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The broad aim of this essay is to examine the different variations of the wooden clog throughout the ages, beginning in the 13th century and moving onward to the present. Geographically speaking,the paper focuses on wooden clogs from western Europe and Sweden especially. The different versions of the wooden clog are presented chronologically and compared accordingly. As the analysis inches closer to the present-day clog, aspects of branding, commerce and advertising grow more relevant. Visual semiotics is used to analyse how certain messages are communicated through the design of the clogs in question. It is evident that not only the style of the wooden clog has changed throughout the years, but the shoes inherent meaning too. The present-day clog possesses (unlike its predecessors) a capacity to express the wearer’s identity, be it one’s gender or ancestry, by means of design.

Background: The comfort of buying online satisfies consumers more than the traditional way of shopping in stores. Buying fashion online is highly influenced by consumers' fashion consciousness and their personal values which enhances the willingness and dependence to buy new products. Emotional needs come from moral emotions and can be felt frequently by consumers in the thought of purchasing, and can interfere with the sustainability aspects. Purpose: The purpose of this study to understand how moral emotions can shape the consumers decision making in regards to consumption of fashion. Since sustainability awareness is increasing, the study further aims to investigate whether or not this aspect will further have an effect. Methods: The research is a qualitative study, which is made by semi-structured interviews of different consumers with different buying behaviour. It is analysed with a deductive and inductive approach to thematically analyse and enable an interpretative method to find differences, themes and new experiences. Conclusion: There is evidence on moral emotions affecting the decision-making of fashion purchases. It does not necessarily shape a sustainable consumer behaviour but rather find obstacles for the consumers to act according to their own ethical obligations.

In this work agricultural workwear garments will be deconstructed with the goal of challenging agricultural workwear expression and creating clothes that can be worn in multiple ways allowing for wider expression and ways of wearing in a smaller set of clothes. By opening up clothes from a farmer’s wardrobe to new ways of wearing and new garment types, placing them in new contexts, stereotypes and preconceived notions of farmers and rural culture will be challenged. The method used to deconstruct the garments will be based on working with ready made clothes and replicas and cutting them up, displacing the garments parts by allowing the wearer to enter the garment in new ways through alternative openings inspired by the unconventional zipper openings found on many vintage space- suits. Then making necessary adjustments to the construction to best allow the garment to allow for multiple ways of wearing. Colors and textures will be challenged as-well drawing inspiration from space suits and space travel. The relevance of the work is both personal and emotive through its reference points in agricultural workwear and space travel. Traditional shapes found in workwear will be challenged, trying to find new shape and silhouette with the application of deconstructionist methodology from Martin Margiela. The work also holds relevance from a sustainable perspective by prolonging the lifecycle of garments and discourage overconsumption with garments that fill up a wider purpose that otherwise would be served by multiple garments.

Summary: Lolita fashion is a small youth fashion that originated in Japan but is inspired by historical western clothing. The clothing is not sexual in nature. Most studies look at the style in Japan, but the fashion has also found popularity overseas. This paper takes an ethnographic approach to studying the Lolita community in the United States by comparing two regional communities, Houston and South Florida. The research found that the largest difference between the two groups was size and community involvement, with Houston as the larger group and the smaller South Florida group being more concerned with group activity. The study found that compared to the strong subversive element of the wearers in Japan, the United States community at large appears to be motivated by Lolita as a creative outlet. There was no support of the idea that aging played a role in what kind of Lolita fashion was worn., 2017, Includes bibliography., Degree granted: Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2017., Collection: FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

Doctor of Philosophy in Theology, This study pioneers the intersection of theology and the emerging discipline of fashion theory. Rejecting accounts that pit the two disciplines as disaffected, the study argues theology and fashion theory have reason to consider the other of consequence. This thesis is carried out in three movements. First (Chapter 1), by arguing fashion theory’s “multiple perspectives” approach and common intellectual real estate entails fashion theory takes theology seriously. Next (Chapters 2 & 3), by demonstrating the long legacy of both Catholic and Reformed accounts of (fashionable) dress. Third (Chapter 4), by modeling the promise of such interaction through a contemporary Reformed account of fashion, faith and the public sphere. The dissertation concludes by suggesting other promising horizons for further exchange between the two discplines.

The recent globalization of fashion has transmitted not only the American Confederate flag to other countries, but also the debate surrounding its place in popular culture. This paper investigates the case study of COOK, a popular Argentine clothing company that prominently features the Confederate flag in its logo and branding.

Creativity places a more and more important role in organizations today. It is even said that creativity is critical for organizations and seen as a key factor in smaller firms. This thesis is investigating the environment through which leaders involved in creative organizations lead creative people and related issues. Thereof the research issue: “Investigating the environment through which leaders involved in creative organizations lead creative people and processes.” I have been inspired by the method Grounded Theory. The thesis is composed by both secondary- and primary data. Two interviews have been conducted with leaders involved in creative organizations. Further, made the leaders experience from the interviews and the theoretical framework it possible to draw some conclusions in understanding leading creative people and processes.

NO FULL TEXT AVAILABLE. This thesis contains 3rd party copyright material. ----- A body of disability-determined dress scholarship has not emerged to date. This thesis establishes the benefit of introducing critical disability insight to dress research and explores the effect of this introduction on three particular aspects of dress-based knowledge. 'Disability' is examined as a historically-mediated, externally-determined concept that has framed our relationships with dress, past and present. These relationships have, in turn, modulated cultural understandings regarding human difference. Disability operates as a concept that defies attempts at straightforward inclusion into dress research as a so-far overlooked critical category of identity analysis. Rather, as complex and common sets of shifting human experience, 'disability' contributes directly and indirectly to socio-cultural understandings of dress. New theoretical insights are provided around dress concepts already generated in response to human difference, such as size and fit. Normatively disassociated from concepts of beauty, disability is also revisited for its deeper aesthetic implications. Beauty might normatively be considered synonymous with ability, yet many of the multiple, experiential and material perspectives generated by disability disrupt this uncritical presumption, with important social implications. Case study analyses are made of a wide range of visual, textual and material sources drawn from both historical and contemporary archives, literature and legal studies, contemporary media and art practices. Insight and analogy are gleaned from queer scholarship. Queer theory resonates with the aims of this thesis to reinstate respect for difference and to destabilize discriminatory ideals which underestimate the extent of this fertile cross-disciplinary arena. The strongly staged visual aspect of this thesis is deliberate, in order to counter the largely absent state of conceptually sound underst

Clothing is often perceived as a device to create, define and demarcate the gender binary. Accordingly, there are sets of preconceptions regarding ways in which men and women are assumed to engage with fashion. The research presented here reviews three of these ideas, some of which have been challenged by scholars but which are, still persistently, present in popular culture. Such preconceptions assume that men prioritize functionality over aesthetics and are the bearers, not the objects of the gaze, while women’s fashion is represented through multiple binaries of sexualisation and restriction, and female sartorial ornamentation is seen as symbolic of subservience. I investigate these presumptions via three contemporary Japanese cultural texts –(a) Japanese young men’s fashion magazines, (b) Japanese female performers’ appropriations of Lewis Carroll’s “Alice” in their music videos, and (c) Lolita fashion and Tetsuya Nakashima’s film Kamikaze Girls (2004), respectively. My study of these three selected texts explores the following possibilities that: (a) through negotiating the male reader’s desire to attract admirers and narcissistic impulse, young men’s fashion magazines endorse an idea that “crafting” the pleasant “look” is a part of quintessence of self-assurance and the idea of a good, successful life; that (b) kinds of Japanese cute (kawaii) and girlish aesthetics demonstrated by the Japanese singers allow them to accentuate their “cute” femininity without a hint of sexualisation, and; that (c) one of the heroines in Kamikaze Girls engages in both conventionally “masculine” and “feminine” activities while almost always dressed in the highly elaborate, girlish Lolita fashion. My examinations of these texts arguably renders the cultural and socialpsychological conceptions of “gender performativity” and “androgyny” effective and credible. The Japanese context is appropriate for this aim because this is where, particularly since 1868, European sartorial styles ha

This thesis shows that high-end designers' fashion lines at big box stores democratize the designers' names rather than their high-end designs. Isaac Mizrahi, Vera Wang, and Norma Kamali are all fashion designers who fit into this new phase of design distribution despite critical pessimism about the risks each is taking toward dissolving their high-end legacy. The big box store is another venue for business recognition while giving consumers the names they want without the same exceptional design.