenda, but also act according to its own principles. So, if the company is saying that they are sustainable such as Patagonia, for instance, they're also brand activism. So, they act and live within the company according to the same principles that they try to communicate to the consumers.”

Interviewee 8, Fashion Sociology Researcher For consumers, especially for conscious consumers, greenwashing is unacceptable, and they are often sensible enough to evaluate if a brand is communicating honestly about their sustainable effort or not. Therefore, only by having a proper understanding and acting toward a sustainable business model, a fashion brand can gain the trust from conscious consumers.

“I get really annoyed with greenwashing. If something feels a bit shady, that's definitely a turnoff. So instead of just for fashion brands or any fashion brand to be sustainable, that's the first step if you know you make a sustainable collection or whatever, a small act, but in the long run, I would really like to see like already like value based.”

Interviewee 9, Luxury Fashion Specialist Vice versa, for unconscious consumers (price-sensitive, experience-oriented, and social status consumers), sustainable-oriented brands can take their role in educating consumers about sustainability and the benefits of sustainable consumption practices to the environment, the society and the consumers themselves. Even though the definitions of sustainability coming from fashion brands could be biased towards the brand’s sustainable

practices, in terms of raising awareness, this still contributes to acknowledgment of sustainability from unconscious consumers.

90 “If the company is truly sustainable, we don't have many, not really, any company can say that they are truly sustainable, but they are in a process of becoming more sustainable. It helps to educate consumers who want to know more, and then ease the decision making. So, when you know that this brand is sustainable, it's easier to make the decision if you want to prefer sustainable products.”

Interviewee 1, Fashion Researcher

b. Product design and production The product is the core of a brand as it is the representative of the brand’s values. Therefore, building a sustainable product is also a key element in building a successful brand identity. The starting point of making sustainable product is the material choice which environmental-friendly or less harmful for the environment.

“The most obvious part is choosing sustainable materials and fabrics and all textiles that are produced environmentally friendly way.”

Interviewee 4, Fashion Designer and Marketer In addition to the material of the product, the long-lasting design should be taken into serious consideration because if the product is only be used for a short period of time, in the long-term the product itself is not much different from the low quality fast fashion clothes.

“But sometimes if there's too much emphasis on that; the designs are not made to last time. Even though they're made from recycled plastic bottles or something, but then they're still like the trendy fast fashion equivalents that are only made for use in a short period of time. It's important to actually design pieces that people want to keep for decades.”

Interviewee 4, Fashion Designer and Marketer

Spending effort to minimize waste produced in each stage of the production process by using new technologies is crucial in reducing the negative environmental impact. Additionally, these new technologies can increase the efficiency of production for the companies.

91 “I know that when you design and you have the pattern pieces, there are new

technologies are coming out to make sure there's like as little waste as possible.” Interviewee 5, Fashion Designer

By reducing the number of new collections each year and spending more time on the design process, businesses can deliver higher quality products with sustainable-oriented production principles.

“ I think there should be more time and resources to this given to the whole design process. That would help more sustainable practices, for example, like utilizing the zero-waste method of pattern making, and all these kinds of innovative ways of making and designing fashion.”

Interviewee 4, Fashion Designer and Marketer The beautiful design is equally important to the production processes. The style of the sustainable brand should be timeless but modern and attractive to the consumers. If the design is not attractive, even though the products are produced sustainably, consumers do not want to buy them, and the products become waste which is even more unsustainable.

“I think I have one problem that I've kind of experienced is that I don't like usually like the sustainable brands’ style, I don't like their style. For example, like a Finnish

brand that I see, I don't like them. So usually, I tried to find more basic clothes.” Interviewee 5, Fashion Designer

Furthermore, the aesthetically good-looking design also contributes to prolong the usage of the product when the design inspires and resonate with the aesthetic taste of their target consumers.

“They're such a good quality that they don't break down that easily and also aesthetically good looking.”

Interviewee 4, Fashion Designer and Marketer

92 c. Reliable and transparent information

One of the most important factors for a sustainable brand is the transparency of information regarding the origin and production process of the products. There are international certificates for indicators of sustainability; these certificates could be one way to increase the reliability and transparency of the information for a fashion brand.

“To be reliable, they would need to be some, like international measurements and

regulations that are clear to consumers.” Interviewee 4, Fashion Designer and Marketer

Sustainability knowledge and awareness need to be embraced by fashion designers as well as the people working in the brand to ensure the processes are managed and communicated transparently.

“What was very important for me is transparency. And customers are going to know

exactly where the fabric was sourced from. Who made it that it was fairly made ethically correct? For example, when you can see on the T shirt that was made out of this many bottles or save this many litters of water. It's important to communicate when you design.”

Interviewee 5, Fashion Designer In addition, for conscious sustainable fashion consumers, the way a brand communicates their sustainable values will be critical as those consumers are aware of the greenwashing phenomenon. At the same time, the conscious consumers understand that the transition to sustainability will take time, so it is better to be honest about the real situation of where the brand is in their sustainability journey and the long-term plan to achieve their sustainability goals. The sustainable values should be embraced in brand values and be visible consistently in the brand’s communication channels.

“I think there has to be certain consistency to the communication. So, the sustainable information is ingrained into the brand, and it's always present. Also, not maybe

93 trying to appear too perfect. You can say that, well, in this aspect, we are not hundred percent perfect, but this is how we're going to move into that direction.”

Interviewee 6, Sustainable Fashion Consumer

“Maybe to actually show. So maybe to have a cheap shirt from here and then good

quality sustainable shirt and actually show like how it wears, and it functions better. Or show the working conditions like side by side, because that can really make your brain tick and decided that's a better choice.”

Interviewee 5, Fashion Designer

“I think they had defined their values very clearly. And they also were very

transparent about all kind of aspects related to the company and how they design and produce them.”

Interviewee 6, Sustainable Fashion Consumer

d. Brand aesthetic Sustainable fashion concepts can still be new for consumers; therefore, to enable a smooth and easy sustainability mindset transition for unconscious consumers, it is important to build an attractive and distinguished brand so that the consumers can understand the brand’s

values and identity which cannot be fully conveyed through product design.

“The brand can be embedded and built to be many things that the product itself cannot signalize.”

Interviewee 1, Fashion Researcher

Moreover, with the increase in sustainability awareness from consumers and future fashion brand companies, who prefer higher quality and lower quantity, there will be larger number of small-scale sustainable brands rather than a few large-scale fashion brands that are providing to a larger number of consumers, as the situation is now.

“The consumption habits should change from buying masses of cheap clothing to the buying more quality and less quantity. So that's why also, it's important that in the

94 future, maybe would look like that there would be smaller brands. And they were a slower pace. Like compared to now we have the few mass players that cater to millions and millions of consumers”

Interviewee 4, Fashion Designer and Marketer

The findings imply that conscious consumers are more likely to trust and therefore, more likely to shop from smaller scale sustainable brands. For that reason, the increasing number of conscious consumers might indicate the increase in the number of small sustainable fashion brands not only in product-based businesses but also in the service-based businesses.

“How I look at it is maybe trust more like smaller brands that operate more locally and will have their own production sites or factories maybe they have more control over the whole process.”

Interviewee 6, Sustainable Fashion Consumer Therefore, along with the normalization of sustainability standards in the industry, brand aesthetics become one of the key factors to differentiate one brand from the others.

“As people get more and more conscious, it’s not enough to be sustainable, or produced sustainably. And it all comes down to the design and the aesthetic and the style of the products. Yeah. And that, like, the whole essence of the brand. So, like, it’s not like as we go forward. It’s like, it’s not an added value anymore to be sustainable, but it has to be the core. And then we would see more brands that are, like, representing their own unique stories and aesthetics”.

Interviewee 4, Fashion Designer and Marketer

e. Cultural sensitivity and social relevance As part of the consumer culture, fashion has strong social symbolic meanings. This requires fashion brands to be sensitive of cultural aspects and considerate of social issues. Fashion companies need to consider all cultural aspects globally and locally where the brand is located to ensure the designs and practices are cultural accepted. Equally importantly, fashion brands must take into account social issues such as equality, racism, discrimination

95 and inclusivity in everything that they do from production design to marketing campaigns or any form of publicity.

“I think for now if you have a fashion brand or if you’re having a show etc., you need to consider really, all the factors or all the keywords like sustainability. Like all the equality, like no matter where sexual or racial or cultural equality or just also you need to think about like, waste; it needs to be right. Like everything related to fashion needs to be right.”

Interviewee 10, Customer Relationship Expert

“So, people have different bodies, for instance, or people have different skin colours, and this is something that the companies or the brands have to reflect upon recently and address somehow because fashion has been criticized a lot for producing wrong body the image, for instance, then for not being inclusive.”

Interviewee 8, Fashion Sociology Researcher In order to be more sensitive of cultural aspects and considerate of social issues, fashion industry and fashion brands need diverse representation of people with different cultural backgrounds in not only the public side but also in the back-office. Otherwise, it would be difficult for the fashion brands to be culturally appropriate in their product design as well as in all aspects of brand operation and communication.

“I’m not only mean on the commercial side or the advertisement, but also mean people who are employed with companies like back-office CEOs. So, if you don’t have enough of representation of people different you know skin colours and things like that then you have problems like H&M have at some point or Gucci or Prada.”

(the incidents of using discriminative symbol in product design) Interviewee 8, Fashion Sociology Researcher

Furthermore, to build an emotional bond with consumers, fashion companies should build their branding to be relevant with what is happening at that time or consider and contribute

96 to solve the raising issues in the industry. Otherwise, the brand could be significantly damaged by the culturally or politically inappropriate actions.

“Sexualized woman right now is very problematic, because they portrayed that image of sexualized woman which has lost its relevant; it’s just completely lost its relevant. Although Victoria Secret tried to address the diversity issue by including transgender model, so the different women, but when you’re portraying that sexualized body, it becomes problematic right now because it’s not enough to be diverse. You should address that. Do you have to sexualize women in that way, at this point of time, when the whole discussion in the society is basically critical toward that.”

Interviewee 8, Fashion Sociology Researcher

f. Customer experience-oriented brand design Well-designed services with sustainability-oriented For all brands nowadays, consumer experience is a significant element for successful branding as the emotional bonding between the brand and the consumers is the key ingredient in maintaining a long-term relationship with consumers. The effect of consumer experience is increasingly important in branding strategy and in making the brand stand out in the consumers’ eyes. Having valuable and well-designed services along with selling products can help brands to better support consumers to commit to their purchasing decisions, which make it more likely that consumers will love, take care and use the product for a long period of time.

“I bought this jumpsuit from a Finnish brand and they had this service where I could order samples of their clothes to my home. So, I could try them on and that was basically free. I, then ordered and decide to buy one of the pieces. I actually like that service a lot; it was easier for me to commit. It’s a lot about the service and the delivery options as well.”

Interviewee 6, Sustainable Fashion Consumer

97 Brands could add to the customer experience by paying attention to personalize the experience for customer; this factor is believed to add great impression and positive emotions from consumers toward brands.

“They (a brand) also had a very personal touch to it (the purchased item). First of all, when I received it, there was a handwritten note about “Hello…, and the here is yours, I hope you really enjoyed this”. That really impressed me.”

Interviewee 6, Sustainable Fashion Consumer Findings show that brands should be visible and easy to find on social media channels. They should actively communicate and engage with customers not only through the products but also through their values and ideology to create emotional and aspirational connections with customers.

Also, being presence on social media accounts; have really good marketing online on Instagram and everything. So, it is kind of easy to find them and relate to them.”

Interviewee 6, Sustainable Fashion Consumer

Appealing and meaningful story Sustainability issues can be stressful for consumer to hear about frequently, especially if the tone is aggressive. Even though this approach can provoke strong emotional reactions from consumers, it could have the side effect of stressing consumers too much, leading to the consumers avoidance of sustainability.

“It’s a combination of really good design, really good story and how to educate the customer, and give them information about the value of sustainability in a way that isn’t stressful. Because not everybody wants to know about the social issues, or environmental issues when they are shopping fashion. There’s so much going on in the world that clothing consumption is, for many is like fun practice, and they don’t want to know that much about the bad side.”

98 Interviewee 4, Fashion Designer and Marketer

Therefore, choosing a well-balanced approach to consumers is important in building an appealing sustainable brand which is the combination of good product design and appealing approach that can promote sustainable values in a compelling way. An honest, interesting, and engaging story about the design principles of the brand to communicate the brand values is essential in getting unconscious consumers open to learn about and enjoy sustainable businesses.

“So, I think for her (the founder of a sustainable oriented fashion brand), and all

good brands, it’s so important to have a good story around the design. So somehow also incorporate the sustainability value and educating customers with the story.”

Interviewee 4, Fashion Designer and Marketer

Creative approach In addition to including the sustainable values, the brand can take a different focus to explore fashion for example from the art aspect of fashion. Given the above, the consumers can consume not only a sustainably produced product but also enjoy the symbolic side of the fashion product.

“They (a sustainable oriented fashion brand) are using art as like an advocacy and

expression to reach out to more and more people. So, you’re not just targeting the people who are all about sustainability, but you’re going one step further, and you’re targeting people in the art space, who want to support other artists, or they really like the new movement of whatever, and then they want to have a shirt with that. So maybe that’s a good way to not only focus on sustainability but involves a different aspect. So, then it’s like a smoother transition. So, it’s not about I want to see all the animals, or I want to see all the water. But maybe people will focus more on the aspect that it’s an art expression through clothes. And then they will be more likely to buy and it’s a sustainable option.”

Interviewee 5, Fashion Designer

99

Visual appeal Last but not least, visually appealing design of the product and all the marketing material are essential as they are the first interaction point to catch the attention of the customers. At the same time, the visually appealing design creates a better experience for the customers when they interact with the brand.

“Very visually pleasing material that catches the customer’s attention. I think that’s so important. I say first rule to actually be desirable looking. Because that’s like, nobody really cares about those ugly deco hippies. You have to offer something is truly looking luxurious and that’s a bonus”

Interviewee 4, Fashion Designer and Marketer In general, actions for sustainable fashion transition are required from the regulatory agencies, fashion companies and fashion consumers. As consumer behaviours are varied based on personal values, knowledge, consumption habits, social structure and resource situation, the solutions for sustainable consumption should be built accordingly. From fashion companies, significant transformations need to be made from product design and production management to communication and branding strategy to build ethical and sustainable businesses. 5 DISCUSSION The structure of the discussion is to first of all, summaries the findings of each research questions and secondly, compare those findings with current literature review and highlight statements have the alignment among them and statement that might be not agreed between the two parts. With the purpose of contributing insights to improve fashion-related practices for consumers and industrial participants for a more sustainable fashion industry, this research first of all, tried to investigate to get the understanding of different expertise background on the

100 definition of fashion. Secondly, the findings from this thesis helps to identify the challenges in sustainable fashion transition. Finally, the findings also provide suggestions on how consumers and fashion brands can tradition towards sustainable consumption and fashion production. 5.1 Fashion from different perspectives The findings indicate that fashion needs a visible form to exist; however, that visible form represent a symbolic meaning that is share on among a social context meanwhile resonates with an individual’s identity. There are four main elements of fashion: tangible form, symbolic meaning, identity expression and society reflection. (See Figure 11)

Figure 11. Snail shell graph of fashion formation elements

101

5.1.1 Tangible form Fashion needs a tangible form, which are clothes and accessories, to exist. The tangible form of fashion has its functionality to the human who wears it. However, for clothes with functionality to be fashion, there should be the element of art in it. The element of art is the inspiration, the design and the craftmanship to create that piece of clothes which is extraordinary in comparison to other pieces of clothes or accessories. Then that physical form creates a strong aesthetic experience for the people who wear it. The tangible aspect of fashion is similar to the consumers goods or the market offerings from Consumer Culture Theory. The market offerings in CCT play as a social structure that provides consumers with the tangible tools to support consumers in representing their identity projects in different social contexts (Schau, 2018). Moreover, CCT describes consumer goods to have two functions. They serve as commodities, and they serve as identity expression tools. Similarly, the tangible form of fashion has its functional purpose; therefore, it is undeniable that fashion serves consumers as commodities also.

5.1.2 Symbolic meaning What makes fashion is the tangible art form in parallel with the symbolic meaning of the tangible form. Even if the art form of fashion is cultivated from fashion designers’

inspiration, design and craftsmanship; those clothes and accessories will not be fashion if there is no social acceptance among a social group upon the assigned symbolic meaning to the tangible form. Therefore, fashion needs the agreement among a social group to be formed. As fashion has the agreed meaning among a social group, fashion can be a form of social status expression for an individual toward the same social group and toward other social groups. For that reason, fashion has the ability to influence the perception of the other people toward an individual even though the effect could just from the surface and be impermanent. Furthermore, the findings indicate the power of fashion in influencing the

102 perception of an individual toward themselves in the way that fashion can elevate the spirit of the individual who wears the clothes and accessories. The symbolic meaning of fashion indicates the shared belief of a group of society; therefore, fashion represents the social structure of a particular society. The particular society here can be formed based on various of shared contexts, for example, based on national identity meaning a society of people who are from and live in a same country, or based on a common sport such as a society of people who play tennis in a same sport club. The question is how is the symbolic meaning successfully created? Or why a particular society would agree or approve about some meanings but not others? Coming back at the imagination process. The “food” for imagination is the “data” that an individual is exposed to, and the product of imagination is an individual’s digestion of the “data” (Schau, 2018). Therefore, if we look at a context of a particular society, the people inside that society are partly exposed to the same “data”. Additionally, other people’ imagination in that society is also one form of “data” that an individual is exposed to. In other words, people in a particular society influence each other imagination’s results and therefore, influence each other’s identities. The source of “data”, what I call, the composition of information exposure is everything that an individual experiences through each and all five senses: hearing, seeing, tasting, touching and smelling, which might or might not provoke thoughts inside a person’s mind. The composition of information exposure includes the interactions of an individual with all the societies that she or he is a part of. The sources of influence and their intensity to the imagination or the identity are varied because the composition of information exposure is unique and different from person to person. For that reason, the imagination and the contagiousness of perceptions and actions explain how symbolic meanings are formulated and why they are always in a constant change, in general and in fashion.

103 5.1.3 Identity expression

From individual perspective, the findings show a strong element of fashion in the identity expression. The identity expression includes personality, personal beliefs, personal values, the lifestyle of an individual. Interestingly, whether an individual intended or did not intend to use fashion for identity expression, everyone is telling a story about themselves through their choices of clothes and accessories; in other words, everyone expresses their identities through their outfits. Moreover, everyone plays different social roles in different social contexts and fashion is a tool for people to express their identities when they are in different social roles. As mentioned above, fashion has a symbolic meaning in a social context; therefore, it has the ability to help people to express their desired identities in different social roles and social contexts. In alignment with the relationship between identity and consumption from Consumer Culture Theory, which claims that consumers use the marketplace or consumption to express their desired identity (Schau, 2018), all interviewees agreed that fashion is one form of identity expression through clothes and accessories. In addition, in the identity framework, personality is one of the identity’s elements (Schau, 2018) and because personality is different from person to person (Roberts & Jackson, 2008), it explains the different relationships between consumers and fashion. Everyone uses clothes for their functional purposes but not everyone cares about their clothes the same way, or the way they perceive the importance of fashion is varied. Nevertheless, the choice of fashion partly reveals the identity of the person who wears the clothes. On the other hand, the findings also suggests that the identity expression does not only happen through consumption of consumers but is also reflected through creations and designs of the fashion designers. In other words, fashion designers express themselves through the clothes and accessories that they designed and made. Therefore, the fashion products designed by a fashion designer represent a project identity which also demonstrates a brand’s identity. As from a brand’s perspective, the fundamental criteria for building a successful brand communication is the alignment between brand identity and the target

104 customers’ identity (Kapferer, 2012). As consumers are consciously using consumer goods, including fashion products, to represent their identity (Schau, 2018); fashion consumers seek for fashion designers with the aesthetic design or fashion brands with the brand identity that resonates with their identities.

5.1.4 Society reflection Fashion is the reflection of the world as the formation and development of fashion industry has been deeply resonated with the development of humans’ identities as well as the whole society. This point of view is aligned with the analysis of the marketplace as a social structure formation from the relationship between identity and consumption in Consumer Culture Theory which claims that marketplace, in which fashion industry is included, facilitates consumers imagination and identity project expression (Schau, 2018); therefore, social structure develops interdependently with the reflections and changes of consumers’

identities. In addition, constant change is one of the key characteristics of fashion. From the findings, the constant change of fashion is due to the fashion companies, especially the fast fashion companies because they have been increasing the number of new collections every year significantly. In other words, the constant change of fashion is driven by the constant mass production from fashion companies and by the overbuying behaviour from the consumers. Similarly, the constant change of market explained from the perspective of Consumer Culture Theory is due to the influences of the composition of information exposure which includes all sensory experience (Schau, 2018) . In the case of fashion, the increasing number and intensity of triggers from being exposed to many types of advertisements, sales or from walking by physical fashion stores fill consumers’ minds with “data” that is highly likely to manifest as impulsive buying behaviour. 5.2 Sustainable transition in fashion for consumers and fashion brands The interdependent relationship between supply and demand in the market indicates the interconnection between fashion companies and fashion consumers. The findings show factors for making a successful sustainable fashion brand and bringing satisfaction for

105 conscious consumers. Those factors are synthesised and presented in Figure 12, which I call Lotus Diagram – The sustainable fashion brand design principles.

Figure 12. Lotus Diagram - The sustainable fashion brand design principles

The key interrelation in the Lotus Diagram is the relationship between fashion brands and fashion consumers. The principle is that fashion companies need to understand consumers’

perspective to create a successful brand. Again, I want to emphasize that the purpose of the Lotus Diagram is not to persuade consumers to buy more and more but to be the foundation for first of all, fashion companies to transition into or design a sustainable fashion brand and secondly, for fashion consumers to have an easier and more exciting journey in transforming their consumption habits. The diagram has two sides: fashion consumers and fashion

106 companies or fashion brands. Similarly, the relationship between consumers and brands is utilized also by Kapferer (2012) with the Brand Identity Prism framework. The findings indicate that, the most important factor for determining purchasing decision of conscious consumers (the group of consumers that needed to be grown for a more sustainable fashion industry) is (1) the proud feeling, the freedom from guilt, and the enjoyment of consuming sustainable products with responsible consumption lifestyle. This finding aligns with the culture facet in the Brand Identity Prism (Kapferer, 2012) which emphasizes on building an emotional bond between brands and consumers. The findings show that conscious consumers, who have strong awareness and commitment toward sustainable consumption, have a strong concern about sustainability. Therefore, in order to deeply connect with conscious consumer at emotional level, brands need to be able to make consumers proud to consume from their brands by being the cultural hero and trying to solve social issues which in this case is the issue of sustainability. (1) Sustainable production is a fundamental requirement for the proud feeling of consuming. Meaning that, for a fashion brand, the sustainable production is a required factor to be a successful brand among conscious consumers. This includes sustainable materials, fair treatment to garment workers and a business model following circular economy. As can be seen from the Lotus Diagram, this characteristic is located in the bottom of the lotus flower because it is the foundation of a sustainable brand and sustainable consumption. The aesthetic design includes the tangible look of the clothes; however, because of the severe sustainability issues in the fashion industry, the aesthetic design of fashion is evolving to contain the values of sustainability in it. Furthermore, as mentioned in the findings, fashion is a way for consumers to express their identity, as such, consumers prefer fashion brands that have the (2) aesthetic design that represents their desired identities. Therefore, it is crucial for brands to build the correspond (2) brand identity that resonate with their target customers. As there are many consumers with different identities, there is space for fashion brands to have their own authentic styles. In addition, as shown in the findings, authenticity will play a crucial role in in the long-term in differentiating one brand from the others when sustainable production becomes a norm in

107 the fashion industry. The aesthetic here is not only in aesthetic design of the product but also includes the integrity of a fashion brand. Another essential factor in creating a successful brand is the quality and the design of the product. Conscious consumers want (3) long-lasting products with good style because they want to use them for long; therefore, brands must ensure (3) the high quality and great design in their products. The elements (1), (2) and (3) of Lotus Diagram show an association with the physique aspect of the Brand Identity Prism (Kapferer, 2012) framework which indicates that the tangible aspect of a brand is like the backbone of the brand; if there is no physique aspect, there is no brand. Additionally, conscious consumers care strongly about the ethical principles of a fashion brand because they want to buy from fashion brands that embrace and take action according to values the consumers consider as their (4) personal values. These values could, for example, be sustainability, equality or diversity. Therefore, fashion brands need to design their product and build their brands to be (4) relevant culturally and socially to their target customers. Similarly, Kapferer (2012) strongly emphasize and assert the culture aspect as the most important factor in brand identity design. All consumers have a strong concern about the (5) honesty of brands, no one wants to be lied to and this includes fashion consumers being lied to by fashion brands. As such, it is important for a fashion brand to be (5) transparent in their information, especially about the origin of their products, how they were made and by whom because conscious consumers check that information carefully to evaluate if they can trust a fashion brand or not. This factor of the Lotus Diagram is different from the Brand Identity Prism framework, due to the greenwashing phenomenon, consumers become critical about the transparency of brands. As fashion embraces a form of beauty in it and the beauty exist only through the personal recognition of it from consumers, consumers, in general, appreciate the (6) inspiration from fashion brands. Therefore, fashion brand should think of an honest and (6) appealing

108 approach in telling their brand’s story in a way that can inspire the consumers to at least enjoy the beauty of fashion and, if possible, integrate the sustainable values into the story to inform more consumers about sustainability benefits. The key point is to find a balance for the brand story, it should not be only about stressful facts. The company production’s

information can be presented in a separate place from the brand story, for example, on one section of the brand’s website. Last but not least, the (7) customer experience is important for brands in delivering not only their product but the whole brand’s experience which includes (7) great service based on sustainable principles. The factors (6) and (7) resonate with the relationship facet of the Brand Identity Prism from Kapferer (2012) in a sense that they both focus on designing the right message and delivering the message in the right way to the target consumers. All in all, the Lotus Diagram show some similar principles of building successful brands, which are seen, understood, loved and consumed by their target consumer, with the Brand Identity Prism framework by Kapferer (2012); however, the Lotus Diagram also indicates different aspects to foster sustainability design in creation of a brand. First of all, Lotus Diagram indicates the strong emerging of sustainable production, which has never gained the centre position in value proposition of fashion brands. Secondly, different from other brand design related models, Lotus Diagram embraces the transparency element which suggests that all fashion companies have to reveal how their products are made. The Lotus diagram gives fashion brand’s designers, fashion producers and marketers a model or a framework to build or rebuild their fashion brand to be more sustainable. With the increasing number fashion brands including sustainability in their strategy, production and business model, the sustainability of fashion industry will be improved. 6 CONCLUSIONS The fashion industry has caused severe damage to the environment as well as to the society and people who are directly producing garments. To stop those unsustainable behaviours not only from unethical fashion companies but also from the consumers guided by consumption

109 habits, awareness must be raised among the consumers to put the pressure to the production side. This research wants to emphasize, from consumer side, the core idea of liberation of consumption motivations to create sustainability in fashion industry. After all, the idea of fashion is fuelled and brought to life by the interactions and influences of perceptions and identities which keep evolving and changing as the change of the composition of information exposure that all human beings experience every day. All forms of consumers goods and services start as a thought, an idea in the mind before it manifests as a tangible product; therefore, I would argue that any tangible product or service before having its own tangible shape has already existed in an intangible form, or I call it, core form as an idea in human’s mind. As such, that product has already been influenced and designed by the perceptions from a person or from a group of people. For that reason, all products or even services are the result of imagination, not from one single person but from number of people due to the contagious characteristic of ideas, perceptions. However, the idea might manifest and become a visible form as products or service (I am using these examples because we are taking about identity and consumption) from an individual. In order to make changes in actions, the changes need to happen at the identity level. Action is the manifestation of thoughts. Identity results from imagination, the radical thinking of “data” emerges in imagination, and the source of “data” is the composition of information exposure. Therefore, the composition of information exposure strongly affects humans’

actions. Meaning that what a person hears, sees, touches and feels affects their purchasing behaviours. All in all, the key to transition production and consumption toward sustainability is to change some aspects of identities of all human beings. Furthermore, to transform the fashion industry to be more sustainable, unified actions are required from regulatory agencies, fashion companies, suppliers, manufacturers and fashion consumers.

110 6.1 Practical implications Throughout the research, findings indicate that fashion companies; in order to sustain and develop in the long-term, must understand the equation of environmental cost and profit gain. In addition, they need to understand consumers’ perspective and values to design their business as well as branding. There are more and more conscious consumers and sustainable-oriented fashion brands; in the long-term, sustainability might become a norm in the industry. As such, fashion companies need to work on their brand identity and sustainable ways to deliver great customer experience. However, in contrast to the luxury branding which provides consumers with glamorous, mysterious and high-end oriented experience, with sustainable fashion brands the customer experience should expand to transparency of information, material innovation, and design operational practices to reduce and minimize the environmental harms throughout the customer journey.

From consumers side, understanding the marketing tactics from fast fashion brands and before buying anything actively asking questions: do you really need and will use the item for a long time? Are the items produced sustainably? Is the company behind this operat ing ethically? Is this supporting the world you and the next generations want to live in? In addition, you can establish yourself a guide or decision-making process to ensure every purchasing decision of yours is aligned with sustainability values from your knowledge and situation. In this busy world, it is challenging to avoid being influenced by the constant triggers that continuously try to affect your purchasing behaviours and gradually affect your identity; however, by being aware of those triggers and not letting those triggers manifest into a thought or develop into a perception or take form as the decision of purchasing items will help consumers to make better purchasing decisions and create a more sustainable consumption lifestyle.

111 6.2 Limitations of the study As a first-time researcher, my work has some limitations regardless of my effort to minimize them. The number of interviews was limited because the time needed for data analysis is significant as it included line-by-line coding. To ensure the collected data was analysed thoroughly; I was able to carry only 11 interviews which is small sample size for a concept generation research. The sample profiles could be more diverse as the sustainability in fashion involves a wide range of stakeholders, for example, profiles from supply chain or from fashion manufacturers would have given broader coverage of expertise. On the other hand, in the sample profiles of this research, all participants all have high level of sustainability understanding; therefore, the findings regarding the overview of consumer motivations are indicated directly and indirectly through the lens of sustainable fashion consumers. Regarding the act of investigating the sustainable behaviour, it is more likely that interviewees are not very open and willing to share their own unstainable behaviour which in this case is the fashion related purchasing behaviour. The data used in this research is descriptive data which is from interview transcripts; therefore, it is challenging to manage the bias from interviewers as well as the dominant of one type data (Warr & Pyett. 1999 as cited in Elo et al., 2014). Meaning that the interpretation of the findings could have been limited within the data scope provided from the interviewers. Even though I actively try to keep my interpretation objective; however, I aware that I might have unintentionally or subconsciously analysed the data through my personal lens which can influence the findings. Also, the scope of literature review used in this research is broad; therefore, my understanding about those fields might not be thorough enough; meaning that there might be other frameworks that could be taken into considerations.

112 6.3 Suggestions for further research The further research for this thesis would be focused on how to enforce positive change in the consumer identities toward sustainable behavior. In addition, future research could investigate alternative sustainable fashion consumption and services that could balance economic activities and environmental and social issues. As fashion is linked closely to identity, research could be done in how to promote social values such as equality and diversity through fashion. Furthermore, this thesis focuses on fashion companies and fashion consumers perspective, therefore, there is a need for the research of the supply chains and the manufacturers in the fashion industry. In addition, more research can be done on the regulations and international standards regarding fashion production, business model design and the management of the environmental issues as this aspect was not addressed in detail in this thesis.

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119 APENDICES

# Open code list 1 Logic of fashion: belonging and differentiating 2 Constantly change in fashion – the chasing of new creation 3 Luxury differentiation in fashion (vertical) 4 Mass production – belonging (horizontal) to higher class 5 Motivation of buying counterfeit – desire for symbolism as higher class 6 Fashion logic and status consumption 7 Status consumption need for uniqueness – status need 8 Mutual role of consumer and companies in creating fashion 9 Supply and demand perspective 10 Population – trendy phenomenon 11 The reflection of identity through consumption and actions 12 Company role in providing consumers option to choose from 13 The role of early adopt to make something mass 14 The characters of human psychology as social animal type 15 Sociology aspect - Fashion as a good representative of driving force of change in everything 16 Fashion is more than tangible product – “alive” – we “consume” 17 Fashion forming by the shared knowledge/agreement among a group of people 18 Fashion needs a social context to make sense or a person’s recognition 19 Fashion is a tool that have symbolic value to express identity 20 Fashion is complex 21 Choose a brand based on personality, social role 22 The social role effects self-conscious/choice of fashion background – brand style 23 Brand identity is a tangible signal for consumers 24 Fashion choice a protection from attention/ personality 25 Social role affects fashion/signal (silent) 26 How other people read fashion choice from each other as a limitation fear of being read difference 27 Fear of being misjudged from what brand wore 28 Choose brand’s values over the look of product 29 Brand representation a consumer’s story/values/identity 30 Fashion choice brings consistence and security is proof of what consumer want to demonstrate 31 Expressing true self to yourself to others

120 32 Empower consumers by own the purchasing decision 33 Conscious consumer care about the brand’s story values 34 Not impulsive purchase 35 Consumer lack of knowledge about quality of clothes 36 Consumer lack of understanding about cost from production to delivery 37 Fast fashion creates a misunderstanding about quality, price and the speed of what does it means to be fashionable, too fast pace 38 Fast fashion creates the urgency from company for consumers of wanting something new 39 Low quality or out of date 40 Less is more is sustainable behaviour 41 Unify effort makes changes (Covid shows evidence) 42 Consumers need less clothes than they actually need 43 Dressing up for other 44 Dressing for yourself 45 Second-hand market booming when people are home a lot 46 Overuse of textile products 47 Competence support chain create social issues 48 Consumers don’t want to know the big picture because it too stress 49 Stop consuming is good for the environment but Fashion brings economics values for people in SC 50 Cannot stop producing but produce and consume sustainably 51 No one know where the starting point is 52 Wicked problem 53 Everything need to be changed at the same time 54 There is no right answer: sustainable demand VS sustainable option 55 Brand is the communication tool for all brand associations: values 56 Brand is the tools to build trust to consumers 57 Branding creates emotional bonding with consumers 58 Brand offer an umbrella for company value 59 Brands create emotional bonding 60 There is no full sustainable fashion brand but in progress 61 Company defines sustainable in different ways and only one small part of sustainable 62 Consumer confusion about sustainability meaning 63 Sustainability is a marketing tactics 64 Confuse consumers

121 65 Challenges for luxury brands to go sustainable 66 Normal consumers of luxury brand consume sustainably (organically): save to buy, high quality, use for a long time and sell to second hand after used 67 Billionaire consumers buy but don’t use much 68 Pay more get more is not always true 69 Luxury brand equity makes it more expensive 70 Ethical issues from creating something rare/unique from luxury brand 71 Using handcrafted for upgrade brand over the handcrafted person 72 Luxury focus on emotional branding 73 Logical branding for sustainable values because sustainable consumers are conscious consumers 74 Luxury brand don’t communicate that they are “luxury” but creating the experience as

“luxurious” 75 Sustainable brands shouldn’t brand as “sustainable” but shows it through create

“sustainable” experience through production choice 76 Customer experience creating is individual as people have different views on term “luxury”

“sustainable” 77 In branding: don’t state who you are showing who you are and let consumers interpret 78 Sustainable science 79 Alignment between short term and long-term plan for sustainability and innovation 80 Sustainability and innovation need the align with society, changes needed from the social side 81 Intersection of design, innovation and sustain them to transition and transformations 82 Transformative sustainability, innovation and business 83 What is the approach for wicked problems? 84 Sustainability in Indeed is a wicked problem 85 Reduce consumption 86 The pace of production and consuming is too fast creating too much waste 87 Problem in consumption and waste 88 Reducing also need to be in production of fashion 89 Production's activity is in developing countries where need economic activity 90 Massive, wicked problem 91 Need for balance between consumption and production systematically 92 Need transitioning to a production consumption system that is not harmful to the environment and human exploiting without taking away the livelihoods of people 93 Need a balancing act 94 Consumerist value-based society problems in the West

122 95 Problems in the attachment to the idea of economic growth being necessary and being measured as material 96 Economic growth is not a well indicator of societal or individual well-being 97 Various reactions on sustainability depend on people 98 Referring to personal response for sustainability: buy high quality clothes, personal

favourite. Items don’t need to be replaced easily 99 Personal response: small and high -quality garments wardrobe 100 There are designed brands that their ethical practices are questionable 101 Personal response: buy from small fashion brands whose has local or regional production and genuinely trying to change the system 102 Personal response: used to buy second hands – in incremental but important way to keep the waste low 103 Buying high-quality clothes or second hand is not necessarily making systematic change 104 Systemic change comes from values, worldviews and political economic system 105 The political economic system seeks for economic grow and resource input 106 The decoupling from resource consumption economy is not possible 107 The problem in the growth mindset of the economic system 108 Using the measure of success is GDP is wrong/ not indicative 109 Values and world view is more personal 110 We are made to believe that we are realizing ourselves when we consume 111 Fast fashion catch consumer purchasing behaviour because it’s cheap, can buy many and often 112 All business is under the force to do something about sustainability due to the risk of losing business 113 Internal sustainability in company’s values 114 Companies with sustainability values might accept the risk and develop solutions fit their organizational values 115 There is no answer for the sustainability building motivation from organization perspective 116 Production line cannot be shut down because of the people’s livelihood behind it 117 Fast fashion is exploiting recycling 118 Fast fashion companies do not try to do as they claim about sustainability 119 All companies should focus on reducing the production in which requires resource extraction 120 Ensuring the well treatment for the labour 121 The essential of strategy making for a long-term outlook from organization: openness to change (company culture) and challenges (to persuade non-profit seeking values)

123 122 The approach for company toward sustainability is from build long-term strategy rather than the immediate work around the products 123 Redefining the role in the societal context 124 Consider long-term consequence of business to the next generation 125 Transparency information of production line though barcode 126 Information transparency creates a good story for consumers to exploring, good branding 127 Transparency only meaningful if the organization commit to change 128 Constantly improving the business model 129 Information transparency only meaningful if that the tool for communicating real sustainable values. 130 Important role of consumer in demanding for information transparency 131 Fashion sustainability is also individual responsibility with the purchasing power 132 Consumers are not using the power they have 133 Challenge for innovation operating in the existing system 134 Require changes to work in the alternative system 135 Challenge for organization to allocate resource for the normal business and the remodelling of business practices. 136 The essential of innovation team to be aware of long-term goal 137 The important role of top manager in innovation 138 More effective innovation when new ideas come from all management levels 139 Open innovation culture enable innovation from anyone in the organization 140 Essential of new ways to meet a need without more production 141 Innovation solution for meeting need without product 142 Sustainability measurement based on which part you want to make impact on 143 Many issues related to environmental impact measurement 144 Important to know which part you trying to create impact. Production, production location, consumption location 145 Having a specific impact 146 Business model and branding is based on what sustainability impact you want to create and important to know how to measure the impact but not too generic 147 How to demonstrate the impact you want to create 148 Sustainable measurement 149 Sustainability branding can come from many aspects besides the product itself 150 Sustainable in packaging 151 Logistic, vehicles

124 152 Material: sustainable material or recycled material 153 Less logistic: move production closer to the 154 Packaging contributes to the branding 155 Having statement through changes in other aspect than the product itself: recycled packaging, less plastic 156 Question about the motivation of sustainable long-term plan from a fashion company: real effort or just for branding? 157 Fashion companies are playing time with sustainability 158 The pressure from media about unsustainable issues force fashion company to build sustainable effort for branding purpose but partially trying to be more ethical 159 Fashion company have difficulty in increasing the price range (for producing more sustainable product) as their customers will not understand it well 160 Mass production help to reduce the production cost, which explain the cheap price from some fashion companies 161 It costs more to produce sustainable product 162 The price of fashion product from fast fashion company is questionable 163 Sustainability can come from the style of the product: classic (natural and plain) or with more detail but with sustainable material 164 The change in production line takes sometimes so the effort from non-production process will change the business a lot 165 Non-production process can be from packages and delivery 166 Minimize the logistic and the means of transportation 167 Sustainability as a survival factor for a fashion brand? 168 Sustainability is a survival factor for fashion brand 169 Small business produce sustainable product with very high cost so cannot sell to the mass 170 The percentage of consumer who care about sustainability is small so big fashion company need to maintain the business while make changes toward sustainability 171 Looking at sustainable from a different material wise 172 Eventually all the fabric will be recycled material 173 When the cost of produce sustainable produce is still high, for small business, the first look at other aspect to help the business run in more sustainable ways. 174 Big companies also can consider other aspects of sustainability beside the material because it would take sometimes 175 From fast fashion company perspective, the only thing they can do is to product a sustainable collection line because the majority products are unsustainable anyways

125 176 The middle-sized companies also can take small steps toward sustainable 177 The top manager in big fashion company has the intention to make meaningful sustainable changes but it is not that simple 178 Looking at the demanding of sustainability, the next generation of big fashion companies will adopt more sustainable practices 179 Currently, the production capacity is not ready yet for mass production with all recycle material or sustainable material 180 Big fashion companies which have a lot of assets or money can produce sustainably 181 Small company don’t have much asset to produce things sustainably 182 Big companies have assets, but the production is not ready yet. 183 Difficult in production partly comes from the material part. It is impossible now to have all material recycled 184 Waste problem in production 185 The production life cycle of fashion is complex and there are not enough assets yet for the creation of sustainable fabric. 186 Consumers always have desire to wear something new 187 We cannot produce clothes ecologically yet 188 A fashion company doesn’t do marketing in a traditional way: no ads 189 Some fashion companies focus on their website to make them look more sophisticated and editorial. 190 Marketing by investing models, ecommerce, visuals on websites 191 Marketing through ecommerce, building catalogue online 192 Old school fashion house style, no b2b, no partnership 193 Marketing through ecommerce, fully focus on producing new stuff 194 Marketing visual focus, constantly produce new images with good visuals, best models 195 Change regularly the visual, structure of the website, logo 196 The production pace of a fashion company does affect the consumers purchasing pace 197 Different country has different style and lifestyle regarding consuming behaviour 198 Weather also effects what people buy in different country 199 Challenge in sizing differences 200 Consumers in different culture react differently with fast fashion. 201 Culture effect how people shop and also their taste in fashion, therefore, one fashion brand sells well in one country but not the other country 202 Sustainability awareness has not reached a certain country; Nordic counties are more aware of sustainability is more aware of the issues than the others.

126 203 Consumers in some countries are not educated enough to care about sustainability in fashion 204 The fashion production pace is fast, and the quantity produced is huge every week. The production mainly is from China 205 China production is very questionable in term of sustainability due to the big quantities and the pace of production there 206 As a conscious consumer, looking for fashion products that are done in Europe 207 As a conscious consumer, buy high quality second-hand clothes 208 Second-hand fashion market will expand more in the future 209 There are companies focusing on selling luxury fashion products that work really well. 210 The second-hand luxury market is growing 211 As the price of luxury brand are high so consumer consume less and also the uncertainly to Covid19 212 Psychologically, people like to wear something new and find something new 213 Consuming will never disappear as the economic cannot take that and the desire of consume from consumers 214 As a consumer, the information about sustainability from fashion brand are very confusing 215 The sustainability information from fashion brand is overwhelmed and confusing for consumers 216 The transparency information regarding the cost structure of the product is good as consumer can know how the price is built up. 217 Sustainable brand still gain profit with the business model of fixing broken for free 218 Sustainable branding does good social values contributing to the good brand image 219 Consumers feel good about know how many bottles they save in product they buy 220 Customer's confusion, how to make information more reliable? 221 There are key words and a thousand characters to sell your product by telling why your product is better than the other. This is about how to reach target users with terms that they will use and represent what they are looking for. 222 Currently, regarding sustainable fashion key words are likely to be where the product is made, recycled material, vegan 223 Customer experiences? 224 Customers have good feeling with the brand through the experiences/interaction with the brand: for example: in packaging, the way the boxes are coming, everything is recycled 225 Consumer behaviour: consumers buy less when that see too many products comings everyday/ when they realised that they have too much 226 As a consumer, packaging and the way the product is delivered effect the experience/the satisfaction of customers

127 227 The thoroughly done in every step of branding bring nice surprised for customers 228 Sustainable values communication through create experience for customers? 229 Sustainability focus company communicate sustainability values through the material (recycled from the plastic waste from the ocean) and online experience through app showing the information about the product 230 Sceptical if consumers are ready for online experience through app 231 Creating emotional experience or any kind of experience are not implemented yet because of its abstract especially for ecommerce business 232 Luxury stores create luxury experience for customer making them really feel the luxurious felling 233 Fast fashion, the experience is lean toward efficiency and there is not much customer’s experience 234 Unclear about if the fast fashion apparel industry is ready for the emotional branding 235 The online shopping process on Instagram still too complicated therefore, consumer experience online still has some limitation 236 From ecommerce perspective for fashion part, the sizing is still confusing for customers,

some consumers don’t return things. Customer experience needs more development 237 Valuable sizing system suggesting from brand improve customer experience and satisfaction 238 Customer loyalty, don’t buy from new brand without knowing if the size fit 239 Customer don’t know why they are loyal brands 240 Roles of branding in sustainable education consumers 241 Luxury brand don’t really do sustainability in their branding except Sella McCartney 242 Sustainability in luxury branding: limited quantity, buy less, use more 243 Property and brand protection leading to the fact that they have to burn new products that are claimed to be copied or samples, or the unsold items 244 Statement is not enough (in term claiming not burning unsold products) but rather showing real action by opening a store for unsolved items 245 Luxury brands are going into direction of producing less and less clothes due to the margin and the sales are actually go into accessories 246 Fashion brands adjust the production quantity and the types of products based on the observation from consumer behaviour (who consume their brand) 247 Examples of a luxury brand main products line due to the number of sales in each category 248 There is used to be a brand that only sell the leftover clothes from many brands 249 Challenges of sustainable fashion in communicating their values

128 250 Overwhelming information regarding sustainability from many fashion brands and channels that educate consumers creates the confusion for consumers; there is no standard to evaluate information 251 A large amount of fail information that makes consumers even more sceptical about any information claim sustainability efforts from fashion brands 252 Fashion brands find it difficult to find the balance between what they do and what they claim regarding sustainability 253 Better not to claim anything if the sustainability effort is small; it could have counter effects 254 The information use to communicate with consumers from fashion brand is the most problematic for them 255 From big companies’ perspective, a complete sustainability business is very difficult to achieve in a short period of time; therefore, be honest and communicate the company’s long-term plan and follow it honestly 256 Building sustainable brand regarding the brand image (excluding the fact that the brand is real sustainable or not) is difficult if you have a long history 257 With long history of unsustainable practice, there will be a strong assumption from consumers about your brand image no matter what you do 258 Being honest in branding is the way to make it work 259 Sustainability should be recognized in many aspects besides production wise 260 Difficult to recycle mixed material 261 Sustainability in branding is not just about material wise but also from packaging, logistic 262 Sustainable in packaging 263 How to launch and brand sustainable product is a big question 264 Working to provide a service is much more satisfied that working on selling cheap product- employer satisfice 265 Hope for more services instead of products to meet the need for sustainability 266 Curious to see if fashion company modify their products and bring it back to consumers 267 Wearing something nice, good quality from famous brand makes you feel good. 268 New idea about prolongs a life by fashion brand in which they will modify the items of their customers and send them back to them as a new, which make them feel happy and use longer 269 Luxury has the ability to take care of afterlife product thanks to good system and smaller quantity 270 Luxury fashion items have high resold value 271 Business model of second-hand fashion market is working now (2% of the price for guarantee) – circulating used items

129 272 Sustainable fashion consumption: second-hand shopping, collaborative consumption, buying new sustainable produced and slow fashion 273 Nordic countries have stronger sustainable fashion consumption compare with China 274 Wealthy status indicator through clothes is more important in China compare with in Finland 275 Prefer luxury brand over buying second hand due to the negative attitude toward second-hand as the indicator of less resources 276 China strategy to improve sustainability issues has huge impacts and they are the biggest manufacturing facility in the world. 277 Fashion is an art in at the highest scale because of the design and tailoring 278 Fast-fashion is not fashion 279 Fashion is new, aesthetic experience and self-expressive in personality and identity 280 Daily clothing and fast fashion are not fashion 281 From designer perspective, one aspect is about choose sustainable material 282 The emphasis on environment friendly is too strong as the trendy which make the designs are not durable 283 Designs that use low quality material (like recycled plastic bottles) are like fast-fashion trend which are made to use in a short period of time 284 Sustainability in fashion includes the long-lasting feature so users can use them for a long time 285 The aesthetically good looking of the design contributes to the long-lasting feature as it does not seem to be outdated 286 Big players in fashion industry have strong power and strong motivation to make money for the corporations 287 Designers in big companies don’t have enough voice in decision making 288 Designers face the conflict between passion for design clothes and the fact of there so many clothes already 289 The difficulty in trying to do more sustainable-oriented values but the current structure is so strong to break into 290 The whole business model has to change to make change toward sustainability 291 Luxury brands are moving toward fast-fashion business model which is mass production 292 Small sustainable fashion brands might be care more about the waste, slower cycle of design and production 293 There should be more time and resources in creating the design process 294 Utilize zero waste in pattern making 295 Create and apply innovation in making designing fashion

130 296 Difficult to evaluate the sustainable-oriented claim from fashion brands 297 Fast fashion brand claims about their sustainable collections but the amount of product they produce is mass and contract with what the brand claim or at least the sustainable effort is just so small compare with their effort 298 Serious effort toward sustainability in big fashion corporation will make a huge different compare with small brands whose has small niches 299 As sustainability issues are quite new, reliable measurement for sustainability is not strong and clear 300 Sustainable consumption starts from the shifting in the mindset of consumer from yourself to the whole environment 301 Luxury fashion consumption is very hedonistic and self-centric and individualistic self-expression, showing wealth 302 Slow fashion designer at the core building a fashion brand 303 Ethical natural material, ecological luxury 304 Alternative for something that is mass produced 305 It is important in branding to have a good story around the design 306 The story of the brand that includes the sustainability value and educating customers 307 Digital marketing is the main customer contact 308 Visually pleasing material catching customer’s attention is important 309 First rule is desirable looking 310 No one will care if the product design is not appealing 311 Looking luxurious it a bonus to the whole business model and production base on slow fashion ideology 312 Sharing information about the production and people behind the product to increase the transparency 313 Include customers in the brand story to make it feel more familiar and transparent 314 Celebrities – influencers 315 Example of a brand that the aesthetic of the brand in communication is not clear – try to be everything or everyone 316 Sustainable fashion brand should also be reflected in a social aspect at moderate in the way

that people’s options are taken into account not so roofless like on some luxury fashion house 317 The social aspects of sustainability in fashion were neglect which is reflected on the dominance in leadership style of the industry 318 People at every level in fashion industry are overworked and pushed to their limits 319 Leadership in big fashion companies are not very good, designers can be bullied

131 320 Dominance leadership style in fashion industry 321 The need in improve the working environment of fashion industry to avoid the burnout after a few years 322 International measurements and regulations that are clear to consumers helps customers to exam the trustworthy of a fashion brand 323 Normal customers who only cares about the looks and the price of the product are not willing to take sustainability information from somewhere 324 Challenge for sustainable fashion brand in pricing as the cost is higher for sustainable products 325 The cheap and connivence of fast fashion makes it very difficult for consumers stop consume fast fashion even though they are aware of the sustainable issue. 326 The challenge is how to make consumers care enough 327 Good design and very good story 328 Challenge in educating consumers about sustainability that is not stressful 329 Clothes consumption is a fun practice for many people, there are lots of things going on, they

don’t want to know too much about environmental issues 330 Luxury and premium scale brand are more likely to be successful in selling sustainability products as the target customers are in general wealthier and more educated 331 People who are struggling financially don’t have energy to care about their clothes 332 Premium or luxury brands maybe required to show the way also in branding 333 Customers experience in luxury brands can be taken into so many different levels 334 In the past, luxury experience is in tailoring 335 In modern time, the luxury experience was transferred to ready-to-made collection and the showing how the garment is made 336 Being conscious is desirable and also represent a social status (of people who are educated) 337 To avoid greenwashing issue, the brands have to have actions representing their communication 338 Conscious customers are more motivated to read the information and make sure the suppliers are transparency 339 In the long-term, the sustainability issues will be saturated in the market that design and the aesthetic of the product is the differentiation 340 From a fashion brand perspective, if all brands are sustainable then sustainability will not add values, but sustainability should be the starting point for all brands 341 The unique stories and aesthetics make the brand 342 Fashion is a way of self-expression and showing your identity through what people chose to wear

132 343 Despite how much a person care about fashion, what they choose to wear is a statement about who they are 344 Change the consumption habit from buy many low qualities to less but high quality 345 The future of sustainable fashion might turn into many smaller brands with slower pace rather than big brands serving millions of millions of people 346 Finnish young generation values the uniqueness of the clothes item in second-hand market 347 Stop the production for a few months, employers should have paid holiday and the industry should think about what they should do 348 Many different levels have to change their practice 349 Fashion definition: tangible representation of a person’s identity, thoughts and external interactions 350 Fashion definition: different trends that circulate around every decade. 351 Fashion trend can be predictable makes it interesting for people who like to forecast it 352 Fashion creation is fun in the process of design – see it come to life and see people wear it 353 Fashion problems: consumers undervalue garment products due to lack of understanding the production effort 354 Outfit creation process requires lots of labour work meaning more cost in the production 355 Fashion problem: fast fashion creates the easy options for cheap clothes 356 Fast fashion creates the wrong assumption about the price of clothes for consumers 357 Sustainable fashion brand has real effort in ensuring the business ethic by actively checking the production line facility and working condition of the worker 358 There companies are only focus on profits 359 Technology/innovations focus on minimize waste, increase sustainability in production 360 Innovations in reduce the resources in garment production 361 Transparency in fashion production is important and should be embrace in the product presentation 362 Important to communicate transparently when you design 363 Building consumer awareness through information transparency and take that a fundamental for marketing communication and branding 364 Luxury brand doesn’t need to advertise intensively on social media as high street brands 365 Luxury fashion brands have strong brand recognition, customers know about them so don’t need persuasion to grab customers 366 Luxury brands have a long history of development: prestige and heritage 367 Many people make themselves look rich, but you can tell they are not because rich people

don’t try 368 Really rich people don’t need to show that they are rich just like luxury brands advertising – it’s not so in your face

133 369 Luxury brand creates luxurious shopping experience through all senses: look, smell, customer service 370 Customer service- hiring the right people is essential for luxury brands different from high street fashion brands 371 High street fashion brands store are full clothes 372 Luxury brands shop don’t have a lot and well spread-out items make it easier for consumers to choose opposite with high street fashion brand in which have too many items make consumers feel overwhelmed 373 Luxury brands shop lay out make it relax for customers to think and decide what they want to spend money on instead of causing headache and confusion 374 Packaging is a big thing in creating luxurious experience 375 Nice packaging creates nice feeling for customers and vice versa 376 Sustainable fashion branding strategy is about communicating facts about production process 377 Sustainable fashion brand also has strong comparison why their products are better than the others 378 Full of fact and negativity can be intimating and too stressful for consumers 379 Too aggressive communication from sustainable brands might be overwhelming for consumers who are slowly transitioning 380 For any new transitions, it is important to slowly educate your customers, and do it when people are ready for it 381 Consumer persuasion about the quality of the products by showing and comparing 382 Try to reduce the price as much as possible within the sustainable practices, people driven by money 383 Target audience not directly in sustainability but in art space to people who into art and new movement 384 Transition: smoother by not only focus on sustainability but involves a different aspect 385 Transition: Focus on clothes as an art expression maybe more persuasive sustainable option 386 Customer experience engagement: exclusive feelings: event, nice atmosphere, nice drinks, speaker, visit website after 387 Positive feeling from sustainable and innovative products for customers 388 Customer behaviour: invest in high quality and sustainable made products 389 Consumer behaviour: like to upcycle from second-hand clothes – good feeling 390 Sentimental: people who make clothes have different values toward clothes 391 Consumer behaviour: bad shopping habit: buying stuff you don’t need 392 Supply and Demand relationship: buy less, produce les 393 Customer feeling-driven: it’s fun to shop and they are bored

134 394 Luxury brands is good in the way that they are high quality and expensive and not many people can buy a lot 395 Consumer mindset: people have more money know which one worth their money on and have less clothes 396 Consumer behaviour: financial situation makes some people have to buy fast fashion (low quality) – buy more often 397 Find solutions to adjusting the price of clothes as it has strong influence in consumer behaviour 398 Include innovation in material and production in ecosystem 399 Continues interaction among all contributors: designer, technology...and end users 400 Collaboration: designers and end-users 401 Customization for buyer 402 Pricing issues in sustainable fashion 403 Technology enables sustainable fashion choice 404 Personal relationship, craftmanship in fashion 405 Pricing issues is solved with long-term use value 406 Fashion as a service 407 Ecosystem/Collaboration: among small sustainable brands 408 Fashion definition: self-expression and having fun 409 Fashion problem: World of fast fashion – ways of production, environmental impacts 410 Consumer awareness: lack of awareness and also lacks sustainable brand’s visibility to consumers 411 Customer experience: buying online is not enough for decision making for high price products 412 Purchase decision: natural fabric, produced in Europe area 413 Fashion service design: direct try on at home for free: strong commitment from customers in purchase decision 414 Purchase decision: not able to touch or try the garment is problematic 415 Branding: clear company’s values 416 Transparency: information, design and production process 417 Customization - branding: personal touch (note with customer’s name), customer satisfaction 418 Brand visibility: online present, social media so easy for customers to find and related 419 Purchase decision: prefer basic design for expensive items 420 Sustainable brand issues: design style is not favourable by customers 421 Customer experience: luxury brands pay closely attention: packaging, people 422 Customer experience: supportive and knowledgeable people to help customers 423 Personalization: packaging

135 424 Product presentation: nice packaging makes consumers appreciation the object more 425 Trustworthy for branding: consistency in communication brand’s values 426 Trustworthy for branding: honesty in communication: where you are and where you are heading 427 Trustworthy problems: greenwashing increase the doubts in customers about sustainable claims from brands 428 Small sustainable brands are more trustworthy than big cooperation 429 Small brands have more control over the whole process 430 Consumer behaviour: try to buy less from big brands even though it was more convenient 431 Consumer mindset: appreciation the sustainable effort but not completely believe 432 Local fashion brand is more sustainable 433 Customer behaviour: trying to more intentional in buying necessary clothes 434 Customer behaviour: trying to buy less 435 Fashion definition: a system of meaning creation and assign manipulation 436 Fashion definition: is structure that the meanings get assigned and reassigned, valued and revalued and devalued 437 Fashion is a fast-moving field: meaning making – making it interesting 438 Sustainable issues in fashion industry 439 The need in not only acknowledge the problems but keep working on the solutions in order to solve them 440 Consumer behaviour wishes play as signals to market need to the fashion brands 441 Consumer wishes cannot drive change but from the government because it about the way we produce clothes 442 The diversity from the consumers side makes it difficult to unify them and therefore

consumer side don’t have strong power in making the change in fashion production 443 Pricing issues in fashion industry make it hard for customer unify in demand 444 Making the prioritize for the environment should be clear for some people that more expensive clothes or less clothes 445 Consumers have different interest in solving environmental issues 446 Inseparable between citizenship and consumerism 447 Consumer awareness as a voter is necessary in the solution 448 Luxury brand is about prestige magic, fantasy 449 Luxury brands is not about functionality 450 Luxury brands create fantasies and dream for customers 451 Luxury brand’s selling proposition is in the magic of owning something beautiful

136 452 Luxury brand self-positioning as creator of something they people wish to have 453 Luxury branding starts with celebrity endorsement 454 Luxury advertising contains mystical figures 455 Luxury branding emphasize on the artistry, the heritage of their designers – significant lineage 456 Luxury branding create the sensation of an established brand with the connection to art, a sort of magical field 457 Luxury products have to have strong tactile feel of being high quality 458 Luxury product has design elements showing the sign of no expense was saved 459 Luxury artistry and mystery figures are shown in fashion show and retail store: designers, inspiration, heritage, connection to high power of inspirations but not talking about the product features at all 460 Luxury is about experience coming from so many ways 461 Luxury experience has to be out of the ordinary not like everyday events 462 Exclusiveness in luxury branding – no co-creation and luxury 463 No co-creation in luxury because they don’t want to put marketer and consumers equal 464 Hierarchical organizing that the designers and the brand is up high, and they are charismatic

figures that offer you an experience, but they don’t ask you to co-create it 465 Luxury is not about trendy or fashionable but try to be a bit more timeless 466 Luxury wants to operate in without concerns about quick change in fashion 467 Luxury is about experience, the business geared toward artistry and experiential element rather than identifying a particular physical element 468 Luxury language is about dream, extra ordinary experiences and fantasy, which also undefinable 469 Social Media makes it complicated for luxury brands 470 Social media environment is open for anyone so also different point of view of the brand which might not convey necessarily like prestigious image 471 Also, fandom in social media with positive comments accentuate the feeling of luxury 472 Social media environment is a mixed of affects to luxury brands 473 Social media’s democratization is thread to luxury brand but is a platform for spreading the brand 474 Internet empower second-hand market 475 Second-hand luxury items gained values as it’s rare, more special (increase in rarity values) 476 Uncomfortable match in branding between luxury and sustainability (maybe in production sense but not branding sense) 477 A must in sustainability transition for all business to survive 478 Transparency in design, production is key in branding for sustainable fashion brand

137 479 The story of how things were made in branding 480 Essential of holistic and transparent view in slow fashion 481 Sustainability is about production 482 Sustainable fashion brand is heterogeneous in the values of brand besides the sustainable values (in production) 483 All sustainable fashion branding strategy needed a credible story about production 484 Difficult to tell a good sustainability story as there are many boring technical terms in production process 485 Good sustainable fashion brand is able to tell the story in a compelling way 486 Exclusivity and sustainable fashion are hard to be one as the brand will signalling to those

who don’t belong to that sustainable brand that they are bad consumers 487 Sustainable exclusiveness creates animosity and division 488 The opposite branding in luxury vs sustainability: exclusivity (status, prestige) and inclusiveness (inviting everyone to save the planet) 489 The more sustainable is the brand, the more complex the production story is 490 The complexity of production story from sustainable fashion brand is difficult to convey to consumers 491 The challenges of a sustainable brand: what you have to do and how you going to communicate enough to proof that you are sustainable without having too complicated production story 492 How to convey the sustainable values to customers is a big challenge for sustainable fashion brands 493 Patagonia go out of the way to imply that they are sacrificing the sale for the environment

with the don’t buy this jacket ad 494 Good sustainable business model involving the services for repair and prolong lifecycle for fashion product 495 Sale oriented business is weak in sustainable claims even the production is slightly better – need in rethinking the business model to be more sustainable 496 Transparency to increase trustworthy: invite non-governmental organization, bloggers ... to evaluate the company 497 Transparency is good as it is can be evaluated 498 Texts is not enough to build trustworthy but privileged access and verification access 499 Key for trustworthy is that people have the access to evaluate the brand 500 The constant changes in what is sustainable design 501 Issues in textile design: too much about aesthetics and need more thinking about possibility in wear and tear (movement, easy to fix, break)

138 502 Aesthetic considerations can never be detached from design but for sustainability wear and tear possibility is more important than the look 503 Sustainable future is not based on consumer choices, but it will be based on regulations and the survival of the planet, the current type of fashion business has to changed 504 Sustainable designers are more about adjusting for an inevitable future rather than a branding strategy 505 Sustainability branding need a niche strategy 506 Sustainability will be an indivisible background; people will take it for granted because it is the economic reality 507 Example of a brand took off by shifting the branding strategy from sustainability to sexiness and daringness 508 The definition of sustainability is changing all the time so the brand cannot barely base on that to build the brand signature but need atheistic values 509 Reinvent the notion of second-hand, concentrated on using past material more inventively 510 Fashion leaders’ roles in creating high value for items which has been mended or added more feature 511 Making new design for patch, fix, combine clothes in a meaningful and beautiful way 512 Create circularity in materials 513 Many different definitions of fashion 514 Fashion as an approach of fashion system 515 Fashion is not only an image-making industry but is a system with many stakeholders and social structure making the images 516 Fashion industry always catches the main problems in the world and reflects them 517 Environmental issues in fashion industry are raising concern and discussion in the world 518 Diversity in identity politics issues in fashion industry 519 Discriminations in fashion industry in term of body type and skin colours 520 Issue in lack of diversity or not enough representative of skin colour in the fashion companies 521 Luxury brands never branding based on sustainability 522 Luxury branding seems to emphasize on the craftmanship rather than sustainability even though it matched in values 523 Luxury brand in the past is produced follow sustainable value in term of long-lasting but

don’t position themselves based on that because of association of sustainability with not sophisticated design 524 One of the notions about consuming luxury brand is about the buying status

139 525 The perception of luxury consumption is different depends also in the country 526 Depend on country, symbol status in luxury brands rather sustainability values 527 Consumer motivations are affected by culture and nations, need to be specific 528 The shifting in brand communication toward sustainability could be one indicator of the

shifting from consumers’ mindset or could be that the brand is trying to educate their customers 529 The branding strategy of sustainable brand (in production and design) might not necessary all about sustainability but other elements: styles, inspirations 530 Sustainability in the background and the design/lifestyle/aspirational in the centre in branding strategy 531 Social media shorten the distance between customers and the brands 532 Customers have more power in pressuring the brand by directly response to social media 533 Conspicuous consumption 534 The design affects strongly the purchase decision 535 Greenwashing: using a small part of production to build sustainable brand but in the big picture the company is not sustainable 536 Brands go for green branding/sustainable branding choose a set of green elements for the marketing strategy 537 Transparency: making all the process and push every single process to be more sustainable 538 Reality, it’s never 100% sustainable but it’s about what the brand can do, and the brand just do that 539 Importance for consumers’ s trust that company do what they claim even though it’s not the whole picture but just a part of it 540 Brand activism 541 Activism brands have act and live within the company according to the same principles they try to communicate to consumers 542 Activism is the most reliable way to be sustainable and appealing as sustainable to the consumers 543 Overwhelming for consumers as there are so many brands claimed to be sustainable as the trend 544 Create consumer communities and how they can be created 545 Luxury brands creates a community (special clients), so their customers feel like they belong to a particular group 546 Customer experience is about interaction and creating the community in different ways 547 Design the interaction with the customers online and offline (events, activities) 548 Customers are attracted to certain values: communities, sustainability, diversity 549 The brand values need to be relevant to consumers and relevant right now

140 550 Cultural branding: reflect the diversity so one brand really talks with consumers according to their values not just the demographics that particular group of people care about particular thing 551 Relevant to the current agent; important to the consumers and for the society then the customers are related to it more 552 The potential conflicts of interest/values for between brand activities and their loyal customers group (politics, values...) 553 Contemporary culture: sustainability is important to people, a social problem 554 Luxury branding is rarely involving in catching what is happening 555 For many brands and could be luxury brands the branding strategy and the 556 Sustainability is more about organizing of process, economy and production rather than branding. Branding is the beginning phase for brand to communicate and for educating consumers 557 When sustainability becomes a norm then the emphasize on branding is still on the design or aspirational 558 Transparency about the brand production chain 559 Transparency and be honest 560 Real effort from companies’ side to looks at the production line and try to make improve the flaws of unsustainable issues and deliver what they promised to the consumers 561 Social media: change everything: influencer is same with models 562 Increases in the number collections per year in designed brands 563 Fashion definition: art combine with functionality 564 Fashion definition: inspiration and self-expression 565 Fashion definition: great tool to wear and express oneself 566 People in fashion industry, creative, are passionate about what they do, stay fresh, open-minded, look for inspiration in different fields 567 Fashion work is lots of hard work and not healthy 568 Luxury brand: lots of talented people comes together to create the glamorous world 569 Luxury brand: high investment in images which is far from reality 570 Luxury is in its own bubble: inspirational but not accessible 571 Strong narrative in luxury collection (inspiration, moods) 572 Racism in modelling regarding skin colour and body types 573 The lack of diversity representative in modelling affects the view on what is beautiful 574 Heath aspect of skinny model 575 Easy to design clothes for skinny people from design perspective 576 Pressure from consumer about sustainability and from their own dignity

141 577 Luxury experiences include the aspiration, excitement from gaining the path toward what you want to have, after that it is nothing 578 Luxury product are nice and elevates people who wear it 579 Luxury product is aspiration and self-image 580 Luxury brands have different vibe for their own stereotypic target customers 581 Luxury products and brand bring to your self-representation to you – how you feel about yourself and to the others- how others see yourself. Even though you sometimes don’t want to admit it 582 Fashion helps elevates your spirit 583 Dress up to respect the occasions, honour the situation 584 Customer service in the luxury store 585 Need for seamless experience across online and offline channels 586 Packaging affects the customer experience 587 Great visual 588 Luxurious from the web shop 589 Accessibility is the different between luxury and street brands 590 Good to so sustainable branding that is really appealing and fresh and not related to old school sustainable imagery 591 A successful case of sustainable brand in communicate the sustainable values with good product design 592 Communicate in analysed the different in product features – comparison 593 Communicate sustainable values in aa a positive change but not too extreme and negative 594 Big impact on changing consumer behaviour 595 Consumerism culture has been developed in the society: sale, marketing 596 Need systemic change on how things work 597 Fashion week pushes everyone follow that schedule: retailer pushes designers to have more collections. Zara and H&M copy and sell within one week 598 The bad reputation in style of sustainable products in the past 599 Sustainable products have improved in style and quality 600 Need rethinking in how to make thing cool and desirable by consumers 601 Shady in communication/product is not convincing 602 Greenwash is a turn-off for customers 603 Sustainability is in company’s values and long-term action according to that not just a collection 604 Sustainability is embedded in customer experience from all touch points

142 605 Want to change the mindset of the brands and the consumers: produce less things and last

long, and consumers don’t buy unnecessary things 606 The mindset of constant in fashion industry – full of creative people who want to invent cool things all the time 607 Hard to change the habit of wanting stuff because we are trained through marketing that we need stuff all the time 608 You cannot turn off self-expression 609 Transparency 610 Fashion definition: identity 611 Fashion definition: making a statement when interact with people 612 Giving an imagery of yourself through everything you're wearing 613 What you wear will make you appear as an identity; you can change your identity as much as you want 614 Sustainable view: produce product as clean as possible: low carbon footprints, raw material, recycling 615 Logistic 616 Biomaterial 617 Greenwashing on vegan leather – it’s plastic 618 Material choice: no plastic 619 Transparency: how and where things are made 620 Recycled plastic but not virgin plastic from China, ensuring the material is recycled plastic 621 Material choice and amount 99% recycled plastic, no plastic in packaging 622 Greenwashing with nice words to consumers 623 Conscious consumers will know if a brand is greenwashing or not. Information in label is not a reliable source as it is easy to cheat 624 Need of proof showing the material is recycled when the label claims that its’s recyclable 625 Product is produced sustainably, no need to add something visually to proof that it is sustainable 626 Sustainability is started from the root then to the communication 627 Design thinking in the solution for sustainability 628 Product design is repair, recycled oriented 629 Emotional consuming: Fast fashion business model is going to die as people feel ashamed consuming them 630 Low quality, unfair payment problem is becoming more sensitive 631 Essential to communicate the fair payment for brand

143 632 Business model including the put back the product into the production or repair 633 Long-lasting, prolong lifecycle of product, high resell values 634 Happy customers sustain business 635 Luxury brands is trying to look cleaner 636 Luxury brands are taking small step forwards sustainability 637 Leather ethical issues, leather of non-meat consumer’s animal 638 Animals' welfare ethical issues from luxury products 639 The products could be very beautiful and long-lasting but be produced brutally. 640 Social media can show cases good example on productions 641 People have good intention but how they get the information is important 642 Information distorters from big brands 643 Small brands have more control on the production line 644 Too many factories make it unreliable auditing 645 Understanding people’s ethical practice (care about the environment, their people) when cooperate 646 Knowing people in person, visit the place every year 647 Strick on the shared values, only work together if the manufactural respects sustainable values 648 Group of customers who want high quality products and feel better about buying it 649 Products come with good style, high quality, sustainable design and produced 650 Honest attitude from brand owners 651 Human is the root of the problem 652 Change people to less money-driven and more socially responsible 653 Activist 654 Fashion is gorgeous in universe but there is a lot of dirt behind it