Purpose – This study sets out to explore the application of psychological research methods (as yet not applied) in the fashion arena. The aim of this project is to quantify, formalise and explore the causal relationships between clothing style, preference, personality factors, emotions and mood with a view to a better understanding of the psychological profile of the fashion consumer. Design/methodology/approach – Using a uniformly composed sample of females, explorative quantitative research was carried out. Two sets of questionnaires were administered to the sample to examine emotion, mood and personality before trying on a set of eight garments categorized according to style; and again afterwards to examine emotion and mood while wearing each outfit. Photographs of participants were taken wearing each of the outfits. Participants then ranked the eight outfits in order of preference. SPSS analysis identified relationships and preference indicators. Findings – The results indicated strong relationships between mood and significant relationships between three out of five personality factors and clothing style preference; mood was a significant predictor of preference, whilst personality was moderate. Research limitations/implications – The research methodology necessitated lengthy time commitments from the participants and therefore limited the sample size, making generalization difficult. Based on the findings, the research requires further exploration of methods for practical application with a larger sample size. Practical implications – Personality, emotion and mood were shown to be managed and reflected through clothing with implications for assistance in consumer clothing decisions, service training, and strategies for personal shoppers, market segmentation and design. Originality/value – The methodology derived from a combination of research methods coupled with actual wearing experience, previously not studied together. This is original and demonstrates how important this combination is in order to fully appreciate the psychological profile of the fashion consumer.

This paper provides a review aimed at comparing cutting and packing (C&P) research in the textile industry and the area of zero-waste fashion design (ZWFD). Both research domains seek to minimise waste material while approaching the problem from very different perspectives. The C&P research investigates the use of mathematical and computational techniques for minimising material waste in the marker planning problem, while the ZWFD provides creative pattern making solutions for the same problem. A systematic literature review was performed based on content and bibliometric analysis of 22 papers published in peer-reviewed journals from 2010 until 2021. The paper maps the research direction of both the C&P and ZWFD as an opportunity to stimulate further research in the future encouraged by the integration of both areas to address the zero-waste fashion designs’ manufacturability problem by incorporating the fashion design process with the C&P optimisation algorithm design process.

Consumer attitudes and disposal behaviour of textiles in developing economies are under researched, constraining capacity to address dual environmental challenges of increasingly disposable fashion and inefficient waste collection programs. We present the results of a systematic case study about post-consumer textiles waste in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Taking post-consumer textile waste as our unit of analysis, we conducted in-depth and semi-structured interviews with the local industry stakeholders, the waste management infrastructure and an island-wide survey of consumer attitudes and disposal behaviour towards post-consumer textile waste. The results indicate: (a) considerably more post-consumer textile waste than recorded at landfills; (b) consumption and disposal behaviour comparable with developed economies, significant in contexts of no formal mechanisms to address end of life post-consumer textile waste and (c) age, employment category, income level and geographical location, are statistically significant in understanding public textile waste disposal behaviour, indicating importance of appropriate policy and infrastructure issues.