Browsing by Author "Durrani, Marium"

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  • Color Matters: an exploratory study on the role of color on clothing consumption choices.
    (2023-05-29) Durrani, Marium; Niinimäki, Kirsi
     A1 Alkuperäisartikkeli tieteellisessä aikakauslehdessä
    It is widely acknowledged that clothing serves as our second skin. Colour plays a significant role in our choice when selecting our clothing, as well as in social and cultural realities, various rituals, everyday practices, and individual or group identities. In this study, we discuss consumer clothing choices in relation to colour based on data analysis drawn from focus group-based research. Analysis of the data revealed not only the importance that colour holds for consumers, but also that there exist different types of colour consumers and that different colour consumption attributes coexist. Moreover the study presents consumers’ colour preferences through different lenses; internal forces (colour preferences in connection to consumers’ identity, mood and body image), colour attributes (shade, matching colours, colour maintenance), external structures (colour preferences in connection to weather conditions and markets) and social factors (social acceptance and cultural context).
  • Consumer attitude towards buying and selling second-hand clothing
    (2021) Sun, Bohan
     School of Arts, Design and Architecture | Master's thesis
    In spite of its long history, the second-hand clothing market has received massive attention in recent years due to an increasing awareness of environmental impact of fast fashion. As the second-hand clothing business is expanding, a deeper understanding about why people choose pre-used garments and how they are involved in this recycling process is needed. This thesis investigates consumers' attitude, consumption patterns and factors that influence their decision making while choosing second-hand garments. Additionally, the role of sustainability as a motivation for the consumers in second-hand clothing shopping experience is evaluated. This study consists of a combination of semi-structured interview as the main method and a followup quantitative evaluation survey for data acquisition. The interviews were conducted with 8 participants, second-hand clothing consumers who visit second-hand stores with varying frequency. A survey was then conducted with 31 responses to validate the results obtained from the interviews. During the interview process, the participants are also interviewed about their second-hand clothes consumption patterns including purchasing, using, and disposing. The findings showed six major motivations to be the driving factor for the purchase of second-hand garments. Among them, hedonistic shopping value plays an important role in attracting consumers to visit second-hand clothing stores. Even though most of the consumers consider sustainability as a reason for choosing pre-owned clothing, they do it primarily because they are against consumerism rather than for being more sustainable. They view second-hand clothes as a compromise or less harmful option when compared to buying fast fashion. However, consumer's utilitarian value can not be fulfilled by second-hand shopping as it demands more effort and time.
  • Designers by any other name: exploring the sociomaterial practices of vernacular garment menders
    (2018) Durrani, Marium
     School of Arts, Design and Architecture | A1 Alkuperäisartikkeli tieteellisessä aikakauslehdessä
    Studies around the cultures of design indicate a mutually constitutive relationship designers share with materials when in practice. However, professional designers are not the only ones experiencing proximate relations with materials. With the recent emergence of community-based repair workshops, non-professional designer practices of fixing things, like garments, reveal sites of active material tinkering aiding transitions in current clothing disposal patterns. Using qualitative research methods and a sociomaterial theoretical lens, this paper takes the mending activities of non-professional menders in communal repair workshops in the city of Helsinki, Finland, as its point of departure. The study identifies these menders as vernacular menders and explores their dynamic practices to reveal the situated, embodied, routinized yet creative process of mending. The created outputs by the vernacular menders result in what is termed as informal design and point towards extending mainstream conceptualizations on design and creativity. In such a way, suggesting new insights on sociomaterial-enabled practices emerging around the brims of professional design.
  • Designers by any other name: exploring the sociomaterial practices of vernacular garment menders
    (2018-06) Durrani, Marium
     A4 Artikkeli konferenssijulkaisussa
    Studies around the cultures of design indicate a mutually constitutive relationship designers share with materials when in practice. However, professional designers are not the only ones experiencing proximate relations with materials. With the recent emergence of community-based repair workshops, non-professional designer practices of fixing things, like garments, reveal sites of active material tinkering aiding transitions in current clothing disposal patterns. Using qualitative research methods and a sociomaterial theoretical lens, this paper takes the mending activities of non-professional menders in communal repair workshops in the city of Helsinki, Finland, as its point of departure. The study identifies these menders as vernacular menders and explores their dynamic practices to reveal the situated, embodied, routinized yet creative process of mending. The created outputs by the vernacular menders result in what is termed as informal design and point towards extending mainstream conceptualizations on design and creativity. In such a way, suggesting new insights on sociomaterial-enabled practices emerging around the brims of professional design.
  • Designing for and with Garment Repair: an Exploration of Future Possibilities
    (2021) Durrani, Marium; Niinimäki, Kirsi; McLauchlan, Shirley
     A4 Artikkeli konferenssijulkaisussa
    Over the years, the increasingly domineering heavy hand of the fashion industry’s ‘take-make-waste’ production paradigm has contributed to the creation of systems that support fast production, easy purchases and frequent disposal of inexpensive, poorly designed and often low-quality garments. Prior research has slowly but steadily been working towards highlighting the fundamental role that garment mending can play in supporting product longevity. While addressing clothing breakages through mending has been considerably explored as a user practice, how it can inform the process of garment design has remained under-researched. Therefore, this paper takes its theoretical inspiration from ‘broken-world thinking’ with a repair-centered sensibility as its point of departure. Here we take malfunction, as opposed to innovation or design, as the starting point of change and garment design. Through this paper, we then explore the opportunities to introduce and weave a repair ethos into every stage of the garment design process. In this way, we highlight the inseparability of repair from design and the importance that basic design decisions can have for facilitating cultures of mending. We also identify the challenges and opportunities that such an approach entail. This paper presents findings from three student workshops in three design universities in different geographical locations. By exploring the preliminary results of this work we open up a discussion on re-evaluating present-day fashion design approaches by initiating a move towards a design sensibility for repair which is fundamental to the process of fashion design, particularly in the context of sustainability.
  • Fashion consumption during COVID-19 : Comparative analysis of changing acquisition practices across nine countries and implications for sustainability
    (2022-04-14) Vladimirova, Katia; Henninger, Claudia Elisabeth; Joyner-Martinez, Cosette; Iran, Samira; Diddi, Sonali; Durrani, Marium; Iyer, Kavitha; Jestratijevic, Iva; McCormick, Helen; Niinimäki, Kirsi; Thangavelu, Priyadarshini; Sauerwein, Meike; Singh, Renu; Simek, Petr; Wallaschkowski, Stephan
     A1 Alkuperäisartikkeli tieteellisessä aikakauslehdessä
    The COVID-19 pandemic caused and still causes unprecedented disruptions in daily lives of billions of people globally. It affects practices and routines across all household consumption domains, including clothing consumption. Drawing on Social Practice Theory, this article explores and compares changes in clothing acquisition practices during COVID-19 across nine countries: the USA, the UK, Finland, Germany, Switzerland, Iran, Czech Republic, India, and Hong Kong SAR. Data was obtained through a standardized survey containing rated and open-ended questions, which were analyzed through descriptive quantitative analysis and inductive qualitative content analysis of open-ended questions. The results of this cross-country research indicate that all forms of fashion consumption, including more sustainable practices, have decreased during the pandemic. The most visible impacts have occurred in the material arrangements associated with fashion acquisition practices (e.g., closed physical shops, shipping disruptions, cancelled events, remote work, etc.). However, changes that result from these disruptions may be shorter-lived that changes that happened as a result of changing meanings associated with fashion consumption and its more sustainable forms and new competencies and skills acquired during the pandemic that could ensure more lasting practicing of more sustainable forms of fashion consumption.
  • Intelligenzia - Fashion design as an intellectual process
    (2021) Petraeus, Mikael
     School of Arts, Design and Architecture | Master's thesis
    In this thesis I will demonstrate what intellectual abilities and capacities are used in the fashion design process, in what phases they’re needed and emphasis they have in the process. There has been a lot of discourse on design thinking, but mainly from designs perspective in general - not that much from fashions point of view. This research will thus be one of the firsts of its kind, that aims to cover that gap in the design thinking research. I’m going to approach my topic from fashion design practice, through various thinking forms, in an order they’re hypothetically used in the fashion design process. Findings of my study are that designers rely much on schemas and intuition when there’s no known data to base various kinds of thinking and reasoning. Results of my study show that a designer uses several kinds of thinking during the fashion design process, from analytical to intuitive thinking forms.
  • “Like Stitches to a Wound”: Fashioning Taste in and Through Garment Mending Practices
    (2021-12) Durrani, Marium
     A1 Alkuperäisartikkeli tieteellisessä aikakauslehdessä
    This article immerses the reader into the world of garment mending in communal repair events in four cities— Helsinki, Auckland, Wellington, and Edinburgh—to explore mending as a locus of taste. It engages in the discussion on taste as a reflexive activity and a sensed effect that gradually reveals itself to the practitioners engaged in the practice of mending. Here the focus is on the role of the body and the interplay between the sensing body and materials, to show how everyday menders construct a taste for and toward their practice over time. As menders actively engage with and appropriate the given design of their garments, they defy mainstream wasteful fast-fashion practices and mobilize variations in dress practices while connecting with the matter that makes up their clothing . By engaging with the notion of taste in this way, the overall aim of this article is to clarify how everyday menders become able to form an alliance with their practice, ultimately converting mending into an object of passion.
  • Not your mitten - Identity, craft, queerness
    (2022) Vehmaanperä, Juha
     School of Arts, Design and Architecture | Master's thesis
    This thesis is a study of queerness through clothing design. The thesis is done in two parts written format and the practice-based clothing collection Not Your Mitten. Queer voices have been historically left out of the traditional discourse on human behaviour as that has been considered unnatural for decades. Through my work I wish to move beyond binary definitions by creating a collection that is neither women’s wear nor men’s wear. To be able to do so, I first wanted to explore how queerness is being commodified in the mass market. Following that I wanted to explore in what ways as a designer can I create garments that would create cultures of practice around clothing and whether it is possible to design in a way that would inspire people to be active participants in the process of making. To answer these questions the research relied on a combination of methods including autoethnography, visual research and practice-led research. In the written part I reflect on my personal experience of participating in the world as a queer person by reflecting on binary narrative of the world. The absurdity of the forced binary gender ideas from colours to fragrances everything has gender label put on to it. I explore the construction of identity in the western world through the material objects and communities of practice. The social psychology of material possessions shows that the understanding of ourselves in the Western societies is increasingly based on the possessions that we have. Objects are used to make distinctions between different groups of people and to show prestige. Development of a practice requires the formation of a community and its members to engage with each other and acknowledge each other as participants. I further analysed group settings by delving into the research on subcultural behaviour. Subcultures are being formed as a rebellion against the current system but eventually the system merges subculture as a part of it through commercialisation. As the productive part of the thesis I created a clothing collection of seven genderless looks. The collection is the end result of the methodologies used to conduct this thesis. It explores group membership through the culture of making and queerness through experimentational pattern drafting and re-contextualizing garments through the act of crafting. There is a central role for pieces that are made of materials and techniques that do not require people to own pricy machinery to achieve the specific look. By learning hand knitting and crochet techniques it is possible for people to replicate or create different versions of the pieces. To enable best result, I explore different combinations of weights of yarns and sizes of knitting needles. By keeping notes and samples of the trials I participate in practice-led research and gather knowledge on how to obtain the wanted result for the knitted pieces. I also reflect on the materials that I am using and focus on the materials that I have sourced more sustainably as second hand or second cycle materials. These explorations allowed me to understand the communal aspect of making through the focus on handcraft methods that enable more people to participate in the making of fashion.
  • "People gather for stranger things, so why not this?": Learning Sustainable Sensibilities through Communal Garment-Mending Practices
    (2018-06-28) Durrani, Marium
     A1 Alkuperäisartikkeli tieteellisessä aikakauslehdessä
    This study uses a sociomaterial practice theoretical lens to explore the learning processes and outcomes of non-professional menders emerging through their participation in communal mending workshops. Recent years have witnessed an emergence of repair workshops that seek to provide an alternative to the make-take-waste paradigm dominating the fast fashion industry in most Western countries. The paper is based on three months of extensive fieldwork in six repair workshops in two cities in New Zealand (Auckland and Wellington). Thirty-five in-depth interviews, eight follow-up surveys and field notes from participant observations were used to collect data. A triangulation of the methods and open coding helped identify three types of learning streams from the data: material learning, communal learning, and environmental learning. The learned outcomes aided in equipping participants with knowledge of how to mend, extend use of existing garments, address alternatives to garment disposal, create feelings of caring, self-reliance and empowerment in communities, and differentiate between good- and bad-quality garments. In this way, communal workshops help users to be more proactive in providing sustainable local solutions to global ecological problems and create diversified learning around sociomaterial and ecological aspects of garments and their use. This could potentially create awareness of the importance of buying better and more durable garments in the future to keep them longer in use.
  • Shared Emotional Values in Sustainable Clothing Design Approaches
    (2017) Durrani, Marium; Ravnløkke, Louise; Niinimäki, Kirsi
     A4 Artikkeli konferenssijulkaisussa
    Recent sustainable initiatives in fashion companies are framing design practices that challenge the traditional role of clothing designers. This preliminary study aims to open discussion on challenging traditional clothing design, through an exploration of the shared emotional values between user and designers, when designing for longevity
  • Through the threaded needle : A multi-sited ethnography on the sociomateriality of garment mending practices
    (2019) Durrani, Marium
     School of Arts, Design and Architecture | Doctoral dissertation (article-based)
    Commonly associated with times of hardship and austerity, garment mending has come a long way from being a domesticated practice of need to an act of commodity activism. As a backlash to the ‘throw away’ culture of fast fashion, recent years have witnessed the emergence of various public garment mending events in Western countries. Although academic interest in mending has been growing among fashion researchers, their focus has remained limited to an exploration of perspectives on mending in domestic spaces. Through this dissertation a shift is made towards an examination of processes undertaken to mend by studying existing off-the-grid mending practices that run parallel to mainstream fast-fashion systems in self-organized communal repair events in four cities. How the practice of mending comes to matter is comprehensively investigated through this dissertation. This study primarily intends to understand, observe and illustrate an alternative conceptualization, by proposing to examine mending as a sociomaterial practice. Through identifying humans and non-human or social and material forces as intimately interlaced, this study anchors itself in a pragmatic philosophical paradigm. Building on this, scholarly works that forms part of the umbrella term ‘Practice Theories’ are used to develop a non-cognitive driven understanding of the practice of mending in a clothing use context. The work draws on three years of in-depth, multi-sited ethnographic field research in 18 communal garment mending events in: Helsinki (Finland), Auckland and Wellington (New Zealand) and Edinburgh (the United Kingdom), during 2016–2018. Data is gathered through non-participant and participant observations, 67 in-depth semi- and unstructured interviews of event organizers and participants, short surveys, web research, and pictures and short video clips are used as mnemonic support. First, I strived to understand the practice of mending by identifying the matters of mending (Article 1). Then I used three effects arising from the produced affectivity of sociomaterial practices to explore mending. These conceptual effects were: creativity, learning and taste. Each effect then provided a framework through which to approach, analyse and understand the performance, learning and sustenance of mending practices. In the first instance, I categorized users as vernacular menders and understood their practices as situated, embodied and routinized, yet dynamic. The analysis revealed how when performing practices, menders methodically organized their practices while simultaneously creatively extending design in use (Article 2). In the second instance, I understood the learning practices of the vernacular menders as being anchored within the sociomateriality of practices rather than resulting from a purely cognitive process. The learned outcomes were: material learning, communal learning and environmental learning. Through the process of mending, the vernacular menders seemed to learn how to identify variations in material qualities, create communal bonds and form understandings of how to better care for their garments. The findings indicated the potential of informal learning platforms for finding sustainable local solutions to global ecological problems concerning garment waste (Article 3). In the last instance, the focus was on the role of the body and the interplay between the sensing body and the materials, to show how menders construct taste for and form an attachment to their practice over time. Their mending practices resulted in increasing the physical life, reshaping the symbolic life and redefining the aesthetic life of garments. In this way, people are seen as disrupting existing social and material orders by defying mainstream fashion practices, levelling off the playing field through active engagement in appropriating garments, mobilizing variations in dress practices, attuning to the matters that make up their clothing, while also forming an attachment to their practice (Article 4). Overall, in taking a non-cognitive approach to the study of mending, this study reveals the practices of menders as not merely reproductive but as dynamic and reflexive. In trying to understand how mending practices are performed, learned and sustained, the study also highlights the broader implications of mending that need attention in the current sustainable fashion discourse. Thus, the study invites future research to explore the practices of vernacular menders and to actively challenge fast fashion dictates towards the practices of caring, inclusivity and stewardship.