Wearing a cause: personal motivations for expressing beliefs through dress

Abstract

This qualitative research used data collected during 35 free response interviews to explore personal motivations of individuals who wear dress items that have text, images, or symbols that state an opinion or affiliation with a cause. The review of literature focused on researchers who had addressed issues of the self and symbolic interaction, the printed t-shirt as a social dress object, identity creation and postmodern theory, the impact of consumerism on identity creation, meaningful dress objects, and stylistic messaging through dress. Five research questions developed out of the review of literature that addressed concepts of self, validation strategies relative to wearing cause representational dress, how individuals established boundaries around appropriate opinions to voice through dress, and how individuals viewed the ability of mass produced objects to relay meaningful messages. Transcribed interview text was analyzed to identify recurring themes that were relevant to the posed research questions. Because of the large volume of data collected, NVIVO 7™ was used to organize and manage analysis. Themes, described as nodes in NVIVO 7™, were refined over time and reviewed by a second party for validity. Themes that surfaced out of the data indicated that the self is impacted by heightening an individual’s awareness of the relationship between personal beliefs and the dress that he or she wears. The process of validation was found to be situational and grounded in a participant’s ability to find dress that accurately reflected his or her personal beliefs and concerns. Participants were overwhelmingly concerned about offending others with derogatory sentiments communicated through their dress. Additionally, participants exhibited a tendency to assess social situations ahead of time and gauge how others were likely to react to the cause representational dress that they considered wearing. Finally, it was found that individuals can find meaning in cause representational dress that is produced as a good, but that the integrity of the dress item representing the cause does break down with mass production and mass adoption by others.