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The article presents papers from selected institutes including "Asian textile and apparel trade: moving forward with regional integration," by William E. James of Asian Development Bank, "SMEs in the Philippine manufacturing industry and globalization: meeting the development challenges," by Rafaelita Mercado Aldaba of Philippine Institute for Development Studies, and "Women and livelihoods in post-Tsunami India and Aceh," by Barbara S. Nowak and Tanya Caulfield of National University of Singapore.

The International Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) regime currently endeavours to protect complex subject matters ranging from art and fashion to software. This paper will specifically examine the key international instruments (issued by the World Intellectual Property Organization [WIPO] and those applicable in the European Union) governing the apparel industry. To that end, it will analyse the different instruments governing the sector and will also highlight in brief the various initiatives undertaken by the WIPO towards facilitating and harmonising the process of protecting the different facets of the fashion sector. Further, we will look at the current statistics available on the different databases and will gauge how the sector has fared. Over the course of the paper, the authors will highlight the gap in the protection granted to garments or cloth weaving techniques belonging to indigenous communities (such fashion articles fall under the broad domain of the traditional cultural expression of a community) ranging from handlooms and handicrafts to unique textile and design prints, motifs, symbols, accessories, and so on, as compared to international fashion corporations. The existing gaps would be analysed in the current international IPR regime which makes it challenging to apply the current norms and standards of IP to elements of traditional and cultural clothing of indigenous communities. It will locate a few examples of communities utilising IPR to protect and promote their cultural heritage in the garment industry. Continuing on this tangent, the paper will look at how the IP regime can be adequately expanded to incorporate the needs and interests of indigenous communities and promote their fashion and culture. The final part of the paper will be conclusive in nature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Minimalist fashion has become a key element of the wider minimalist movement that promotes reducing one's wardrobe space to a bare minimum of essential items (or a 'capsule wardrobe') with few, quality items that coordinate. Minimalist‐inspired 'fashion challenges', in which participants are challenged to only wear a certain number of garments over a certain time period, have also gained increasing momentum, particularly in the USA and the UK. This study considers 'Project 333' (in which participants must only wear 33 items of clothes over a three‐month period), and the 'Six Items Challenge' (which requires participants to only wear six garments over 6 weeks), to explore their potential to encourage sustainable fashion (non‐)consumption. This is achieved via an analysis of 20 blog posts of individuals reflecting on their own participation in the two challenges and an auto‐ethnography of my own participation in the Six Items Challenge. The research reveals that while just over half of participants mentioned sustainability as a motivation or outcome of their participation in a fashion challenge, the challenges' focus on garment reduction, re‐use, repair, and not shopping while partaking in them, renders them sustainability driven in practice. Almost all challenges also mentioned personal benefits of conducting a fashion challenge (such as money and time saved plus greater fashion creativity), which could be seen as a helpful way in which to encourage their uptake. However, the paper also considers the idealisation of 'perfect' minimalist wardrobe spaces and subsequent fashioned identities and issues regarding who has the pecuniary means to embrace the quality over quantity narrative of the challenges. The paper therefore concludes that fashion challenges do have the potential to encourage more sustainable fashion practices, but they simultaneously raise tensions regarding idealised minimalist fashioned identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the mechanisms under which the transmission of CSR practices and values could be successfully attained in buyer‐supplier relationships, particularly in the context of garment supply chains that involve developing country suppliers. Examining the buyer‐supplier dyadic CSR transmission process through the lens of an inter‐organizational learning perspective rather than the traditional compliance‐based one, this study proposes four distinct CSR transmission modes: Monitoring – Compliance, Capacity building – Internalization, Demonstration – Adaptation, and Role modeling – Imitation. Notably, the findings reveal that without buyers' stringent CSR management techniques, CSR practices and values can still be successfully transmitted to suppliers with the aid of proper learning facilitators. The theoretical and practical contributions of the paper are also provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to describe the design and pilot program of a parent designed clothing option for hospitalized infants and children and to better understand the importance and effects of hospital clothing on families. Little research has been done on how clothing a hospitalized child impacts the child's quality of life and their parent's perception of care. Research has been limited to clothing in adults and its relation to infection. Design and Methods: A pediatric outfit (the Georgie) for hospitalized infants and children was designed based on insight from bedside nursing, physicians, parents, and supply chain personnel. The garment was pilot tested on select patients from intensive care units of a large children's hospital. A pre‐ and post‐use questionnaire was disseminated with questions focused on aspects of the child's care, comfort in changing child's clothes/diapers, number of times the Georgie was used and comfort level of using the Georgie. Survey responses were summarized using descriptive statistics. Results: Parents overall response to the Georgie was positive with great value placed on having their child dressed. All parents (n = 5) responded that too many lines were an obstacle to having their child dressed. Compared to the hospital Johnny, the Georgie (80%, n = 4) was the most preferred when placement and securement of monitoring lines was taken into consideration with one parent preferring a blanket and diaper only. Nurses felt the benefit outweighed the added effort in dressing the patient. The majority of the nurses had a positive initial reaction to the Georgie (80%, n = 4) and felt the lines or external devices were "very secure/secure" (80%, n = 4) when the patient was wearing the Georgie. Practice Implications: Implementing a new family centered care initiative of dressing critically ill patients in the Georgie may improve patient and family's quality of life while hospitalized. A larger scale study is indicated to assess the importance of dressing hospitalized pediatric patients for their families, to clarify the effect on nursing care, to optimize ability to stabilize lines, and to understand logistical issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the tools for estimating shooting distance is examination of smokeless powder particle distribution on the target area. Components of the powder that are utilized for this purpose are nitrite anions. The traditional method for detecting nitrite anions mainly involves applying the Griess Test. A known‐distance test firing is performed with shootings done at several distances from different targets. The color pattern corresponding to nitrite anions from the crime scene is then compared to the patterns obtained from known distances of the test firing. When a mutual shooting takes place at the crime scene, and a shooter also becomes a shootout victim, it is possible that when examining the shooter as a victim (i.e. target), additional nitrite‐containing particles, resulting from his/her shooting, will be present on the shooter‐victim clothing. This kind of addition may affect the estimation and practically give a shorter‐distance estimation comparing to the actual distance. In this paper, an experimental setup was designed in order to understand if nitrite‐containing particles were added to a victim as a consequence of him/her being also a shooter. All of the experiments were predominantly designed to try and minimize the effects of other influencing factors and variables in order to examine if the additions resulting from the firing action affect distance estimation. The experiments involved various types of pistols and distances. The results show that in such a scenario, there are marginal additions of nitrite signals on the victim's shirt. Although the forensic expert's final assessment was within the tolerance interval at all distances, caution should be exercised when attempting to estimate shooting distances in scenarios where the victim also shoots. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a full body virtual try‐on which handles both top and bottom garments and generates realistic try‐on images. For the full body virtual try‐on, this paper addresses lack of suitable training data to align and fit top and bottom naturally. The proposed system consists of three modules: Clothing Guide Module (CGM), Geometric Matching Module (GMM), and Try‐On Module (TOM). CGM is introduced to generate a clothing guide map (CGMap) which describes the shape of a garment on a model. Unlike the single‐garment virtual try‐on scheme, it is impractical to collect meaningful data at a large scale for the multi‐garment system. To address this problem, two novel training strategies are proposed to leverage the existing training data. First, a pseudo triplet of model‐top‐bottom is generated from a pair of model‐top or model‐bottom which are already secured. Second, the CGM network is arranged to be exposed to both top and bottom garments during training. Then, the following GMM networks warp and align the top and bottom garments. Finally, TOM synthesizes a realistic try‐on image with the aligned garment and the CGMap. Experimental results prove remarkable performance of the proposed method in the full body virtual try‐on. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While there has been significant discussion of the intertwined roles of mobility and identity, little has been written about these two factors in relation to an important third factor, dress. This paper examines dress and identity within two lifestyle migration memoirs, as forms of media such as these create socially situated imagined places where readers can explore new lives and ways of being. Using a culturally oriented framework to examine the moving parts of mobility, identity and dress within text and place, this paper engages with Carol Tulloch's theory that styling the body is self‐telling, whereby dress reveals autobiographical details about the self through clothing choices. It argues that moving from one place to another begins a process of change, and that clothes are used to signify this process to others. This paper contributes to understanding the transformative process of migration, particularly as it relates to imaginative explorations associated with texts. It also contributes to another underdeveloped field, the study of dress in rural areas. Its original application of Tulloch's theory along with broader social theories, within a discussion of lifestyle migration discourse and dress, means that it differs from previous migration research. This paper discusses lifestyle migration and resulting identity changes as demonstrated in two literary texts. The texts, as do media more generally, provide an important place for readers to imaginatively explore new identities and ways of living that cannot be uncovered in the same way through other methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a novel learning‐based clothing deformation method to generate rich and reasonable detailed deformations for garments worn by bodies of various shapes in various animations. In contrast to existing learning‐based methods, which require numerous trained models for different garment topologies or poses and are unable to easily realize rich details, we use a unified framework to produce high fidelity deformations efficiently and easily. Specifically, we first found that the fit between the garment and the body has an important impact on the degree of folds. We then designed an attribute parser to generate detail‐aware encodings and infused them into the graph neural network, therefore enhancing the discrimination of details under diverse attributes. Furthermore, to achieve better convergence and avoid overly smooth deformations, we proposed to reconstruct output to mitigate the complexity of the learning task. Experimental results show that our proposed deformation method achieves better performance over existing methods in terms of generalization ability and quality of details. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the late 1980s, there has been no explicit regional policy in Canada. Indirectly, though, equalization payments, industrial policies, as well as regional agencies encouraging the adoption of federal industrial and innovation policies, impact regional economies. In 2017, the federal government appeared to alter its approach: the Supercluster initiative was announced, drawing upon the idea that localized networks of interrelated firms can generate innovation and local development. In this paper, we discuss the mechanisms through which spatially focused industrial innovation policy can lead to regional development. We then focus on Canada's Ocean Supercluster initiative. The question we address is as follows: to what extent can this initiative (and, more widely, Canada's Supercluster policy) be understood as a regional development strategy driven by a coherent rationale for regional intervention? Apart from the fact that each Supercluster focuses on a pre‐existing core of firms located within a region, there is little evidence that the Supercluster initiative has regional development objectives or impacts. Key messages: In 2018, Canada's federal government implemented the Supercluster policy. Five regionally focussed clusters were selected for support for business‐led innovation initiatives.Superclusters were presented as a means both to develop regional economies and to enhance Canada's global innovation impact, in a manner similar to Europe's smart specialization.Despite the initial regional dimension, Superclusters are geared towards national, not regional, objectives and do not focus upon regional development processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following Cambodia's violation of human and labour rights, the European Union (EU) decided in February 2020 to withdraw trade preferences for the country temporarily from August 2020. This paper estimates the short‐run impact of preference withdrawal on EU imports from Cambodia. As the EU withdrew preferential tariffs only for certain products and maintained duty‐free quota‐free access for others, I adopt a difference‐in‐differences regression framework and provide supporting evidence for the parallel trend assumption. The results show that preference withdrawal has a significantly positive impact on EU import of affected goods from Cambodia in July 2020, consistent with a last‐minute shipment effect to avoid tariff increases. Subsequently, tariff increases have a significantly negative impact on the EU import of affected goods. These effects are heterogeneous across knitted garments, woven garments, and footwear products. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Forty years ago Robert Blust published a comprehensive, comparative analysis of what he called the 'thunder complex'. Found among linguistically and culturally diverse populations in the Philippines, Indonesia, and peninsular Malaysia, the complex comprises a series of taboos and rites that centre on a belief that certain actions involving a confusion of categories will bring about a punitive storm and the death of offenders in resulting floods, landslides, or lightning strikes. The most typical and widespread of such taboos concern making fun of animals—for example, by dressing them in human clothes, talking to them, or otherwise making them appear ridiculous and so causing people to laugh. The present paper has three objectives. First, I identify a series of rituals performed by adherents of the complex that involve deliberately breaking taboos on animal mockery in order to produce needed rain. Secondly, I introduce a ceremony performed by ethnic minorities in southwestern China for the same purpose. The ceremony has all the hallmarks of the thunder complex and coexists with taboos on making fun of animals. Finally, I discuss what the complex, found among otherwise culturally and linguistic diverse societies, implies for their ontology in regard to human‐animal relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent efforts on wearable robots have focused on augmenting the motor performance and/or protecting the wearer's body with lightweight structures. However, providing human‐scale force and structural stiffness usually conflicts with the wearability. Inspired by sandwich‐structured composites with high structural strengths, widely employed in both nature and man‐made structures, a mechanism of selectively stiffening garments (SSGs) utilizing anisotropic cellular cores and rubber‐laminated face sheets is proposed. While the proposed mechanism shows a high compliance allowing for conformity to the wearer's body when unjammed, it provides a significantly high force density when jammed, compared to conventional jamming methods, allowing for the ability to adjust mechanical properties based on the designs and materials. In this paper, various designs of the sandwich jamming structures for the SSGs with analytical characterizations and experimental validations are introduced. Potential applications for force and motion assistance are also demonstrated and impacted mitigation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on the Tenth International Conference of the Association of Family Ecology and Consumer Sciences, which was held in March 2011, in Pretoria, South Africa. Topics discussed at the conference included strong marketing, labeling in terms of food, clothing and furniture, and knowledge of consumers. The clothing-related papers addressed the use of specific indicators of consumers for evaluating merchandise during pre purchase phase.

The particle size distribution (PSD) of loess particles and agglomerates is the key factor determining the microstructure of loess. The PSD largely determines many physical and mechanical properties such as mechanical strength, deformation characteristics and permeability of loess. In this paper, we combined image processing, geometric measurements and statistical methods to quantitatively characterize the scanning electron microscopy (SEM) images of loess. A new method based on the 'core + clothes' structure is proposed to determine the PSD. The developed Gaussian mixture model is applicable to describe the overall distribution of the image pixel density. Determining pixel density distribution and particle boundary allows for the measurement of various geometric parameters. The comparison analyses suggest that the sieve‐hydrometer method has a well‐developed test procedure; however, the measured particle size is limited to 0.075 mm. The laser diffraction method is simple and fast, yet only weak agglomerates can be dispersed, and very fine particles are influenced by size data conversion theory and light source parameters. X‐ray microtomography has the advantage of a non‐destructive sample preparation and intuitive process. However, the results are greatly affected by the parameter settings and segmentation algorithm, and the segmentation effect is poor for particles with a size smaller than 12 μm. The new image processing technique developed in this study improves the limitation of the measurement results via changes in the loess state (water content, stress level). Moreover, different PSDs can be determined according to the variation of functional units. This work is of great significance for the study of numerous properties related to the loess state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper explores how the materiality of dress mediates and shapes practices of care in the context of dementia. Earlier research called for an approach to conceptualising care that recognised the role played by everyday artefacts. We extend this to a consideration of dress and dressing the body in relation to people with dementia that involves the direct manipulation of material objects, as well as the materiality of bodies. The paper draws on an ESRC funded study Dementia and Dress, which examined experiences of dress for people with dementia, families and care‐workers using ethnographic and qualitative methods. Our analysis explores the process of dressing the body, the physicality of guiding and manipulating bodies into clothing, dealing with fabrics and bodies which ‘act back’ and are resistant to the process of dressing. We consider how the materiality of clothing can constrain or enable practices of care, exploring tensions between garments that support ease of dressing and those that sustain identity. Examining negotiations around dress also reveals tensions between competing ‘logics’ of care (Mol ). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing Connections between four papers, the authors explore how recent writing demonstrates various ways of conceptualizing globalisation in our field, begging the question of "where next for globalization research in #MedEd?" [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors examine the links between economic and social upgrading in a developing country with stringent industry policy and employment legislation, focusing on the strategies of local firms participating in global apparel production networks. Based on the 2015 case studies of five textile and garment firms in Ethiopia, they find that employment security and physical well‐being were driven mainly by government labour regulations negotiated by local employers, workers and trade unions rather than by global buyers and conclude that upgrading and downgrading can occur simultaneously within a firm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Positioning virtual garments onto a 3D avatar is known to be a time-consuming process. This task is usually done manually if the proportion of the garment needs to be kept during the process for a fitting purpose. The positioning of the garment is currently the main limitation to propose a fully automatic virtual try-on application. This paper presents an automatic method based on surface energy minimisation that allows fully automatically positioning of a 3D virtual cloth without deformation of the patterns. The minimum of surface energy is reached by animating the humanoid avatar. Humanoid joints are manipulated to place a 3D avatar into the virtual garment. The proposed method, as well as its implementation, is described in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to contribute to a better understanding of eco-fashion consumption and consumer purchase decisions while constructing one's self with external symbols, such as appearance, clothing and fashion items. This study approaches sustainable clothing from a grounding in design research and the meanings of material culture. The study uses sociology and social psychology; hence, the meaning of appearance and especially clothing and fashion is understood in a social context. This paper also takes an interdisciplinary approach to eco-clothes as cultural and design objects in a social and sustainable development context, objects that intertwine consumers' ethical attitudes and values and how they construct a concept of ‘self’ using external symbols. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on bra damage, specifically damage observed in hook and eye fasteners that are generally located at the backstraps of bras. We describe bra design including the method by which hook and eye fasteners are generally constructed. We assess bra damage in two situations where the damage observed was unexpected given the case scenarios. These were: (i) the complainant of an alleged rape attributed damage to her bra hooks to force during a struggle and (ii) the complainant had earlier manipulated her bra hooks in an incident not related to her complaint. Steriomicroscopy and reconstruction experimentation were necessarily used to assess the bra damage. A systematic approach to damage analysis was employed by the forensic practitioners to correctly identify damage as being a result of mechanical manipulation and therefore as falsified. This paper suggests that more examples of falsified damage should be documented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Boredom reflects the dynamic nature of consumer tastes and preferences. Understanding the role of boredom in clothing disposal is of particular importance given that consumers often dispose of clothes they feel bored with, leading to harmful environmental consequences. Despite its substantial influence on postacquisition behaviours, boredom has received insufficient attention in the disposal literature. In this paper, we explore the factors that lead to boredom and the effect of boredom on retention, recycling and discarding of clothing. We use a sequential mixed‐methods approach, consisting of a first qualitative phase that uses in‐depth interviews to generate hypotheses, followed by a second quantitative phase that tests the hypotheses using survey data. In two phases, we identify the oldness of clothing, decreased social fit and purchase of new clothing as drivers of boredom, which implies that the physical and aesthetic attributes of the clothing, social meaning ascribed to the clothing and situational factors collectively influence feelings of boredom towards owned clothing. As boredom intensifies, consumers are less inclined to keep the item and more inclined to recycle or discard it. Furthermore, we find that attachment and resource input (i.e., money, time and effort) moderate the effect of boredom on decisions regarding disposal methods. The results add to our understanding of emotion‐laden disposal by revealing the role of boredom in clothing disposal. Finally, our findings call for the collective efforts of consumers, retailers, campaigners and policymakers to break away from an increasingly extravagant and wasteful culture of clothing consumption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we present a framework for both skin and cloth deformation. Traditionally, skin and cloth deformations are managed by a non-unified strategy although the skin interacts on clothes and vice versa. In general, the skin is considered as a rigid surface on which the clothes have no effect. We propose in this paper a unified approach for cloth and body deformation. Our system is able to handle both skin and cloth deformation with collision response. These deformations are managed with a particle system. The skin deformation model is a hybrid model, where deformation due to the skeleton motion is controlled geometrically, and where the collision response is handled by a physical-based model. In case of collision among skin and clothes, a reaction and friction forces are applied on both skin and cloth to avoid penetration. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Merging computer-generated objects onto a human video sequence is an important technique for many applications such as augmented reality and special effects in movies. In this paper, we propose a new method for merging virtual objects onto the human video sequence. First, we track the current 3D pose of the human body by using spatio-temporal analysis. Then we generate CG objects and merge them with the human body in video. In this paper, we demonstrate examples of merging virtual cloth with the video-captured images. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a learning‐based clothing animation method for highly efficient virtual try‐on simulation. Given a garment, we preprocess a rich database of physically‐based dressed character simulations, for multiple body shapes and animations. Then, using this database, we train a learning‐based model of cloth drape and wrinkles, as a function of body shape and dynamics. We propose a model that separates global garment fit, due to body shape, from local garment wrinkles, due to both pose dynamics and body shape. We use a recurrent neural network to regress garment wrinkles, and we achieve highly plausible nonlinear effects, in contrast to the blending artifacts suffered by previous methods. At runtime, dynamic virtual try‐on animations are produced in just a few milliseconds for garments with thousands of triangles. We show qualitative and quantitative analysis of results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accurate high‐resolution simulation of cloth is a highly desired computational tool in graphics applications. As single‐resolution simulation starts to reach the limit of computational power, we believe the future of cloth simulation is in multi‐resolution simulation. In this paper, we explore nonlinearity, adaptive smoothing, and parallelization under a full multigrid (FMG) framework. The foundation of this research is a novel nonlinear FMG method for unstructured meshes. To introduce nonlinearity into FMG, we propose to formulate the smoothing process at each resolution level as the computation of a search direction for the original high‐resolution nonlinear optimization problem. We prove that our nonlinear FMG is guaranteed to converge under various conditions and we investigate the improvements to its performance. We present an adaptive smoother which is used to reduce the computational cost in the regions with low residuals already. Compared to normal iterative solvers, our nonlinear FMG method provides faster convergence and better performance for both Newton's method and Projective Dynamics. Our experiment shows our method is efficient, accurate, stable against large time steps, and friendly with GPU parallelization. The performance of the method has a good scalability to the mesh resolution, and the method has good potential to be combined with multi‐resolution collision handling for real‐time simulation in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This systematic review considers the evidence supporting the use of prophylactic dressings for the prevention of pressure ulcer. Electronic database searches were conducted on 25 July 2013. The searches found 3026 titles and after removal of duplicate records 2819 titles were scanned against the inclusion and exclusion criteria. Of these, 2777 were excluded based on their title and abstract primarily because they discussed pressure ulcer healing, the prevention and treatment of other chronic and acute wounds or where the intervention was not a prophylactic dressing (e.g. underpads, heel protectors and cushions). Finally, the full text of 42 papers were retrieved. When these 42 papers were reviewed, 21 were excluded and 21 were included in the review. The single high-quality randomised controlled trial ( RCT) and the growing number of cohort, weak RCT and case series all suggest that the introduction of a dressing as part of pressure ulcer prevention may help reduce pressure ulcer incidence associated with medical devices especially in immobile intensive care unit patients. There is no firm clinical evidence at this time to suggest that one dressing type is more effective than other dressings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A recurrent problem for scholars who investigate traditional and historical clothing is the measuring of items of clothing and subsequent pattern construction. The challenge is to produce exact data without damaging the item. The main focus of this paper is to present a new procedure for establishing a three-dimensional model and the corresponding two-dimensional pattern for items of skin clothing that are not flat. The new method is non-destructive, and also accurate and fast. Furthermore, this paper presents an overview of the more traditional methods of pattern documentation and measurement. Their weaknesses and strengths are also assessed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies pertinent materials related to the conservation of textile apparel and textile-related natural resources that appeared in poster campaign communications published during the Second World War in the US. An examination of World War II poster campaign communications conveying the need for conservation efforts and rationing as communicated to consumers infers the historical context of the era. These poster campaign communications asked consumers to utilize fully of limited resources while maintaining a sense of individuality and trend-setting creativity and fashion. World War II shortages and allocations influenced fashion innovations in women's apparel in the US. This paper provides a retrospective examination of innovative trends and the various conservation themes associated with women's fashion identify themes used to influence and to inspire Americans to reuse and recycle in support of the war effort. At no other time in history was voluntary textile conservation as prevalent in mainstream American culture as it was during the 1940s. Content analysis reveals reoccurring themes that appeared in the advertisements developed by the War Advertising Council in the 1940s and used in their poster campaign advertisements. Themes and conservation activities identified in their poster campaign communications included 'America's New Role as Fashion Arbiters';, 'Conserve Time, Money, Materials for National Defense Program';, 'War Production Board General Limitations Order L-85 - Fabric Conservation on Silhouette Dimensions';, 'Fashion for Victory';, 'Beauty in Peace and War';, 'Fabric Conservation';, 'Teaching Consumers How to Conserve';, 'You're In the War Too';, 'Wearing Clothes More';, 'Changing Materials for War [Nylon]'., In addition, print communications were categorized according to Robertson's adoption process model. This study found evidence that supports that Robertson's adoption process model was a useful tool in studying these poster campaign communications relative to Robertson's decision-making process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fast fashion retailing is leading consumers towards an increased rate of purchasing and the trend to keep clothing for an ever shorter time with the resulting rise in clothing disposal. The aim of this paper is to empirically explore antecedents of two methods of sustainable clothing disposal behaviour in two countries: donating to charities and giving away to family and friends. Using data from females located in Australia and Chile, the authors test the proposed model with structural equation modelling (SEM). The results of this study show that consumer recycling behaviour is a strong and direct driver of donating to charity. In addition, results find that consumer awareness of the environment and consumer age affect donating behaviour. The findings have value for fast fashion retailers, marketers, environmental activists, ecological researchers, charity institutions and public policy makers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Consumption practices of children in contemporary Western societies are implicated in the reconstruction of childhood, according to both popular debate and to those academic perspectives stressing the individualisation of identities within the life course of late modern consumer societies. Yet, little is known about the meanings children themselves give to their own consumption. Drawing from an ethnographic study of children aged 6-11 years and their families, the paper presents girls' constructions of fashion in relation to their own bodies and to those of others. It is shown that although girls may both desire and actually 'dress up' in fashionable clothing, they present a range of contingent and contradictory meanings for doing so. For some girls, 'dressing up' in certain clothes may be a way of 'ageing up' toward feminine adulthood, albeit in restricted contexts and after negotiations between themselves and their parents as to what can be worn and where. Nonetheless, girls in the study also showed anxieties and disapproval of 'showing the body' through 'revealing' clothing. The article concludes by considering the implication of these findings for debates about gendered childhoods, and intergenerational relations in late modern consumer society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The general objective of this paper is to further research on the interaction between civil society organizations (CSOs) and corporations. The aim is to analyze how corporations are responding to demands to enlarge the responsibility sphere. A case is presented in which CSOs are putting pressure on the garment retailer Hennes & Mauritz (H&M) to be responsible for safeguarding workers' rights in the outsourced production of H&M garments. The conclusion of the paper, derived from analyzing the empirical context using discourse theory, is that: (1) CSOs represent a challenging discourse (responsible business) attempting to change the dominant corporate discourse (profitable business); (2) If the challenging discourse is threatening the legitimacy of the corporation, a responsible business discourse is created; and (3) Responding to the demands of the CSOs is done to keep the business practice intact, hence practice is decoupled from the responsible business discourse. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Occupational therapists can no longer rely exclusively on biomedical frameworks to guide their practice and facilitate clinical problem-solving. A postmodernist perspective of health and well-being underlines that the illness experience is not a linear, cause-and-effect equation. Rather, life experiences are constructed through a myriad of social, cultural, physical and economic contexts that are highly unique to each individual. In other words, the assumption that ‘one-size-fits-all’ is as flawed in health care as it is in clothing design. This paper contributes to the growing discussion of health care within the postmodern context of the twenty-first century through first presenting a brief discussion of emerging postmodern thinking and application within the profession, followed by a rationale for the need to scrutinise prevalent modernist assumptions that guide decision-making. Finally, the paper introduces the method of Socratic questioning as a critical tool in successfully carrying out this scrutiny in an empowering and respectful manner for all stakeholders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The clothing industry is widely cited as an industrial sector that is embedded primarily in buyer-driven structures of global commodity chains in which retailers and brand-name companies, rather than manufacturers, are the key driving forces. Analysis of clothing production systems within the commodity chain literature, however, has been predominantly Western-centric, with little emphasis on similarities and/or differences between competitors in different institutional and societal contexts. Therefore, this paper explores the ways in which international and domestic clothing brand-owners compete for market shares within Indonesia. The analytical focus includes important issues such as the influence of the regulatory policy framework on firm-specific behaviour as well as applied marketing strategies within individual fashion segments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores changing relationships between apparel firms and rural labor markets in Wisconsin over the last decade. Mainstream explanations of recent changes in the apparel industry suggest that rural communities will lose tedious or physically demanding, low-skilled apparel manufacturing jobs but will gain more information-intensive and desirable "apparel service" employment. Through case studies of apparel firms located in two Wisconsin communities, the paper argues that current changes in the industry not only affect communities unevenly but, even in regions where apparel service firms have provided significant numbers of new jobs, these jobs are less well paid, more casually structured, and less secure than manufacturing employment has been. The paper argues that current concepts of the economic embeddedness of firms in communities need to be refined to permit consideration of the kinds of leverage and voice that community organizations have in confronting new forms of corporate capital. The two case studies demonstrate that corporate embeddedness and its labor market outcomes are linked to changes in the global market in which firms compete. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the intersection of consumption, Christianity and the nation in Western Province, Papua New Guinea. It examines the significance of the adoption of European-introduced clothing and the consumption of trade store foods like tea, tinned fish, rice, sugar and tinned milk for Gogodala communities of PNG. Although initially disgusted by the idea of consuming substances that seemed reminiscent of mother's milk, Gogodala now embrace trade store foods with enthusiasm. The paper traces the transformation of Gogodala attitudes to such products in terms of the development of a 'national culture' as well as a more globalising Christianity. It suggests that, for the Gogodala, consumption is an arena for what Foster has termed 'everyday nation making'. Yet, in this case, 'the nation' is understood and realised through a metaphoric association with Christian others, particularly Europeans. The basis of national subjectivity for the Gogodala, then, is an enduring relationship between Gogodala and expatriate Europeans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, paper we present a coherence-based method to detect collisions between the garment and human model for dressed human simulations. Based on the property of coherence, collisions can be rapidly detected by tracking the movement of the most likely geometric elements to collide. The voxel technique is employed to quickly identify the potential collision region. Experimental results show that our method is very efficient. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper was to determine whether there is a difference in the readiness to accept Western standards of beauty in which thinness is an ideal of beauty and attractiveness, as well in body and appearance satisfaction between Muslim adolescent girls attending madrassa and dressing in accordance with tradition, that is to say wearing hijab, and Muslim adolescent girls who do not wear hijab and who follow contemporary Western-influenced fashion trends. Both of these groups were also compared to a non-Muslim group of adolescent girls. The sample consisted of 75 Muslim adolescent girls with hijab, 75 Muslim adolescent girls without hijab and 75 Orthodox adolescent girls. The following instruments were used: the Eating Attitudes Test ( EAT-26), the Sociocultural Attitudes towards Appearance Questionnaire ( SATAQ-3) and the Contour Drawing Rating Scale ( CDRS). The highest level of body satisfaction (despite this group having the highest body weight in the sample) was evident among Muslim adolescent girls attending madrassa and wearing hijab. They also showed significantly less pressure to attain the Western thin-ideal standards of beauty than adolescent girls who accept Western way of dressing. Research results indicate a significant role of socio-cultural factors in one's attitude towards the body image, but also opens the question of the role of religion as a protective factor when it comes to the body and appearance attitude among Muslim women who wear hijab. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper deals with the new veiling phenomenon that initially began two decades ago in countries like Egypt and was taken up in increasing numbers by young educated and working women. The new veiling, however, is no longer restricted to the Middle East. This form of dress is now being adopted by many young Moslem women of various national backgrounds all over the world. The new veiling is an individual choice made by those women and therefore requires a deeper analysis beyond the apparent Islamic revival or the simple re-activation of tradition. An analogy is drawn here between the Western anorexic position and this new veiling. The psychological similarities between both situations are illustrated using the social predicament model. The paper argues that both respond to a number of pressures that are now placed upon women globally including conflicting cultural messages and contradictory cultural expectations. These global social changes have their impact on women's sense of their ‘self’ and ‘body’ and therefore need to be seen in terms of women's pursuit of self-definition, development and power negotiations within the progressive differentiation of society under change. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Researchers have proposed various techniques for cloth simulation in the last decades. The crucial problem in interactive animation for cloth is how to speed up simulation with a stable system. In this paper, we describe a realistic and stable scheme for cloth simulation based on mass-spring system. This scheme modifies semi-implicit integration used in cloth simulation system with an efficient damping method. Semi-implicit integration methods have been widely used in dynamic simulation because of acceptable speed and stability. However, internal damping forces are generated with respect to rotational rigid motions, which are only depending on relative velocities. Undesirable change in global movement of dynamic cloth could result in damping artifact. We replace the internal damping forces with an optimal damping method which is based on iterative spring damping but the limit can be computed directly. The method provides simple damping parameter estimation and guarantees conservation of global movement. As a result, complex clothes can be realistically and stably simulated in real time. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT The paper investigates authenticity in supply chain, applying the concept of self-authentication to analyse authentic productions resulting from an authentic supply chain. Adopting the method of action research, the authors accompany the planning and creation of an extended local textile and apparel supply chain based on the native wool produced by autochthonous Tuscan sheep. The research studies native wool's self-authentications along the supply chain together with the related compromises and paradoxes. The methodology used is based on a mixture of qualitative techniques that has favoured researcher participation in the context of analysis. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Auxetic fabrics have gained an increasing attention in the auxetic material area in recent years. Especially, auxetic fabrics fabricated based on both weft-knitted and warp-knitted structures have made some important progress. However, all the knitted auxetic fabrics reported so far are fabricated based on 2D knitted structures, although some of the weft-knitted auxetic fabrics are finally formed into 3D forms. This paper reports a novel kind of 3D auxetic fabric fabricated based on a warp-knitted spacer structure with adoption of a special geometrical configuration which is formed with parallelograms. The auxetic behavior of these fabrics is discussed in terms of tensile direction, geometrical parameter, and repeated extension. The shape fitting ability on a spherical surface is also demonstrated. The results shows that the 3D auxetic fabrics have auxetic behavior in all the fabric plane directions and the highest auxetic effect is obtained when stretched in the weft direction of the fabric. The 3D auxetic fabrics also display an excellent shape fitting ability, which makes them very attractive for various applications where fitting to the human body's shape is highly required, such as bra cups, protectors for knees and elbows, shoes covers, etc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present a new technique which can handle both point and sliding constraints in the multigrid (MG) framework. Although the MG method can theoretically perform as fast as O(N), the development of a clothing simulator based on the MG method calls for solving an important technical challenge: handling the constraints. Resolving constrains has been difficult in MG because there has been no clear way to transfer the constraints existing in the finest level mesh to the coarser level meshes. This paper presents a new formulation based on soft constraints, which can coarsen the constraints defined in the finest level to the coarser levels. Experiments are performed which show that the proposed method can solve the linear system up to 4-9 times faster in comparison with the modified preconditioned conjugate gradient method (MPCG) without quality degradation. The proposed method is easy to implement and can be straightforwardly applied to existing clothing simulators which are based on implicit time integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For a clothing system, comfort is a fundamental necessity. In this paper, basic definitions and elements of clothing comfort and the general research trends were reviewed. In particular, understanding comfort of textile materials, its relevance to clothing choice and some assessment methods have been discussed. The impact of fabric and clothing attributes on clothing comfort was explored. Psychological, physical and physiological perceptions of clothing comfort were reviewed, including subjective and objective modes of assessment. A thorough discussion of handle comfort was presented, including assessment methods. Statistical presentations from selected comfort studies were also reviewed. Other sensory comfort properties particularly acoustic and appearance were also mentioned. From the aforementioned reviews, it was noted that the main focus for most researchers has been on sensorial and thermal comfort. Practical Applications To comfort researchers, this review gives resourceful insights relevant to subject selection and the general research trend on clothing comfort. For clothing manufacturers, the compiled consumer feedbacks by wearers of particular clothing are tools for product improvement to enhance utility. Finally, this review informs consumers about clothing comfort, which will contribute to informed decision making during purchasing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fashion involvement has been regarded as an important research topic in consumer research. Despite the importance of this topic, no attempt has been made in the past to review, assess and consolidate extant research on fashion involvement. This study presents a comprehensive and critical review and analysis of the recent studies on involvement in the context of fashion clothing to indicate the current state and identify possible gaps. A content analysis of the current peer-reviewed journal articles published on this research topic reveals a paucity of research on a number of antecedents and consequences of involvement. Further, the findings show that the research method is biased towards the survey method as opposed to experimentation. In this paper, the results of the content analysis outlining methodologies, sample characteristics, variables and major findings are provided and analysed, followed by directions for future research, theoretical and managerial implications, and limitations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the gendered implications of defiling a churchman’s ceremonial cope by tearing or ‘dagging’ it, or by cutting off the tip of the garment’s voluminous hood; ‘dagging’ entailed slashing the cloth to imitate knights returning frayed from battle. Analysing a number of distinctive instances of this remarkable act of violence from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries suggests that both clerics and laymen forcibly rent a cleric’s cope or hood to ridicule, emasculate, and ‘frock’ the churchman during conflicts over power and authority. Disfiguring a cleric’s vestments was apparently understandable–to the victim, aggressor and audience alike–as an act of public defamation, figurative impotency and symbolic illegitimacy. This menacing-yet-comical form of mastery and disparagement was remarkable enough to find its way into contemporary literature. An examination of contemporary chronicles, sermons and episcopal registers suggests that clerics and their supporters symbolically de-legitimised clerical adversaries during conflicts within the church by targeting their ceremonial garments and ‘dagging’ them to mimic lay fashion. Laymen, on the other hand, tore the vestments worn by clerics who endeavoured to excommunicate them in order to thwart episcopal authority and to demonstrate their own physical mastery over, and effrontery towards, the ecclesiastical body. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the same way that the Futurists aggressively reworked the purpose of literary language, severing it from its representational responsibilities and freeing it from symbolic signification, avant-garde artists overturned assumptions about clothing and cosmetics. This article examines the unconventional, at times outlandish and subversive, strategies of representing, clothing and adorning the human body, such as those on display among members of the avant-garde in daily life, on the theater stage, and at costume balls of the period. It focuses on the trope of paper/cardboard costumes and proxies in Blok's The Fairground Booth, the Paper Ball organized to celebrate the play's premier, Mayakovsky's Vladimir Mayakovsky: A Tragedy, and the real-life costume balls taking place in Moscow and St. Petersburg. It argues that the avant-garde reconceptualization of physical appearance and treatment of the body as an artistic canvas relied on the principle of applying or using materials unexpectedly, thereby disrupting traditional, culturally determined assumptions about aesthetics and form-function relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Progress in cloth simulation for computer animation and apparel design has led to a multitude of deformation models, each with its own way of relating geometry, deformation, and forces. As simulators improve, differences between these models become more important, but it is difficult to choose a model and a set of parameters to match a given real material simply by looking at simulation results. This paper provides measurement and fitting methods that allow nonlinear models to be fit to the observed deformation of a particular cloth sample. Unlike standard textile testing, our system measures complex 3D deformations of a sheet of cloth, not just one-dimensional force-displacement curves, so it works under a wider range of deformation conditions. The fitted models are then evaluated by comparison to measured deformations with motions very different from those used for fitting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a new model of consumer impulsivity, using type of good, a person's endorsement of materialistic values, and identity deficits as predictors. Traditional decision making and psychological accounts see impulsive behaviour as a general overweighing of short-term gratification (I want that dress now) relative to longer-term concerns, irrespective of consumer good. Our proposal is that consumers' impulsivity (a) differs according to type of good and (b) is linked systematically to a combination of materialistic values and high identity deficits. Beginning with Study 1, three experiments, using a temporal discounting paradigm, show consistently that discount rates are higher for goods that are seen as highly expressive of identity (e.g., clothes) than goods not expressive of identity (e.g., basic body care products). For materialistic consumers, identity deficits predict discount rates for identity-expressive goods (Study 2), and discount rates change for materialistic individuals when their identity deficits are made salient (Study 3). These findings support a conceptualization of consumer impulsivity as identity-seeking behaviour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]