Clothing and the Social Self: An Analysis and Categorization

Open Access
- Author:
- Stratico, Katherine Rose
- Area of Honors:
- Marketing
- Degree:
- Bachelor of Science
- Document Type:
- Thesis
- Thesis Supervisors:
- Jennifer Chang Coupland, Thesis Supervisor
Jennifer Chang Coupland, Thesis Supervisor
Alok Kumar, Faculty Reader
Jennifer Chang Coupland, Thesis Honors Advisor - Keywords:
- clothing
brands
social self
social identity
self-extension
relationship form
Family Fashionista
Friendly Stylista
Society Sartorialist - Abstract:
- As the fashion industry continues to embrace fashion blogs and other social media, the social nature of fashion is more and more evident. Two important questions, then, are brought to light: what exactly is the self that consumers and fashion-followers are trying to express, and with whom do they want to connect? This thesis tries to answer these questions by studying social identity and construct theory, self-extension theory, and relationship form theory and relating them to each other. The researcher hypothesizes that consumers tend to express themselves as one social identity – family member, intimate society member, or society at-large member – depending on whom most influences their life and fashion choices and with whom they most wish to communicate through their clothing. With ethnographic and auto-ethnographic research, she also shows that the more intimate the dominant social identity, the more a consumer feels that clothing is intertwined with his or her social identity and the more he or she is committed to brands, and the relationships that consumers form with particular brands often resemble their dominant social identities. It seems that clothing may have much more to do with social identities rather than the individual – instead of “we are what we wear”, perhaps we wear who we know. Finally, the researcher suggests that marketers segment their customers according to the different social identities and tailor their promotional efforts towards each group in order to encourage greater commitment. She names these groups Family Fashionistas (those with family identities), Friendly Stylistas (those with intimate society identities), and Society Sartorialists (those with society at-large identities).