3rd PLATE Conference
September 18 – 20, 2019
Berlin, Germany
Nils F. Nissen
Melanie Jaeger-Erben (eds.)
Universitätsverlag der TU Berlin
Collins, Rebecca : New-old jeans or old-new jeans? Contradictory
aesthetics and sustainability paradoxes in young people’s clothing
consumption. In: Nissen, Nils F.; Jaeger-Erben, Melanie (Eds.): PLATE
– Product Lifetimes And The Environment : Proceedings, 3rd PLATE
CONFERENCE, BERLIN, GERMANY, 18 – 20 September 2019. Berlin: Uni-
versitätsverlag der TU Berlin, 2021. pp. 147 – 153. ISBN 978-3-7983-3125-9
(online). https://doi.org/10.14279/depositonce-9253.
This article – except for quotes, fi gures and where otherwise noted – is
licensed under a CC BY 4.0 License (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0).
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
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New-Old Jeans or Old-New Jeans? Contradictory Aesthetics and
Sustainability Paradoxes in Young People’s Clothing Consumption
Collins, Rebecca
University of Chester, Chester, UK
Keywords: Youth; Clothing; Aesthetics; Novelty; Product Ageing.
Abstract: This paper reports on an ongoing research project exploring the role of aesthetics –
particularly aesthetics related to the multiple meanings of ageing – in young people’s interventions in
the material lives of their clothes. Provoked by the trend for ‘pre-aged’ jeans, this study interrogates
how material manifestations of the passing of time shape young consumers’ relationships with their
clothes. Specifically, this enquiry focuses on the multiple, intersecting and sometimes contradictory
aesthetics of aged garments. It examines the extent to which – and circumstances in which – young
consumers view the visible lived history of their garments as positive, and the role played by personal
manual interventions (e.g. acts of repair, customization, upcycling or repurposing) in transforming an
un(der)loved and un(der)used item into one with heightened forms of value. Drawing on practice-
based workshop-interviews with twelve 18-24 year olds, plus peer-led research with a further sixteen
participants (and four ‘peer researchers’), this research seeks to contribute to emerging debates
around sustainability, consumer agency and the aesthetics that shape product lifetimes in specific
relation to the consumption of fashion.
Introduction
In a white paper published by sustainable
clothing activists Fashion Revolution in 2015,
the millennial age group (young people aged
17-34) was named as the demographic group
best positioned to drive the shift towards a
more ethical and sustainable fashion industry.
In part this is the result of young adults (under
the age of 34) being the biggest consumers of
fast fashion (Bhardwaj and Fairhurst 2010).
With the rapid obsolescence that characterises
fast fashion widely acknowledged to be one of
the biggest drivers of unsustainability within
the fashion industry, a shift away from such
stylistic churn will be key to longer-lasting
relationships with clothing and thus less textile
waste. Environmental threats driven by
unsustainable consumption are increasingly
high on the youth agenda; recent activism and
growing awareness of consumption impacts
may herald a turning of the tide against too-
easily-disposability. However, another
important driver of more sustainable clothing
consumption comes from a purported
increasing willingness from young consumers
to consume second-hand clothing (Satenstein
2016).
Such has been the cultural caché of the ‘old’
aesthetic that it has been enthusiastically
embraced by fast fashion producers, with the
ubiquitous ‘pre-ripped’ jeans constituting the
ultimate symbol of this ‘new-old’ tension. In
direct response to this apparent paradox, these
items – pre-ripped jeans – formed the starting
point for this inquiry into the tensions between
aesthetics of ‘newness’ and ‘oldness’ in young
people’s clothing consumption. The project
sought to examine what kinds of ‘oldness’ are
considered cultural acceptable and stylistically
desirable by young consumers, and in what
kinds of contexts something temporally ‘old’
might be made acceptably ‘new’.
Understanding the subtleties and nuances in
young consumers’ responses to these
characteristics of garments may usefully inform
the approaches of those seeking to promote
and embed longer garment lifetimes.
Aesthetic Implications in/for
Sustainable (Clothing)
Consumption
Whilst much debate concerning the product
lifetimes of clothing has focused on matters of
physical durability and the environmental
impacts of material choices, how garments
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New-old Jeans or old-new Jeans? Contradictory aesthetics and sustainability
paradoxes in young people’s clothing consumption
look, feel and even smell plays an equally
significant part in their longevity. Although
studies explicitly located at the intersection of
multi-sensory aesthetics, sustainability and
material consumption remain rare, these
concerns have intersected in studies from a
range of disciplines, from product and fashion
design, to sociology, anthropology and human
geography, amongst others. The discussion
that follows pinpoints some of these
intersections and articulates key conceptual
contributions which help to inform emergent
debates around aesthetics of/for sustainable
material consumption.
Venkatesh and Meamber’s 2008 paper
examining aesthetics in the context of everyday
consumption practices notes the relationship
between the multi-sensory nature of aesthetics
and the pursuit of hedonic experience – or
pleasure – through various forms of
consumption. Beyond the affective response
based on how something looks, as Roe (2006)
demonstrates, practical interaction with an
object – embodied experience of its texture and
smell – can either amplify or contradict that
initial response. Our multi-sensory interaction
with the multiple aesthetics of an object make
us either inclined, or not, to consume it – and
this (dis)inclination is equally shaped by a
range of personal subjectivities accrued across
lifetimes of embodied experiences.
To date, concerns with sustainability have been
brought into productive discussion with this
framing of consumption aesthetics in several
ways. One response has involved making the
impacts of product use a conspicuous part of
that product’s design, such as Backlund et al.’s
(2006) designs for lighting that etches delicate
lines into the surrounding lampshade to show
the light’s energy consumption. Another
response has focused on designing products
that face considerable everyday ‘wear and tear’
in materials which are both physically and
stylistically resilient. Lilley et al. (2016) have
experimented with this approach, designing
smartphone casings from materials ranging
from cork and wood to leather, in order to gauge
consumer responses to the emergence of an
aged patina generally considered attractive in
non-tech contexts, such as home furnishings.
Within the domain of sustainable fashion,
increasing attention is being paid to how
garments might be designed for changeable
style and functionality, thus producing – via
one item – multiple garments and multiple
(visual) aesthetics (e.g. Koo et al. 2014).
Here, whilst novelty is ‘designed in’ to the
object to increase interest in more frequent
and/or longer-term wear, fulfilment of that aim
rests on the willingness of the consumer to
engage with the potentialities of that design.
Relatedly, research has suggested that
consumers have found the aesthetic repertoire
within existing ‘eco-fashion’ and ethical
clothing ranges somewhat limited (Niinimaki
2010), thus limiting its consumption. Here only
the strongest environmental values overpower
consumer commitment to aesthetic variety.
Given the important of clothing consumption
for articulation of both sense of self and peer
group affiliation (Venkatesh and Meamber
2008), a limited garment palette may be
problematic, especially for young consumers
for whom conspicuous identity articulation can
be particularly important.
It must also be remembered that access to
modes of consumption with strong ethical and
sustainability credentials is also limited by
cultural and economic capital. In their research
into the Slow Food movement, for example,
Sassatelli and Davolio (2010) argue that, whilst
this mode of consumption is environmentally
sensitive and aesthetically enjoyable, it has the
potential to be socially exclusionary by virtue of
the capitals required to access and participate
in it. Nevertheless, as Gill et al. (2016) argue,
forms of sustainable consumption are
accessible to everyone; the challenge is making
those modes of consumption culturally
desirable. Specifically, they suggest that
making visible the worn-life of clothing, as
emphasised through practices of maintenance
and laundering, makes sustain-abilities (i.e.
ability to sustain) of clothing conspicuous and
valuable, by demonstrating the importance of
everyday acts of care for prolonging garment
lifetimes both materially (i.e. ensuring material
durability) and culturally (i.e. the social
acceptance of worn-looking clothing).
In sum, a growing number of theoretical and
empirical strands across a range of disciplinary
literatures are informing debates around
sustainability, aesthetics and material
consumption, although these are yet to cohere
around distinct positions. Most salient for this
discussion in this paper are those debates
concerned with the expressive capacity of
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consumption – specifically how consumers feel
their (new, old, worn or (un)cared for) garments
are seen and interpreted by peers – and the
labour involved in keeping objects in use.
Following a brief overview of the research
methodology, empirical findings are used to
elucidate some of these ideas.
Research Methods
Two small scoping studies inform this paper.
The first, which took place in 2016, took the
form of a series of one-to-one ‘workshop
interviews’. Following similar approaches
discussed by Shercliff and Twigger Holroyd
(2016; knitting) and Straughan (2015;
taxidermy), a format was designed in which
participants were invited to bring to the
workshop interview a garment or other textile
item which required some form or repair,
maintenance or upcycling. Since items worn by
participants are ideal stimuli for discussion
about clothing aesthetics (Eckman and Wagner
1995) the intention was to direct conversation
through the garment and the work that would be
applied to it. Twelve participants aged between
18 and 24 took part in a one-to-one workshop
lasting between 60 and 120 minutes. All
materials required for the
repair/maintenance/upcycling task were
provided. The specific tasks participants
engaged in included: patching jeans/
dungarees; darning socks; sewing up holes in
hoody cuffs/jacket seams; repairing a broken
rucksack zip. These items and the work they
demanded invited conversation around topics
including: object novelty; ageing of garments;
fashion; style; garment quality/-ties; skill. (A
more detailed overview of this methodology can
be found in Collins and Dixon 2016.)
The second study, which ran from January to
April 2019, took a peer-research approach. Four
undergraduate students (in Geography) were
recruited and tasked with devising a qualitative
study through which they could explore their
peers’ attitudes towards the ageing of garments.
Taking a peer-research approach addressed the
power imbalance inherent when an older
researcher, particularly one in a particular power
relation like an academic staff member in a
university setting, seeks access to young
participants’ experiences. Instead, having young
consumers interview their peers enabled
discussion between ‘equals’ with shared cultural
emplacement (Murray 2006; Northcote and
Tarryn 2019). The four peer-researchers
conducted sixteen object-led peer interviews in
total, each of which lasted 30-45 minutes. A
standard semi-structured interview approach
was augmented by the incorporation of three key
clothing items: jeans, coats, pyjamas. Each
interviewee was asked to bring these items to
the interview to facilitate discussion. In addition
to using these items to structure discussion, the
peer-researchers also asked questions about
their participants’ understanding of the terms
‘vintage’, ‘retro’ and ‘old’ in relation to clothing.
Transcripts for both the 2016 workshop
interview and 2019 peer-led interviews were
produced and subjected to a process of open
coding and grounded theorisation. Key themes
from this analysis are presented below. All
participant names used are pseudonyms, but
the real names of the peer researchers are
used to acknowledge their role as co-
researchers in this project.
Discussion
V is for Very Old (or not) (a.k.a. Vintage)
The contradictions that characterise the
temporal registers of young people’s clothing
consumption were made evident in the ways
they talked about ‘old’ clothing in relation to
‘vintage’ clothing. This was summed up neatly
in this exchange between Hannah, one of the
participants in the peer research project, and
Abbie, her interviewer:
Hannah: “I think that the term vintage has
changed over the past few years to what it
actually means which I’ll go onto but now it’s
actually like a trend a fashion trend, shops
have vintage sections, I was in Primark today
and they have vintage jeans which are not
vintage because they’re brand new. Vintage
should mean, well personally I think it should
mean old clothes that have been re-, like,
given a new life. To be sold on again, it’s
second-hand stuff but now I think vintage has
become like a style. But vintage to me is
going into a shop, and there’s loads of old
brands and styles and you can go, like, ‘oh
cool, a nice Adidas coat from 50 years ago’.
That’s what I think vintage is.”
Whilst ‘old’ clothes were described by
participants using words such as ‘dated’,
‘ruined’, ‘tacky’, and ‘worn-out’, there was
consensus that items which had a strongly
evocative style – often clearly associated with a
past era – could, and often were, framed as
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paradoxes in young people’s clothing consumption
‘vintage’. Rosie (a workshop participant)
described how she liked to imagine ‘glamorous’
or ‘exciting’ past owners of ‘vintage’ clothes
(see also Goulding 2002), which formed part of
their appeal. Loveland et al. (2010) link this
nostalgic view of these garments as indicative
of a need to relate, belong, and feel a sense of
embeddedness in a more distinctly articulatable
cultural grouping than is often possible in
postmodern consumer culture. Indeed, the
appeal to some young consumers of clothing
tied to distinct cultural epochs might be situated
in a broader consideration of the loss of
conspicuous youth sub-cultures and an
associated convergence or homogenisation of
youth identities. Beyond ‘glamorous’ or
nostalgic perspectives on vintage clothing,
participants’ comments suggested that
constructing vintage as a style (rather than a
temporal characteristic of garments) might also
have the effect of limiting its appeal – by
culturally historicizing garments in ways that
detract from their banal, practical utility. As Mair
(workshop participant) noted wryly, “It’s a little
silly those things were still nice before you
had to stick a label on it for it to be good.”
Across both research projects, participants’
levels of comfort with consuming ‘old’ and/or
second-hand clothing was varied. Participants
were more likely to embrace the ‘old’ where
those garments were worn further from the
skin. Coats and jackets were commonly worn
until they started to materially fail (e.g. through
holes, failing fastenings), and there was
widespread ease with the idea of wearing a
second-hand garment. In contrast, whilst
participants in the peer-led interviews were
comfortable wearing very old pyjamas
(generally replaced only when they started to
fall apart), some did not like the idea of wearing
second-hand nightwear, likening it to second-
hand underwear because of the proximity of the
garment to the wearer’s skin. This reflects
widely documented anxieties about the intimacy
of proximity to (un)known others’ bodily traces
(e.g. sweat) through second-hand garment
consumption (e.g. Roux 2006).
The discussions around new/old pyjamas
elicited by the peer-researchers may also offer a
partial explanation of the desire to consume
new-old jeans. Jeans are designed to be worn
intensively. Leading brands (including Levi’s,
Tommy Hilfiger, Hiut and Nudie) advocate not
laundering jeans, at least for the first six months
of wear (O’Connor 2016). This intensity of wear
invites a range of deeply embedded bodily
traces – both through emissions such as sweat,
but also the shape of the wearer’s body itself –
that imprint upon the item. For wearers
uncomfortable with such conspicuous proximity
to a prior owner – especially if the garment does
not have the stylistic caché of ‘vintage’ – second
hand ‘old’ jeans may be unpalatable. Yet a
cultural aesthetic has been produced in which
visibly new denim is not as ‘cool’ as visibly old
denim. (More generally, Rosie suggested,
having anything that looks brand new is ‘not
cool’.) Adam (workshop participant) reflected
that many young consumers will wear garments
with holes in if the holes were produced by a
machine or some kind of industrial process, but
not if another person has worn that hole
organically. Thus, amongst these young
consumers, there was widespread acceptance
of – even enjoyment in – an ‘old’ aesthetic, but
much more limited consumption of temporally
(rather than stylistically) ‘old’ clothes.
Sanctions: Fear and Loathing in Clothing
Consumption
Beyond the challenges associated with
navigating the ‘right’ kind of new and the ‘right’
kind of old in their clothing consumption,
participants revealed their varying
(dis)inclination to keep garments in long-term
use through acts of maintenance, repair or
upcycling.
There was quite widespread willingness to
engage in ‘quick win’ adjustments. Hannah, for
example, removed some frills from a pair of
jeans: “Frilly bits on the end, that was so in
fashion for, like, six weeks and then everyone
stopped wearing them, so I just chopped them
off and now they’re just my, like, one pair of
good skinny blue jeans.” Although all the
participants in the one-to-one workshops had
the necessary basic level of sewing
competence to engage in their chosen
repair/upcycling project, all noted that repairing,
maintaining or upcycling clothing was not
something they would normally do as a matter
of course – only if the item was particularly
treasured or important. For Emily (workshop
participant), this was because she felt it was
simply an ‘uncool’ use of time:
“ for my age group it's just kind of a bit
uncool, like there's that stigma of, "Oh, she
makes her own clothes", or like, "She sews her
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paradoxes in young people’s clothing consumption
own thing up", it's quite, like, uncool, and we're
in an age where you can just so easily, if you
rip your top you can go out and get another
one for two quid, so I don't think people are
that concerned when it's that cheap.”
She was, however, keen to point out that she
did not consider the practices themselves, or
their aesthetic effects, to be uncool. Because
of her personal interest in cosplay (where
participants dress up in costumes as fictional
characters), along with the style aesthetic of her
immediate friends and family, the broader
youth-cultural ‘uncoolness’ of sewing up a
frayed hem did not prevent her from doing so.
This raises interesting questions about the
cultural (un)acceptability amongst young people
of giving time to their possessions, through acts
of maintenance or repair, and creates a timely
tension with growing youth activism around
sustainability and environmental threats due to
over-consumption.
Luke (workshop participant) was less
concerned about spending time on repairing
garments. Instead, he explained, he was
worried about doing the repair ‘incorrectly’, and
being seen by peers as having been ‘wrong’ to
even try. In contrast, he said, a newly bought
garment was automatically ‘correct’ or
‘acceptable’. Research over the last two
decades (e.g. Russell and Tyler 2005; Isaksen
and Roper 2012) that has examined the
sanctions young people can face by getting
clothing consumption ‘wrong’ highlights the
significant emotional impacts of these cultural
errors. The fear of judgement Luke articulates
may be an alternative narrative of Emily’s
report that, amongst her peer group, repairing
or upcycling is seen as an ‘uncool’ use of time
(cf. Breunig et al. 2014; Ojala 2007).
Samantha (workshop participant) noted that
she finds her peers simply judge whether an
upcycled or repaired garment looks nice or
not, rather than wondering who did the work,
how long it took and how much skill might
have been required.
This emphasises the extent to which
consumption-based peer and self-esteem
within this group is primarily produced through
conformity to established aesthetic codes via
consumption, rather than the development and
application of practical skills via production.
There is evidently, then, a strong set of
culturally produced disincentives for young
consumers to act on their clothing to keep it in
use. This is despite their professed
acceptance of multiple ‘old’ aesthetics, and the
evidence that we tend to keep and use for
much longer any items (not only clothing) that
we have had some part in the (re)making of,
precisely because we have invested our time
(and arguably part of ourselves) in it (Cooper
2005; Maller et al. 2012). The purported desire
for individuality commonly sought by young
consumers through their consumption is, thus,
firmly situated within the safety of defined
stylistic boundaries. Further, there is a
widespread reluctance to self-produce any
element of this individuality through acts of
maintenance, repair or upcycling, or even
basic customization. Buying off the peg is not
only practically easier, it is culturally safer.
Conclusions
It was clear that, for the participants in these
two studies, decisions about whether or not to
wear (or purchase) ‘old’ clothing were made in
the context of how socio-culturally acceptable
that ‘old’ garment was imagined to be – or,
perhaps more accurately, whether the garment
was the ‘right’ kind of ‘old’. The data indicates
that garment aesthetics based on fabric wear or
stylistic ageing, conspicuous upcycling, or that
feature elements of (in)visible repair, were not
inherently undesirable to this group. As such,
these aesthetics can be argued to be
compatible with a more sustainable approach to
fashion consumption amongst young
consumers. The key appears to be finding a
balance between what this group considers to
be the ‘right’ kind of new (i.e. not visibly,
conspicuously new) and the ‘right’ kind of old
(i.e. perhaps associated with a clear cultural
epoch; probably limited to garments worn some
distance from the skin). It will be important to
remember that – at present, at least – young
consumers seem quite willing to consume
these garments, but not prosume them.
Although prosumption (producing for one’s own
consumption) is gaining traction both
theoretically and practically as a means of
relocalising production and drawing long-
overdue attention to matters of labour, skill,
identity and self-efficacy (e.g. Knott 2013;
Ritzer 2014), the participants in these studies
reported that spending time on maintaining their
garments was simply not ‘cool’. This admission
points the way to a number of important
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paradoxes in young people’s clothing consumption
questions for future research, including the
extent to which the ‘uncoolness’ of
maintenance and repair is a façade for an
experiential deficit (i.e. feeling unskilled, lacking
confidence).
More practically, given that there are ‘old’
aesthetics that are demonstrably appealing to
this group, and given that garments are seen
to be more appealing when they aren’t ‘too
new’, there may be scope to make more of
clothing designs, ranges or retail mechanisms
that allow ‘old’ garments (or their fabrics) to be
re-made into a new item. (Companies such as
RE/DONE are already active in this space.)
Here, the garment is sanitised through the re-
making process, but retains cultural caché
through the fabric’s history and offers
sustainability benefits by reducing/avoiding the
need for virgin materials. At a more localised
scale, there are opportunities to culturally
normalise spending time on clothing
maintenance and repair by making it more
common, making it enjoyable and making it a
mechanism through which peer esteem and
relations can be nurtured. Providing these
kinds of opportunities in a range of spaces will
not only contribute to the normalisation of the
practice but should go some way towards
addressing the risk that everyday action
towards sustainable clothing consumption is
only for some, when it must be for all.
Acknowledgments
Sincere thanks are due to Abigail Dixon, my
research assistant for phase one of this
research, and to Abbie Kinnersley, Chloe
Leatham, Jennifer Flint and Annie Hall, the four
peer-researchers who carried out phrase two.
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