Localism and Clothing: Views from the Wardrobes of Aotearoa-New Zealanders

Abstract

In the context of the global clothing industry’s significant environmental and social impacts, ‘localism’ has been heralded in practice and scholarship for its radical sustainability potential. Existing fashion scholarship has focused extensively on the experience and the potential related to clothing producers, with little attention to how wearers are conceptualising and engaging with local clothing, and its potential for aiding sustainability efforts. This thesis brings together scholarship from cultural and economic geography, emotion-centred design, and fashion action research to understand how ‘the local’ features in wearers’ clothing relationships and practices. Taking a qualitative approach, the main findings surface from a questionnaire (n = 56) and a series of wardrobe interviews with nine Aotearoa-New Zealand wearers. This data was analysed using a thematic approach. Emerging from the wardrobes of these wearers is evidence of a localness informed not only by dimensions of spatial proximity, place-association, and a strictness of nationalised manufacturing, but also by an association to community. The local, as mediated through clothing, was found to contribute to wearers’ garment-attachment, and their sense of connection to the wider system of clothing, to place, and to sense of self. Such findings hold significance when thinking through the social and spatial lives of local products, the sustainability potential of localism as a concept, as well as more practical lessons for the role the local may play in enhancing practices of garment use in more environmental ways.