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Episode 83 – Psychology of Fashion
The clothes we put on everyday tell a story about who we are to the world and can have a major impact on our emotions and mood. Cognitive psychologist Carolyn Mair, PhD, who created the psychology of fashion department at the London College of Fashion at the University of the Arts London, explains the psychology behind our fashion choices and why psychologists are needed to help solve some of the biggest challenges facing the fashion industry now and in the future.
About the expert: Carolyn Mair, PhD
Carolyn Mair, PhD, created the psychology of fashion department at the London College of Fashion at the University of the Arts London as well as an undergraduate degree and two master's degree programs there. She is currently a consultant for fashion brands and author of “The Psychology of Fashion.” Her clients include global, international and national organizations, non-governmental organizations and charities. Mair has published broadly in academic and popular media and is frequently featured by international and national press including BBC, Sky News, ITV, The New York Times, Guardian, Telegraph and Daily Mail.
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Kaitlin Luna: Welcome to Speaking of Psychology , a bi-weekly podcast from the American Psychological Association. I'm your host Kaitlin Luna.
The clothes we put on every day tell a story about who we are to the world and can have a major impact on our emotions and mood. So where does psychology fit into all this, and how does it help us solve some of the biggest challenges facing the fashion industry now and in the future? Our guest for this episode is Dr. Carolyn Mair, a cognitive psychologist who created the Psychology of Fashion department at the London College of Fashion at the University of Arts London as well as an undergraduate program and two master's degree programs there. Dr. Mair is currently a consultant for fashion brands and recently published a book called the “Psychology of Fashion.” Welcome Dr. Mair.
Carolyn Mair: Thank you very much Kaitlin it's a pleasure to be here. Thank you.
Kaitlin Luna: We're happy to have you. How did you get into this field?
Carolyn Mair: I've always been interested in fashion, and my first job was a window dresser, visual merchandiser as it's known now. I did that for four years, absolutely loved it and then I did several other creative jobs. Making clothes for people, making clothes myself and so on and then when I got into my 30s and I had three children I decided it was time to get a degree. So, I did my undergraduate degree in applied psychology and computing. Then I did a master's in research methods and then I was very fortunate to be able to have a funded PhD studentship. So, after my PhD I really wanted to work in the applied field of psychology because my PhD was so theoretical, and I worked for seven years in an ordinary psychology department as a senior lecturer and then became a professor. And then I was at a conference and I met somebody from London College of Fashion and when I asked him if there were only psychologists there he said there weren't and that I should come into a paper there. And so I gave a paper at London College of Fashion on the importance of psychology for fashion and I was invited back to discuss how I could bring psychology to the college and that was back in 2011. I started working there in 2012 and developed the master's courses and set up the department before I left in 2017.
Kaitlin Luna: Wow so you've had a lifelong interest in fashion and that became academic and now here you are having have set up this program at the college, that's wonderful.
Carolyn Mair: Thank you.
Kaitlin Luna: And you wrote in your book that there are very few psychologists in this field, so from your perspective why is it important to have psychologists researching and working in the fashion industry?
Carolyn Mair: Well the fashion industry is about people. It employs millions worldwide and everyone wears clothes. Clothes are the closest thing to our bodies, they're our second skin. And psychologists can help with loss of the issues that are known to be caused by the fashion industry. So for example the fashion industry has a poor reputation in terms of social responsibility and now coming to a head, and it's been around for four decades actually, are the issues about sustainability. So the fashion industry is one of the worst industries for damaging the environment and psychologists can help with this. They can help the consumers change their habits through developing behavior change programs, they can also work with employers to help them create workplaces that provide better conditions for their staff, and they can also help in predicting demands so that there's far less waste when the items are made. So currently fashion forecasters tend to work on intuition, gut feeling, sometimes they look at the historical cycles, but psychologists are well trained in data analysis and they will be able to predict fashion trends much better using data.
And of course, there's the obvious way that psychologists can work in the fashion industry and that's in consumer behavior. And consumers are becoming more and more demanding. They are wanting more than just to be satisfied. Customers now have fantastic opportunities for competition, for searching online and in-store so the retail companies, fashion retail companies, have to give consumers a fantastic experience and who better to help design a fantastic experience than psychologists.
Kaitlin Luna: You just touched on some very interesting issues regarding overconsumption and regarding the environment. So you cited an alarming statistic in your book as well that in the US about an estimated 15 million people have a spending addiction, so we know that overconsumption is clearly an issue. How can people break the cycle and consume more responsibly?
Carolyn Mair: Well it's a very difficult one because the way we shop becomes a habit and lots of, lots of us go shopping as a social pleasure, as a leisure pursuit, and so shopping becomes part of what we do, part of our identity. And also you know, we like novelty, we like fashion we want to look nice and enhance ourselves. But people can also change their habits through structured behavior change programs so they can learn to identify what are the habits, what are the triggers that encourage them to go out buy more, more, more, more. And quite often they don't wear these items and how can their habits be changed so that it's a win-win situation for them so they have more money in their pockets to enjoy experiences rather than material objects. And they can also do good for the environment by consuming less and contributing less to the landfill problem.
Kaitlin Luna: Is this something you're working on when you in your consulting work?
Carolyn Mair: Yes, so I'm currently working across so many issues within the fashion industry and it's just such an amazing opportunity to make a really important difference globally. So yes changing people's habits, looking at the communication that we put out as a business, looking at how we communicate with our staff and with our customers. Yeah so this is something that I've been doing as a consultant since 2017. Understanding that, you know, that consumers are people, and they have behavior and psychologists understand behavior. So as a cognitive psychologist looking at all the cognitive processes you know the way we think, the way we perceive, the way we understand the world to make sense of it, all these things, processes, that we do as human beings this is what psychologists can help the fashion industry, and then to be honest all industry, learn more about.
Kaitlin Luna: And you wrote a lot about fast fashion which we've touched on as well. The environmental impacts of this and the human impacts of it, how its created environmental and human rights problems and there has been some movement in a positive direction, it's more awareness of this but people are still suffering in sweatshops and landfills are still getting filled up with unused or unwanted clothing. What is needed to change this trend?
Carolyn Mair: Okay first of all, I think it's quite important that that this notion of fast fashion equals bad needs to be changed. So, lots of items which are not considered fast fashion are made in exactly the same factories under exactly the same conditions. The problem is not with fast fashion per se, the problem with is with overproduction and overconsumption that ends up in the landfill sites. There are problems with the working conditions with abuse of the workers, with human rights as you say and these need to be addressed at the local level because they the factories are typically run by people in the local communities and there is a lot of pressure on them to change and hopefully they will. When the pressure turns into voting with our wallets, which is, I think we're beginning to see that, people are buying less and being more mindful with what they buy. Then then the behavior of the factory owners and the retail companies will change accordingly and the pressure is coming from consumers now.
Kaitlin Luna: So you are seeing changes in the opposite direction where people are being more mindful about what they purchase and how much of it.
Carolyn Mair: Some pockets of the population yes for sure, but there are still people who want to consume a lot simply because it's cheap and in reality they probably spend as much as they would on five or six very cheap items as they would if they bought one more one expensive item, a more expensive item that they would actually wear and it would potentially last longer and they would value it more.
Kaitlin Luna: Do you think a solution is for people to purchase perhaps higher quality items? Sometimes that can mean more expensive items as opposed to those, you know, buying five t-shirts for the price of one nice shirt. Is that one way to alleviate the problem?
Carolyn Mair: Yes I think I think that makes perfect sense. Because you know buying five very similar items and four of them are unlikely to be worn is purely wasteful and because they're cheap they're probably not going to be sold or swapped or nobody was really going to want them secondhand anyway. So yeah, I would definitely say buy less, buy mindfully, enjoy the experience, but don't buy multiple items that you're not going to wear. Think about it at the point-of-sale, when are you going to wear this item or these items, do you really want to buy it and is it just gonna hang in your wardrobe with the tags still on it until you decide you don't want it anymore and find out that nobody else does either which is, it's just so wasteful.
Kaitlin Luna: So there does come a point in a lifecycle of a piece of clothing item where you might want to give it away or to donate it or something of that nature. Is that a good solution to give away your clothes, give them to charity, give them to friends?
Carolyn Mair: Yeah definitely anything that stops them going into landfill is good, recycling if the product can be recycled then fantastic. Sometimes the recycling process does quite a lot of harm to the environment as well. Separating different fabrics, different textiles is difficult and not always possible. But anything is better than putting your unwanted items in the bin that would go to landfill. So swapping, renting clothes is becoming more and more popular. Selling on a market, individuals selling their own clothes is also becoming popular, and lots of fashion brands, fast fashion I'm well aware of, I'm not sure that the higher end of the fashion market does this, is accepting bags of recyclable clothes that you don't want, previously loved clothes let's say, for recycling and they might be used if they can be separated out for recycling. Some are useful for stuffing other fabrics for rags and then some are sent on to other countries so there's some organizations that go around and buy unwanted used clothing. But this can be problematic because the used clothes might end up actually frustrating the development of the fashion industry in developing markets.
Kaitlin Luna: I want to turn now to mental health, and as you mentioned clothing conveys a lot about a person. So what does, how does what we put on our bodies every day influence our mental health?
Carolyn Mair: Well it's stressful for us if we don't feel comfortable in what we're wearing. If we're really worrying that it's appropriate or it's suitable or we don't feel confident in what we're wearing. It stresses us and this means that we don't have the cognitive capacity to deal with the problem at hand. This is why lots of very successful people tend to wear a work uniform in inverted commas, not necessarily as suits but it may be t-shirt and jeans as we've seen with Mark Zuckerberg who wears the same items every day to allow this freeing up of cognitive capacity for more important issues. And then you know for you or me this might mean going to a meeting wearing something that we've worn before and knowing that it's suitable or it's appropriate and we don't have to worry about that at that time.
Kaitlin Luna: I know there have been positive steps in the right direction but it still seems like everywhere we go we're bombarded with images that encourage us to consume fashion and that there's no way to escape it. How does that impact people's mental health?
Carolyn Mair: People generally buy far more than they need and probably to be honest, none of us probably needs to buy any more clothes ever. Research suggests that 80% of clothes in our wardrobe are unworn and that's quite worrying actually, as some people can become addicted to shopping and this can result in debt, in shame, in guilt and there's a move now to buy mindfully which we've discussed, and I would definitely agree with that. Buying too much is something that we really should avoid. When you buy less it seems like a win-win situation. You've got more money in your pocket to enjoy the experiences that bring more and lasting satisfaction and you're also doing less harm to the environment.
Kaitlin Luna: So throughout this interview you've mentioned several times about the importance of people being mindful of their purchases, and this move toward mindfulness is certainly wonderful in many ways. But how does that work within the fashion industry because they certainly need to generate profits. I mean they want to respond to their customers in terms of wanting to be understanding and receptive to being more mindful about fashion, but at the same time they also need to make money. So what are you seeing in terms of that tension that exists?
Carolyn Mair: I think once the fashion industry is more in tune with what the customers want, actually want rather than what they think they want, when they're more able to predict more accurately, so production on demand rather than full supply, then you know this affects profits more so than the selling. So much money is wasted on overproduction, so if that comes out of the equation, the company can still be profitable.
Kaitlin Luna: You mentioned in your book the pressure to produce for consumers is so high that people in the fashion industry often suffer from mental health issues like substance abuse, anxiety, depression and eating disorders. So what needs to change in the industry and are you seeing any movement in that direction, in a better direction?
Carolyn Mair: Well I think we're still waiting for some change in that. I mean the cycles of fashion have become shorter and shorter so where they used to be two seasons and perhaps a cruise collection there are now six, seven, ten. Some high street brands have new stock every week, some every two weeks, and the designers are just on a treadmill. And the ones who we've seen are the very famous high-end designers where it makes news when they have mental health problems or worse. But there's a whole industry behind them of designer's assistants and interns who don't make that publicity when they have mental health problems. And it's not, there isn't time to speak out about how you feel, there isn't that possibility really. And it's not just the designers, its models as well who, when there's a fashion week or on shoots, they have to be available from the early morning to late at night looking fantastic the whole time often like no time to eat or very little time to eat, no food available for them, and there are reports of models saying that they've not been treated very well at all, that they just treated like a, like a clothes hanger I suppose, and that they're not called by their names. Not all, and we see the very famous ones, the ones who have fantastic lifestyles, but again there are thousands of models who don't enjoy that kind of celebrity status whose mental health may well suffer. And it may be that the fashion industry attracts people who are susceptible to mental health problems because it's so creative, so dynamic, so exciting and the pressures are on not just to work but to be on form 24/7.
Kaitlin Luna: And on the flip side for consumers who see images of these impossibly thin and beautiful models, what does that do to a person's self-image and their positive feelings about themselves?
Carolyn Mair: There's quite a lot of research now which shows that even a very brief look at fashion imagery of thin models or airbrush models can damage a person's body satisfaction, so they feel worse about their body than they did before after a very brief exposure. And given that we're exposed to images of a fashion thousands of times in a week you know this is affecting most of us, and social media has a lot to answer for to be honest with the images that are on Instagram for example. So anyone who likes fashion is going to be following the people, the designers they like, the models they like, the influencers they like, on Instagram and most of them have a particular image which, you know, individuals want to aspire to, they aspire to be, but quite often are unattainable.
Kaitlin Luna: And what do you think needs to change in this area?
Carolyn Mair: Well the same as it across the whole industry. More diversity, more representation and not just on the other side of the camera but in front of the camera so more diversity in the workforce of the fashion industry and in their peripheral workforce so model agents and so on. So far, more representation of the populations that the fashion industry serves, and this isn't just about skin tone, it's about body type, body shape, ages, ability and just the whole range you know. As I said right at the start everyone wears clothes and everyone should be represented by the fashion industry.
Kaitlin Luna: Where do you see psychologists fitting into all this in terms of helping promote more inclusivity and diversity?
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Carolyn Mair: Psychologists can run studies that test hypotheses that say that improving representation is good for the industry and good for the consumer and show the evidence, bring the evidence to the fashion industry. Psychologists can also help with the communities who are marginalized. And when psychologists work in the industry they can actually really show the industry and how beneficial it is to have a diverse workforce. I mean there's plenty of evidence for that already.
Kaitlin Luna: Absolutely, and turning to a more casual topic what are your thoughts today about people dressing more casually? I mean a lot of people wear active wear as everyday clothing and offices are becoming more casual in a lot of instances.
Carolyn Mair: Yeah I'm fine with that. You know, in London you can wear absolutely anything you want and nobody looks at all. I think it's great that people can wear whatever they want, whether that's active wear, casual wear to work. I think it's a really positive move. For lots of people working in a formal suit it doesn't represent their true selves or their self-identity and so they might struggle to do the kind of job that they want to do if they were free to choose what clothes they can wear. But me for example, I really don't like wearing suits and I would typically wear jeans, I'm wearing jeans now. Or jeans and a jumper, or jeans and a shirt, so yeah I think people should be allowed to dress in the way they want because the way we dress is part of our identity, part of who we are.
Kaitlin Luna: Yeah so is what you're saying is a more casual environment overall does help people's mental health I imagine. Because if they are expressing their authentic self as opposed to wearing a suit or uniform every day, probably feeling better yea.
Carolyn Mair: Exactly, they have the freedom to choose. And autonomy, again plenty of evidence to support this, giving people autonomy at work or in their lives in whichever aspect is possible, is a really positive element of people's life.
Kaitlin Luna: So people say often “dress for success,” does that hold water these days?
Carolyn Mair: It depends on the industry. Progressive industries success might be a pair of jeans and a cool t-shirt with a slogan of something. Still in finance it might be that you still have to wear a suit. When people ask me this question I would always say do some homework, find out what the next level in the hierarchy is wearing. What is the unwritten rule for that job, because you know if something is inappropriate or just considered not suitable by the person who might be hiring you, then however much you love it, it shows your identity, the person the hirer might believe that you're not really the right person for that job. In my opinion it shouldn't matter but it still does.
Kaitlin Luna: As a fashion psychologist, how do you approach your wardrobe?
Carolyn Mair: I like very plain casual clothes. I try to dress appropriately for a situation that I'm going to. Yeah I would say that I don't want clothes that shout, so I prefer clothes that don't say very much about them, so I'm not a logo wearer. Yeah typically quite plain clothes, often black or navy and in the summer maybe white, so I'm a quite plain dresser.
Kaitlin Luna: You know I've actually noticed that some of the biggest fashion designers you know will come out on the catwalk and they're wearing very simple, maybe black clothing. So is there any psychological reason why they might do that? Or are they trying to have an emphasis be on the clothes, of their other clothes that they're designing?
Carolyn Mair: Yes, it's almost an unwritten rule I think of the fashion industry, is black, almost like a modest dressing, quite loose fluid, gender fluid clothes. Yeah and that's been around for quite a while in the industry. It varies, I mean there are some fashion designers who dress quite, outrageously let's say, but yeah the majority I would say dress plainly. Perhaps yes as you say to not distract from the creations they've made on the catwalk.
Kaitlin Luna: It's always kind of struck me as interesting, someone who creates this like nearly dynamic outfit maybe it's colorful or something and then comes out and they're wearing maybe a black pants and a black shirt, sneakers or something like that, it's always a little jarring. I wanted to go back to, you mention about the workplace uniform and kind of a trend you might see like in the Silicon Valley or something where entrepreneurs wear casual clothes. Maybe they wear the same thing every day, that kind of thing. Is there anything behind that, you mentioned you people wanting to reserve cognitive resources, but is there any other, are there any psychological reasons why someone might want to wear a self-imposed uniform?
Carolyn Mair: It says something to the people who they are interacting with. For example it's not going to be any commentary around their clothes if they wear the same thing every day. So you know this issue with, oh wow, drawing attention to what they're wearing just won't happen if you wear the same thing every day. And perhaps that's why fashion designers and people who work in fashion wear a lot of black loose clothing because it doesn't say anything much about what they're wearing. But I think there's an important part about the cognitive resources, because if you're stressed about what you're wearing or if you're thinking about what you're wearing you don't have the capacity to think fully on the job at hand. You know worrying is it appropriate or have I dressed correctly for this meeting and then I'm going to another meeting. So I think a work uniform frees up time in the morning, you don't have to make decisions about what to wear for the day, but it's also very efficient at work because you won't get comments on what you're wearing. I would think it's rare that people would say oh you're wearing the same thing every day.
Kaitlin Luna: And do you think there's a lot of openings in the fashion industry for psychologists? You mentioned wanting to get more people in the field but do you think this is an area of study that you see growing in the future and opportunities for psychologists or people with a background in psychology or interest in psychology to find a way to use their knowledge in perhaps a different field than they expected?
Carolyn Mair: Absolutely, I think this year is a very interesting year for fashion retail. I think a lot of fashion retailers will struggle this year with the rising consumer demands and the rising competition and the rise of omni-channel shopping and so psychologists are suddenly being the people as well as tech people who are necessary in the fashion industry to understand all the processes that happen in the brain as well as all the social processes that happen between people. So consumers, fashion employees, and the peripheral people who work with fashion brands but are not actually part of the brands. And I think a huge opening will happen, and this takes time. So the course has only started recruiting in 2014. But I would say in a couple of years' time there's gonna be great demand for psychologists working in the fashion industry and I really feel it's important that people who work in the fashion industry as psychologists have psychology training and don't just feel that because they're human that they are psychologists. I think this is really really important because psychologists are also trained in ethics and understanding that, you know, people are vulnerable and sort of making claims about what happens because this all that can backfire with people who are not able to handle the outcomes of something for example. So I'm really conscious of some people wanting to work in the fashion industry as psychologists who have little or no understanding or training of psychology.
Kaitlin Luna: And going off what you just mentioned about ethics, there's been some scandals from recent brands like Gucci and Prada who've had issues with race and cultural sensitivity issues. So how can psychologists contribute to helping brands in this manner?
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Carolyn Mair: Well, psychologists can help they because they need to help brands become more diverse in the areas of design, in their thinking, in their communications. Because this is an issue of lack of diversity as much as it's an ethical issue and a racist issue. So the lack of awareness by these brands is clearly shocking. And running diversity programs, implicit bias training to overcome the biases that people have, and also getting people on the ground actually working with the communities who these brands serve. It's beyond defensive and you know I think the brands have to hold their hands up when they've done something that is offensive. You know it all comes down to diversity, but the ethics is across the board and it needs to be implicit in everything that a brand does. So, you know, we're seeing with more data use the ethics of that has to be really seriously considered.
Kaitlin Luna: From your perspective what is the future of the fashion industry?
Carolyn Mair: Well I think the fashion industry is going to diversify not only in terms of its workforce or it's symmetry but in terms of its products, in terms of its services, because if we really are going to be buying less and it still needs to make a profit it needs to do that somehow. I think the fashion industry is also going to need to work with other disciplines, it's already working with AI and tech, it will be working far more with materials scientists, creating biodegradable textiles that can be woven easily and laundered and cared for but also can be recycled in a way that doesn't harm the environment. The fashion industry will of course be working with more psychologists and apologists. I think it's going to be an industry that in the past has been very much design based and business based that we will see the necessity, like neuroscience, for working with lots of different disciplines and actually appreciating the value of the diversity of disciplines within the industry, it's gonna make it far richer.
Kaitlin Luna: Thank you so much for joining us Dr. Mair, really appreciate your time.
Carolyn Mair: Thank you very much for having me.
Kaitlin Luna: