Fashion Design Commons^™

Shadow Garments: Costume Creation For Integrating Alienated Parts Of The Self, Mega M. Galvin

Art Therapy | Master's Theses

This study explores costume creation as a narrative-based intervention for integrating "shadow" parts, or aspects of the self that are repressed or alienated due to shame, trauma, or social pressure. Grounded in Jungian analytic psychology, narrative therapy, and expressive arts theory, the research addresses the limitations of traditional talk therapy in accessing somatic memory and proposes costume making as a pathway for externalization and re-authorship. Using a qualitative, participatory study inspired by Pat B. Allen’s Open Studio Process, four adult participants engaged in a three-session workshop to design, construct, and wear costumes representing their identified shadow aspects. Data was collected …

Independent Apparel Brand Launch Campaign Strategy, Nick S. Schottenfeld

Graphic Communication

Soleil Lune is an independent California apparel brand with an established visual identity, a growing social media following, and a live product collection but lacks a coordinated marketing system to connect those pieces into a unified launch. Without that structure, the brand’s Instagram, Shopify store, and print materials were operating independently, making it difficult to build consistent customer trust or drive sales. This project developed a full launch campaign producing a print and digital lookbook, 10 Instagram campaign assets, a printed poster, and a branded care insert card all designed to work together to tell the brand story, grow the …

Ile Idasile Aso: Creating Spaces That Promote The Creative Economy In Lagos., Ifeoluwa S. Gandonu

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

Ilé Ìdásílẹ̀ Aṣọ directly translates to “House of Cloth Creation”. Yoruba fashion is more than attire; it is a cultural system that encodes identity, resilience, and social belonging through fabric. Every textile from the indigo-dyed adire of Osogbo to the ceremonial aso-oke woven in Abeokuta carries a story of community, heritage, and continuity. These materials serve not merely as garments but as living archives that express the Yoruba worldview through color, pattern, and form. Just as fashion weaves meaning into cloth, architecture can weave culture into space. Both disciplines involve composition, layering, and adaptation, reflecting how societies construct and express …

Augmented Reality In Fashion Retail: A Walmart Unlimited Study, Chloe A. Mcpherson

Apparel Merchandising and Product Development Undergraduate Honors Theses

As technology continues to evolve, augmented reality (AR) has become increasingly common within the retail and fashion industries. This study explored Gen Z consumers’ perceptions of immersive AR shopping experiences through Walmart Unlimited, an interactive digital shopping platform. The purpose of this research was to better understand how younger consumers respond to AR-enhanced shopping environments and whether these technologies influence attitudes toward convenience, engagement, and sustainability in retail.

A quantitative research design was used for this study. Participants completed the Walmart Unlimited shopping experience and then responded to a Qualtrics survey measuring areas such as immersion, satisfaction, ease of use, …

The World Of Counterfeits: How Fake Sneakers And Clothing Affect The Fashion Industry, Jake R. Watkins

Apparel Merchandising and Product Development Undergraduate Honors Theses

Counterfeit sneakers and clothing continue to grow at an unprecedented rate, creating a global market valued between $400 and $800 billion and posing significant challenges for both consumers and fashion brands (Cardona, 2024). This study investigates the motivations behind counterfeit purchases, the economic and social factors that sustain counterfeit culture, and the effectiveness of current authentication resources. Using qualitative content analysis of discussions across 4 selected Reddit communities, the research identifies five dominant themes influencing counterfeit consumption: financial constraints, social display, authenticity and identity, ethical rationalization, and functional use. Findings reveal that consumers frequently turn to counterfeit goods due to …

Exploring The Significance Of Hyper-Feminine Fashion Within Gen Z, Riley D. Frymark

Apparel Merchandising and Product Development Undergraduate Honors Theses

This study examines the rise of hyper-feminine fashion within Gen Z and the role that social media plays in shaping trends. Through a social media content analysis, this study explores how hyper-feminine fashion and aesthetics gained popularity and how it is perceived by Gen Z women. The findings suggest that Gen Z associates hyper-feminine fashion with empowerment, agency, and a sense of nostalgia redefining and challenging traditional expectations of femininity. These findings informed a fashion design developed to reflect key themes and design elements identified in the content analysis such as a pink color palette, lace, bows, and ruffles. Overall, …

Anastasis: Slow Fashion, Barbara Bultman

Theses

This thesis explores how slow fashion principles contribute to the longevity and cultural significance of iconic garments. Using qualitative research methods, including historical analysis, literature review, and practice-based design research, this project analyzes and recreates six iconic garments: the little black dress, trench coat, wrap dress, shift dress, wide-leg trouser, and women’s suit. The research investigates couture-level construction techniques, sustainable materials, and timeless silhouettes, demonstrating how these strategies can extend garment lifespan and foster emotional attachment between consumers and clothing. Ultimately, the research concludes that slow fashion provides a practical framework for creating durable, meaningful garments that support both environmental …

A Comparative Analysis Of Jean Sizing And Fit Across Popular Denim Brands, Brooke R. Sterbens

Apparel Merchandising and Product Development Undergraduate Honors Theses

Denim jeans have been a staple in closets for many decades. In more recent times, human bodies have changed and have a larger variety in shapes than in the past. Brands are looking to create the perfect denim jean for their customer but lack putting in the time and research to make sure their measurement are accurately fitting. Variability in jean sizing among brands creates challenges for consumers to have a consistent fit among different styles and brands. This study aims to examine jean fit through different garment measurement sizing charts across multiple brands at different clothing stores. A quantitative …

Adaptive Leggings For Crohn’S/Colitis/Isbs Patients With A Colostomy Bag, Sarah E. Liebbe

Apparel Merchandising and Product Development Undergraduate Honors Theses

As the prevalence of inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD), including Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis, continues to rise in the United States, an increasing number of individuals undergo colostomy or ileostomy procedures requiring the use of an ostomy bag (Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation, 2023). While these medical devices are essential for maintaining health and quality of life, they often introduce challenges related to clothing, including discomfort, lack of support, limited concealment, and restricted self-expression (Hubbard et al., 2019). Despite growing attention to inclusive design within the fashion industry, adaptive apparel for ostomy patients remains limited in availability, style, and affordability, leaving …

Adaptability From Tv & Film Into Theatre | The Subversion Inspiration In Celia’S Identity Versatility Throughout William Shakespeare’S As You Like It, Emani White

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the inspiration of adaptability skills, pivoting from television and film into theatre, and the potential of unconventional pathways as a catalyst for reconciling anti-traditionalism within the mediums. It offers insight into the obstacles, segues, and adversities faced during the journey of a former athlete turned television and film actor, and into a theatre actor. It illuminates agency as a subversive identity (the disguise), the sacrifice of status, and the need for an emotional anchor of resilience—acknowledging the systemic transitional barriers in performance, career, and education. The paper also discusses the understandings gained from my journey as an …

City, Janina Butz

Theses and Dissertations

Janina Butz observes the improvised support structures holding New York City together at its edges. Looking at the found, cheap materials, spray painted, rusty, drilled, sawed, and haphazardly welded together on the sidewalk. The hard clashes of cheap material and expensive real estate lead Butz to draw a bigger picture of the fraud seams our society is tied together with.

Cannibalizing The American Dream: Memory, Materials, And Manifesting, Juan Hinojosa

Theses and Dissertations

Juan Hinojosa’s thesis explores collage and assemblage through discarded materials, pop culture, and personal history. He transforms found objects into layered works that reflect consumption, memory, and American identity. Moving between sculpture, painting, and installation, his practice examines excess, nostalgia, and the tension between what is consumed and what consumes him.

Antecedents And Consequences Of Consumer Behavior In Circular Fashion: Cognitive, Normative, And Behavioral Pathways Shaping Purchase And Participation Intentions, Mahmudul Hasan Sabuj

Department of Textiles, Merchandising and Fashion Design: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The increasing environmental impact of the fashion industry has intensified the need for a systemic transition from linear to circular production and consumption models. Despite growing interest in circular fashion, there remains a limited understanding of the underlying behavioral dimensions that drive consumer engagement in sustainable practices. Grounded in the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) and Norm Activation Theory (NAT), this study examines consumer behavior through an integrated framework capturing cognitive, social, and normative influences.

Using data collected from a structured online survey (N = 575), the study employs Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA), reliability analysis, and multiple regression techniques to …

Objective Chance, Convulsive Beauty And The Marvelous Within Fashion, Ellen Silva

MA Projects

Objective Chance, Convulsive Beauty and The Marvelous within Fashion is an exhibition inspired by the early idea of Surrealism specifically how the concepts of objective chance, convulsive beauty and the marvelous are intertwined and represented within fashion in the 21st century. The audience will be able to witness for themselves the use of these themes throughout the Surrealist movement by viewing works of fashion and artwork side by side. Some of the references are unmistakable, but some of them must be viewed with more of a conceptual focus as Surrealism was not only an art movement, but originally a philosophical …

Fashioning The Body Politic: Explorations Of The Political Semiotics Of Fashion In France And England During The French Revolution, Annika F. Gauthier

Scripps Senior Theses

In the midst of the French Revolution, women’s fashion underwent a complete revolution, moving from the multi-layered elaborate gowns of the ancien regime, to light, form-fitting dresses. These gowns reveal the way clothing reflects the political positions of women and the ways the French and the British used clothing to construct national identity and politics. Following research on the political symbolism and role of clothing across France and Britain, this thesis reviews fashion’s overarching connection to politics, revealing its role in the early French Revolution’s conception of women and patriotism, women’s responses to political exclusions, and rival nations’ adaptations of …

“What Is In Vogue?” A Critical Study Of Photography, Psychology, And Power In Vogue Magazine, Hannah Eve Osinoff

MA Theses

Capitalizing on our obsession with beauty and power, this thesis examines, through psychological and art-historical lenses, how Vogue’s use of photography increased the public’s fascination with elitist culture. Using archives and secondary sources, this thesis aims to prove that photography was so powerful that it compelled readers to covet what they did not have. Accordingly, Vogue serves as a key example of how photography informed cultural perceptions of beauty and class. Ultimately, photography has and continues to impact fashion and media, as exemplified by Vogue’s early dominance of this medium and the resulting change in culture.

A Community Affair: An Exploration Of The Queer Community, Nightlife, Performance Art And Their Adjacent Qualities, Tatiana M. Castro

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

This thesis explores the importance and roll of community in queer artwork, such as drag and burlesque and retroactively also all the work that I create. This paper aims to express this importance by exploring my personal relationship with building community. By interviewing performers selected through a customized-for-savannah voting process, I allowed the community to directly influence my thesis, as well as directly referencing photos of the hands of community members as a continued motif used throughout my work to represent community. This culminated in a two night thesis performance and installation  exhibition that explored performance and how its environment …

Brands & Virtual Personas: How Virtual Influencer Types Impact Brand Awareness, Carol Calderon Ambelis

Department of Textiles, Merchandising and Fashion Design: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

As social media continues to shape how consumers interact with brands, virtual influencers (VIs) have emerged as a new type of digital celebrity. While previous research has explored how VIs contribute to brand image and awareness, there has been limited attention on how different types of VIs, both anime-like and human-like, affect consumer perceptions across different markets. This study examines how these two types of VIs impact relatability, aspiration, and brand awareness, with a focus on the differences between luxury and mass market. Using a within-subjects experimental design, this study recruited 574 participants with social media experience using MTurk. The …

Sustainability: Buzz Word Or Future Of Fashion? Measuring The Feasibility Of Outright Sustainability Among Fast Fashion’S Biggest Agents, Ryan Miller

Apparel Merchandising and Product Development Undergraduate Honors Theses

Abstract

The fashion industry is currently experiencing unsustainable rates of pollution within its supply chains. The rapid increase in demand for short lead times perpetrated by large-scale retailers has led to hazardous practices negatively affecting both the environmental conditions and working conditions of producing countries. With this increased pressure, relationships between brands and suppliers have become untenable. Limited transparency and imbalanced power dynamics at the hand of the industry’s leading retailers require restructuring in order to build more sustainable and equitable supply-chain practices. Further, governmental regulation is currently limited in its capacity to enforce sustainable business practices on a global …

Hope By A Thousand Cuts: Fashion Ethics From Cutting Fabric To Cutting A Fashion Film, Sarah G. Porterfield

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

I conducted an experiment during which I learned to sew, created a clothing collection, and wore nothing but my collection for a month. Additionally, I documented my collection and the process in a fashion film. The goal of my experiment was to investigate fashion ethics. To gain a greater understanding of the underlying theories that fashion materializes and to grasp their ethical implications better, I studied the texts of fashion theorists such as Marx, Barthes, Derrida, Deleuze and Guattari, Butler, Benjamin, and Merleau-Ponty throughout my experiment. Therefore, I gained insight into many aspects of fashion ethics, from the beginning stages …

Ray Collection: Forging A New Fashion Genre, Olivia R. Cooper

Graphic Communication

This senior project addresses a gap in the fashion industry by creating a new genre through a unique collection and comprehensive branding. The "RAY" collection draws inspiration from the designer's artistic roots and is a deeply personal homage to influential female artists like Frida Kahlo, Louise Bourgeois, and Leonora Carrington, whose works have inspired the designer's creative journey. Each piece in the collection draws direct inspiration from these artists, reflecting the creator's vision and self-expression, a key element of the streetwear genre incorporated into the designs.

The project also heavily emphasizes fashion branding, encompassing a logo, brand identity, social and …

Green Weave: A Textile Guide To The Future Of Fashion, Simon Braunschweig

University Honors Theses

Fashion and technology are inextricably linked. The more advanced our technology becomes, so too does fashion and our understanding of it. Fashion is also one of the top contributors to climate change. However, modern technology has the potential to change the way fashion impacts our planet, working harmoniously with nature instead of against it. This thesis investigates the connection between technology and fashion, resulting in a handbook for fashion designers who want to implement more sustainable practices into their work with the help of modern technology.

Folding Horizons: Knitted Textiles For A Mobile World, Yutong Li

Masters Theses

We have grown accustomed to living in flux—moving between cities, countries, languages, and digital spaces. Life no longer unfolds in a straight line, but in fragments and transitions, never quite settling. In this restless rhythm—shaped by fast trains, shifting skies, and the invisible current of the internet—we find ourselves suspended in a vast, woven network. Connection is constant, yet motion is unrelenting.

This project begins with a question: how can textiles reflect this state of in-between? I imagine textiles not as fixed surfaces, but as responsive skins—adaptive, expressive, and attuned to change. Inspired by the tensions of contemporary life—surveillance, shrinking …

Visibly Invisible: Reclaiming Atlanta Black Architecture Through Black Expression, Sean M. Spencer

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

Architecture has long grappled with questions of self, community, and cultural identity. While the number of Black architects is growing, architecture that genuinely reflects Black identity remains rare. This lack of representation has contributed to a sense of invisibility for Black communities within the built environment—whether by design or neglect. There is an urgent need to define and celebrate Blackness and Black space in ways that reflect the cultural richness of Black communities. As George Will points out, broad labels like African American or African often obscure the unique cultural experiences within Black communities. Historically, the lack of economic and …

Developing Adaptive Clothing For Patients With Advanced Als Disease, Kadence D. Trosper

Apparel Merchandising and Product Development Undergraduate Honors Theses

In 2017, over 30,000 people were battling with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, also known as ALS. ALS is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells within the brain, brain stem, and spinal cord (ALS Association, 2023). The individual’s brain loses connection with muscles, slowly taking away one’s ability to walk, talk, eat, and eventually breathe. The currently is no cure for this disease or even treatment to halt the progression, however the treatment available can help ease the symptoms. Despite the physical challenges associated with ALS, there is a significant lack of adaptive clothing options that provide comfort, functionality, and …

Cavedivers: A Multi-Media Visual And Musical Release, Emily J. Langford

Theses/Capstones/Creative Projects

For my graduating UNO Honors Program capstone project, I have chosen to undertake a creative project that involves recording and releasing an album with my band, Cavedivers, while also designing the visual media and advertising graphics to accompany the release. The songs we have recorded were all written and developed before the start of this project. Therefore, this project is less of a songwriting endeavor, since most of that process is already complete, and more of an experimentation and workshop in communicating music through recording and identifying effective trends within graphic design.

As an art major and musician, this has …

Cultural Of Authenticity And Commodification: Analyzing The Aesthetic Waves And Collective Culture In The 2010s And 2020s, Stefanny Leung Yu

Student Theses

The “authentic self” is curated, aestheticized, and most notably, commodified. Digital algorithms, likes, views, and engagement are more than just digital metrics, they are the management of performance. For millions of other users — including the author herself — social media is the locus of personal expression. Most notably, sites like Tumblr, where users in the 2010s posted hazy images or overly filtered graphics along with melancholic song lyrics that match the vibe of the moment, expression was earnest and idealized. Today, social media in the 2020s, new creators like Hannah Neelaman, better known as Ballerina Farm, dress in pastoral …

Sustainable Fashion Identified: An Exploration And Education Of Sustainable Apparel, Michaela M. Lentsch

Department of Textiles, Merchandising and Fashion Design: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Consumers today are searching for and are loyal to companies who support their views and concerns about sustainability. The fashion industry is one of the biggest industries in the world, but one that has many environmental and sustainability concerns. Fortunately, there are many ways the fashion industry and consumers can take steps to make sustainable change and better the planet. Small fashion businesses and boutiques can make positive changes to operate and provide sustainable options and services for customers which can help the planet become more sustainable.

Through this manuscript, an assortment of sustainable methods and practices will be shared …

Through The Looking Glass : Diversity Through The Eyes Of A Dress Form, Amara Copeland

LSU Master's Theses

This article aims to look into educational institutions and how they address diversity using curatorial displays. Does fashion and costume curation add to the seclusion of luxury? Looking into this correlation, this study aims to answer these next couple of questions. How does museum curation add to fashion social norms? Is it a subconscious or conscious decision when deciding on a mannequin or dress form? How do museum and fashion curations add to the exclusion of minorities in the world of luxury? What is costume luxury, and who do we say can obtain it?

This research aims to understand the …

Tartans: Weaving A Warped History With Myths, Heritage And A Whole Lot Of Heather., Bethany Sassen

LSU Master's Theses

Scotland has many tartans throughout the whole of the country. Each has a different meaning and is used for different clans and purposes. Tartans are the plaids that are seen throughout the Highlands and the patterns and colors have a wide range depending on where and when the tartan was created. The purpose of this research is to investigate the history of the tartans and how they interact with our current culture. I also built two outfits to show how tartan is still being used. One a more traditional outfit and the other more avant garde. Tartans have a long …