Looking Good, Feeling Good, Doing Good? Exploring Aesthetic, Affective, Subjective, and Symbolic Dimensions of Women's Clothing Consumption in Relation to Environmental and Social Sustainability

This interdisciplinary project examines individual clothing experiences situated in social-ecological webs of practice. I analyze issues in apparel consumption (e.g. acquisition, use, maintenance, disposal) as they relate to (e.g. hinder, facilitate, are irrelevant to) environmental and social sustainability. The framework developed offers a systems perspective grounded in in-depth interviews with nineteen women in the Midwest; material culture analysis of garments; and fieldwork in homes (e.g. wardrobes, laundering spaces).;Three core issues framed women's clothing experiences: (1) negotiating multi-sensory experiences with personal and social tastes; (2) balancing goals of quality, deals, and convenience; and (3) perceiving garment stories as distant or intertwined with personal experiences. I explore themes of appearance and identity, context and habits, and trivialization and domesticization of clothing. Through these frames, four strands of embodied experience emerge: (1) Multi-sensory aesthetic pleasures (2) Affective experiences (3) Subjective understandings (4) Socially-situated symbolic meanings These are pivotal intimate dimensions of experience and, thus, potential sites of intervention.;This dissertation contributes to sustainability initiatives by providing a model that visualizes embodied aesthetic, affective, subjective, and symbolic dimensions of individually-scaled clothing practices as critical factors that reciprocally constitute each other and systems structures. My Web of Practice model allows us to zoom in and out between macro and micro contexts to show where sustainability initiatives can occur. Initiatives attending to (e.g. recognizing, respecting, redirecting, reinforcing) strands of meaning along thematic issues can help craft ethical, ecological, meaningful, and engaging clothing practices.;Stakeholders (e.g. individuals, apparel industry professionals, cultural mediators, educators, policymakers) and opportunities exist across systems levels: (1) All stakeholders working to reshape norms (2) Individuals engaging in environmentally, socially sensitive behaviors that support wellbeing (3) Apparel industry designing for meaningful, mindful engagement with clothing (4) All stakeholders advocating for technological, educational, economic, or legislative infrastructure on family, community, or international scales that enable sustainable practices (5) All stakeholders working to make visible interdependencies.;In addition to access points listed, I suggest that creating dialogue across disciplines (e.g. sustainable design, embodiment theory, human ecology) and focusing on meaning and connections (e.g. material culture, aesthetics, feminist care ethics) can help build sustainable clothing systems.