A design tool to identify and measure the profile of sustainable conscious fashion costumer

Abstract

Ethical Consumer, Environmental Consciousness, This research intends to help designers to improve their projects for a new market whose concerns are leaning toward a more sustainability life-style. Clothing, more precisely "fashion", a better term for describing the clothing system in the period in which we live [1], is the fruit of contemporary consumer products and one way of human subject expressiveness of social and economic representation in society. The purchase of these products has witnessed an evolution, first they were searched by need and now they were bought by impulse and consumer desire. This is the reflection of a complex and organized system called fast-fashion. Consumers have been encouraged to buy a greater volume of clothes and a large amount of waste materials has been increased as well as their impact in Nature. However, the environmental awareness also grew and a new kind of market emerges in the field of fashion [2]. The "environment" has become a differentiation source and a concern requirement that designers and green companies have to recognize, specially because of the values related to the preservation of the universe as a whole; this is increasingly felt by consumers, the main social actors in the construction of the consumption of green products and brands [3]. All products we buy obey to a lifecycle, but if the Design is a methodology to “solve problems”, designers can change consumption trends by projecting products of greater durability and more efficiency planning, rationalizing all resources implied in the product lifecycle [4]. This study is made on the basis of a similar study performed by Bertolini and Possomai, but instead of being applied to a generic ecologically, ethical products, it will be specific for the clothing field. A methodology will be made based on an instrument in the form of questionnaire for a consumers focus group between 25 and 65 years, part of a active working population that has more interest in Fashion [5]. The study variables will take into account not only generic parameters related to the type of most consumed clothes but as the type of conservation exerted on its use and on its disposal. This instrument will identify groups of consumers with similar personal values, it will examine their buying criteria and it will verify their level of environmental consciousness, having as perspective on the economic viability of future clothes design products.