SECOND HAND SHOPS CRAFTING RELATIONSHIPS-DESIGN FOR PRODUCT LONGEVITY Nantia Koulidou_Student research assistant in SPIRE
The intention of this research is to foster sustainable behavioural change by demonstrating design practices where clothes are likely to have more meaning for the consumer and result in product longevity in the context of the second hand shops. Designing for product longevity has the potential to reduce the over-consumption of fashion products when instead of being replaced, clothes can be repaired, remodelled and remade (Cramer J.2013).
technical innovation new materials
transparency
DEVELOP NEW CONSUMPTION MODELS
reuse
product
recycle thowingaway redesign
Product ion process
purchase repair
Fashion is among the most powerful industries in the world and one of the most enviromental damaging. Consumers can play a pivotal role in transitioning the fashion industry towards more sustainable business models. The Deloitte fashion survey (Fashion Sustainability 2013) address six strategies how the industry can raise awareness and interest amongst consumers to choose sustainable fashion and sustainable consumption of fashion (Figure 1). Reforming the operating system of fashion and the industrial mode of production is one way to address sustainability and collaborative consumption models and developing models based on co-creation and innovation with end users is a new approach that can challenge the whole fashion industry. Fletcher(2007) acknowledge that ideas of sustainability require more than a focus on enviromental issues to make them happen. The success of sustainable fashion lies on empasizing relationships, connectedness and cooperation, focus on a new role of fashion that encourage and empower users.
In Denmark clothing is resold and reused within the domestic market in physical space through second hand shops and in virtual space through online stores where users sell their own clothes. For this particular research we focus on the physical space of the second hand shops and its role in the fashion space, as a case study.
SECOND HAND SHOP AS LIVING ORGANISM Second hand shop as a living organism
retail stores
fashion spaces
We understand second hand shops as a living organism where people with different interests can relate to, regardless the changes in fashion industry but their life is dependent on the fashion circle. Based on ethnographic methods and qualitative interviews our research focus on understanding better customer’s shopping behavior and the reasons why they are coming to second hand shops. The narrative process of our research was particularly important in order to create empathy with the users and the research group. C: I don’t think is good that people buy too much.But you couldn’t have all these, if there weren’t so many people go and buy and after few days they say it’s not me and they bring them here. C: I tell. Once I found pair of jeans that I paid 20kr and the normal price was 1000kr. I think that is a good deal! N:Yes! C: I like doing good deal!
C:”I come here to look for silk scarves and linen trousers. They are materials that get old very slowly. And people maybe use them little.So if you buy something classic enough you can keep it for 4 ot 5 years and still look fine.”
Although second hand shops are incapable of automonous reproduction and they are not fashiondriven they are fashionable, changing the summer with winter season clothes and vice versa. Shoppers who love searching for bargains, vintage items of clothing, unique clothes or material qualities are “second hand” customers.
C :Yes when it is second hand you have to look everywhere, you have to be lucky to find something.The reason we come here is that you can find some nice things, and now the fashion is really retro. So you can find second hand things that are really cheap, but are really in.!
Q:Why do you like it? Why do you come?! C ”I think it is a nice idea to recycle stuff, and a surprise, and sometimes you are lucky and you feel so… yes, lucky and happy that you found one piece that fits you.”!
There are several reasons why people purchase at the second hand shops, among them is the price, the uniqueness of the products, the resemblance of a specific time in the fashion history, the material qualities as such and the surprice. Customers seek for meaning in the products that they purchase. In a paper entitled ‘Meaningful product relationships’, Batterbee and Mattelmaki mention 3 categories of objects, that facilitate the understanding of different kinds of subject-object attachment; these categories are; Meaningful Tool where the activity an objects enables, rather than the object itself, is the thing of meaning; Meaningful Association, in which a product is considered significant as it carries cultural and/or individual meaning and Living Object wherein an emotional bond is created between an individual and a product. We use the term “living objects” for the clothes in the Second hand shop to underline the “craft of use” and the story-memories that they hide . Shopping in the second hand shop can be seen as a hunting of living objects.
WHAT DESIGN CAN DO?
How design can help the consumer to create an emotional and valuable bond with their clothing? Design for product longevity by enchancing emotional connection of the wearer and the products clothes has the potential to reduce the over-consumption of fashion (Cramer 2013). Following I will present four different approaches on promoting sustainable solutions: collaborative workshops, sustaining narratives, multiple lifetimes, crafting smart textiles. with reference to literature and the qualitative data from our fieldwork in the seond hand shop.
COLLABORATIVE WORKSHOPS According to Manzini (2009) sustainable design should focus not only on promoting sustainable solutions, but also on how to conceive the possibility of creating new design solutions in a way of social innovation. Designers can be the drivers towards a more sustainable design approach and end users shift from passive to active customers, reframing their roles into co-creator and co-designers. (Fisher 2003). Collaborative projects reforming old garments (von Busch 2009) or development of modular series and clothing (Hur and Thomas, 2011) are initiatives to encourage user participation into the design process. According to von Busch (2009), an open and participatory fashion world, in which individuals become ‘engaged coauthors of fashion’, could include a greater role for amateurs making and maintaining their own garments. But how making affects the process of identity construction through a garment? How can we measure the relationship that users have with their clothes? Or to what degree a garment will satisfy one particular wearer? are questions that we cannot answer with quantitive measurements. The only way to measure factors affecting the possession and use of clothes is by considering qualitative approaches. Align to the personal/product bond questioning, Hirscher A., Niinimäki K. conduct qualitative research and participatory design workshops, investigating if the personal involvement in half/way clothing helps to facilitate a closer person-product attachment and raise awareness about the consumers own purchasing behaviour. They claim that if products can help customers to develop an independent and personal style, it is already a starting point towards behaviour change (Hirscher A., Niinimäki K, 2013). According to Chapmann(2005) half-way products may let the user become an active influential factor in the products story and not just a recipient of the designers given meaning, enabling the opportunity to “shape and influence the nature of the narrative experience by the very nature of interaction that occurs between two parties...”. Motivated by the prospect of a more sustainable and satisfying fashion system, Amy Twigger (2013) investigates the notion that the vast majority of knitted garments can be partially or entirely unravelled and re-knitted, creating a myriad of potential actions. Following, creative research methods (Gauntlett, D. 2007) she organizes participatory design workshops with amateurs.
SUSTAINING NARRATIVES In Denmark clothing is resold and reused within the domestic market in physical space through second hand shops and in virtual space through online stores where users sell their own clothes. In both cases products are longer in life. Sharing stories and experiences are the main objectives of the project “Local Wisdom”, a project that explores habits of use of clothing as a series of personal narratives shared on a website. In the online platform user share stories that reflect traces of their invested care. The narrative experience, produced and experienced by a unique individual, is unfolded in a quote or in a short text. The reader can be characterized as passive observer than a co-producer (Chapman 2005). The narratives can prove a valiable source for designer in designing for emotional durability, through a better understanding of products long-term wear (Cramer 2013). Quilt coat “This coat is made of an old quilt. It’s a quilt that my grandmother was going to throw away…
Q: Are you curious about who wore the clothes before?! ”No actually I don’t thing that much about it, because myself I also give things to second hand shops. I think lots of people are doing that nowadays. It is not like before that you don’t have that much money then you go to the second hand shop, but now everyone does it, and you can find so many things here. So I am not thinking about who had it before me, I just think ”now it is mine!”!
In the context of the second hand shop although the narrative behind a piece of clothing is hidden, traces of use are embedded in R Have you noticed that when somebody was wearing a cloth, the cloth has his body shape. V:Yes! R:the knees are there, the big boobies.The clothes have already the form of another person. the clothing. In this way, the customers becomes a co-producer of the narrative. The interviewers seem not curious about the story behind the clothes, they purchase. We are provoking their reactions by placing clothhanger that reveal the story of the clothes.
What is happening at the moment of interaction between the cloth and the user? Does the story behind the cloth add one more layer of personal attachment for the consumer. How the additional information influence the customers purchase behavior? Does an open-ended story engage people for co-creation?
The pace in which the narrative experiences unfold can play an important role in connectedness between subject and object. Durable narrative experiences much embody multiple layers, enabling a number of co-dependent narratives that apper on discovery (Chapman 2005). Anticipation between the layers can elicit emotions associated with product meaning and therefore stimulate product attachment. Desmet and Hekkert(2007) refered to the anticipation of usage as a form of non/physical human-product interaction and according to them, the anticipation of the consequences of usage and product meaning can generatite affective responses.
MULTIPLE LIFETIMES/role of design C: Sometimes you can buy something and change it a bit,or add a small decoration and you have something special.
R: Do you ever fix clothes?! C: ”Yes, I mix some different items.”
Customising second hand garments is phenomemon that we observed on some of our interviews with the customers. Changing the life of a piece of clothing extend the life spam of the product and can enhance the product-user relationshiop. Another way is to design the multiple lifetimes of a product in the early phase of the design procept. The role of the designer is crucial. Thinking about the multiple transformations of the material give the possibilities of different context of use.
The Living Wardrobe is fashion practice research project from Jo Cramer exploring the idea of ‘enduring product experience’ as a means to create fashion products with sustainability. A dress that looks like rather a conventional dress is consciously designed in time from the designer to transform its parts. Adjustable shoulder straps, bottoms that allow the dress to be let out (or taken in) is just few of the possible transformations that the design leaves room for. The dress has been designed to lbe self-sustaining, kept in use and altered by the owners. It has been designed to last. Elementum is a cloth collection by Daniela Pais, who developed the concept of sustainable principles applied to clothing.The clothes can be worn in different ways and by crossing, layering or folding the piece over the body, new designs are introduced(www.luxuryistohavesimplethings.com)
CRAFTING SMART TEXTILES As computational technology and new materials are entering the world of textiles, our view on the textile material is challenged; the areas of textile design and interaction design start to merge and research attention has tended to focus on the new technical functions. Research going on in the area of smart textiles includes clothes for body motitoring, textile sensors, flexible textile keyboards, textile for measuring body signals, fashionable garmnets, interactive interiors. Smart textiles bring new challenges to textile design and start up discussions about the role of craftmanship and skills in devoloping materials with interactive properties(Kirsti Kuusk at all.2011). Slowing down the process by hand-on experience, it allows the craftman to create a narrative that grows together with their creation and the smart materials. MATERIAL EXPLORATIONS By the making of design examples, experiments a certain notion could be more easily discussed and related to. When getting in physical contact with the material, you get knowledge about constructions and design that will raise certain questions of interest during the process (Anna Persson, 2009) . In that way this work was driven by what is possible through technology, and materials. By taking the approach of a practise-based design research method, experimental design examples with focus on linking interactive properies and tradional techniques are explored and introduced. The results are not specific solutions to a problem but rather samples to inspire and show the properties of the materials and the new aesthetic dimentions. Materials such as conductive threads and fibres, colour-changing materials like termochromatic ink and pigments, lilipad, leds, conductive fabrics, where the ingredients of our first experiments. Next to the computational materias we were exploring the tradionally non-computational materials and more spesific knitted textile structures.
knitted cable
3d printed knitted structure paper origami-total use of the material