Publication

Sustainment and sustainabilities – Exploring everyday clothing consumption practices in Ireland and insights for sustainability transitions

Maguire, Helen
Citation
Abstract
The dual challenges of insatiable overconsumption and vast underutilisation of clothing are causing a detrimental sustainability impact globally. From the perspective that ‘use matters’ and considering that the most sustainable piece of clothing is the one already owned, the clothing active use phase comes into focus here as a vital piece of the puzzle to support advancement towards clothing sustainability transitions. Drawing on current and emerging discourses in everyday geographies and sustainable consumption research, and engaging with literature on circularity, sufficiency, and maximum utilisation of clothing; the primary aim of this research was to determine how everyday practices in clothing wear, care, and repair are currently constituted in Ireland. The study employed a tailored, qualitative, and multifaceted methodological framework to obtain an in-depth, holistic understanding of everyday consumption practices in clothing active use amongst an intergenerational sample of participants living in Ireland. An innovative, multi method methodological design was devised in line with the research focus on everyday clothing use practices and applied a practice-theoretical lens. Purposive sampling was employed to recruit fifteen participants distributed evenly across three life-stage groups: Young Adults (18-24 years); Parents with Young Children (25-49 years); and Older Adults (50 years+). The interdisciplinary empirical study was conducted in the North West of Ireland, in counties Donegal and Sligo, with fieldwork undertaken between July 2018 and May 2019. Data collection occurred at the intimate household scale, as an important site of practice; in participants own homes and in, or near, their wardrobes. Each participant undertook an initial Problem-Centred Interview, followed by an in depth wardrobe interview (including wardrobe audit, a household tour and clothing diary keeping, with still photographs captured to further augment the data) generating a rich and complex dataset of lived everyday intergenerational clothing use practices. Following transcription, a comprehensive, three-phase analysis of the qualitative dataset took place involving vertical and horizontal cross case exploration, as well as focused intergenerational analysis and interpretation. The research offers an important contribution towards clearer understandings of current clothing consumption practices in Ireland. Key insights regarding everyday clothing use practices were unlocked as related to clothing wear, care and repair activities. Findings from the study are presented and explored in each of the three published articles which comprise the results sections of this thesis. A range of implications emerge for scaling-up impact and for supporting future sustainability transitions towards maximum clothing utilisation, lifespan extension and sufficiency. Furthermore, this research adds to theoretical and empirical geographical understandings by exploring how a customised and innovative application of wardrobe studies can provide a valuable addition to a geographer’s toolkit of methodological approaches. By illuminating everyday practices in clothing wear, care and repair over time, this research posits that it is possible to fully consider how to positively influence more sustainable consumption in the clothing use phase. Specifically, the outcomes of this study enable the identification of triggers, or turning points, for sustainable consumption policy development and clothing sustainability transitions and thus, for influencing improved everyday clothing sufficiency and longevity practices into the future.
Funder
Publisher
NUI Galway
Publisher DOI
Rights
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Ireland
CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 IE