Fashion Business Commons^™

When Brand Protection Leads To Brand Crisis: The Case Of Disposable Fashion, Priya Rangaswamy, Rohini Daraboina, Lizhihan Yu

AMTP Proceedings 2026

Firms in the fashion industry have a practice of disposing unsold inventory to protect their brand value. It has gained a lot of importance in the media due to increasing consumer awareness about sustainability and has led to consumer backlash. This research examines whether this practice negatively impacts firm value, contrary to the firm’s belief. Specifically, the authors examine the effects of news on inventory disposal on short-term cumulative abnormal returns using an event-study methodology. Results show that news of this practice has a negative relationship with firm value for both the focal firm engaged in the practice and rival …

Bemerge Pop Ups: Social Media Meets Sustainable Fashion, Owen Mehring, Kyla Echols, Avery Edelbrock

SPARK Symposium Presentations

Our research into the online clothing shopping industry has revealed an opportunity to mobilize the strengths of online shopping to build an in-person community. One company we researched, Poshmark, a social, peer-to-peer resale app, uses the strengths of social media to create an online community-based secondhand clothing market. However, one of the largest problems facing society today is the ease of replacing human connection with screen time in today’s world. Online shopping provides convenience, variety, and a larger reach than traditional stores do. However, the human element is often lost. Our company seeks to take the goal of Poshmark to …

Slow Fashion Behavior In Young Consumers, Melissa Clark

Atlantic Marketing Journal

The purpose of this research is to better understand the gap between Generation Z’s (Gen Z) knowingness and attitude toward sustainable clothing and their behavior including repair and disposal. A theoretical model was created based on the known relationships among Knowledge-Attitude-Behavior (KAB), specifically considering environmental sustainability knowingness (ESK), environmental sustainability attitude (ESA), and slow fashion behavior (SFB) while extending it with the addition of repair and disposal. The data were collected via online survey of consumers identifying as Gen Z and analyzed via regression analysis in SPSS. The findings suggest that the established construct relationships (ESK, ESA, and SFB) held …

Environmental Risk Assessment Of Textile Waste From Bio-Engineered Fibers In The Fashion Industry, Aayush Pankaj Agarwal, Harshit Soral, Irmak Aktan, Karol Montserrat Gonzalez Saad, Maria Daniela Saa Espinosa, Sheetal Suhas Dhanuka, Yi Yang

Harrisburg University Dissertations and Theses

The global fashion industry generates over 92 million tons of textile waste annually, a figure projected to increase significantly by 2030. Bio-engineered fibers, including bacterial cellulose, mycelium-based leather, and recombinant protein textiles emerge as sustainable alternatives to conventional fibers. Despite their promise, recent evidence suggests that these fibers may pose environmental risks at the end-of-life stage, such as incomplete biodegradation in landfills, microfiber shedding, and chemical leaching from dyes and coatings. The purpose of this study is to examine how these risks are represented through scientific literature, corporate sustainability reports, and policy frameworks, and to identify strategies for integrating risk …

Reviving The Lost Art: Historical Foundations And Future Pathways For Bespoke Service In Luxury Retail, Andrew Burnstine

Faculty and Staff Publications & Presentations

The mid-20th century witnessed a zenith of deeply personalized, bespoke service within iconic luxury specialty retailers. This paper critically analyzes the foundational principles of this historical bespoke service model, extending Service-Dominant (S-D) Logic and retail evolution theory, to propose a robust framework for its modern revival. Employing a rigorous qualitative, multiple-case study approach, grounded in extensive historical and media analysis of four archetypal American and British luxury boutiques, and uniquely informed by an insider-ethnographic perspective on the central case exemplar ("Martha's"), the study distills six core principles: Profound Client Knowledge, Visionary Curation & Styling, Anticipatory & Proactive Service, The Exclusive …

Finnish Fashion Lessons For The Creation Of A Sustainable Textiles Industry, Susanna Monseau, Kaisa Sorsa, Heidi Salokangas

Pace International Law Review

The detrimental effects of textiles and the fashion industry on the planet are well-known.
In its 2022 Strategy for Sustainable and Circular Textiles (the EU Textile Strategy) the EU proposed aggressive actions to transform the textile industry to implement the commitments of Europe’s Green Deal and Circular Economy Action Plan. The Textile Strategy’s aim is simple but ambitious: to end fast fashion. Its proposals will regulate textile businesses along the whole supply chain, but the views of the smaller enterprises that make up the majority of the supply chain have been overlooked, even as larger players lobby for policy changes. …

Life Cycle Analysis Of Cosmetic Products -- Assessing Environmental Sustainability And Potential Impacts, Karina Magro Machado

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

The cosmetic industry has a significant environmental footprint due to its reliance on water, energy, petrochemical-derived ingredients, and plastic-based packaging. This study performs a cradle-to-grave Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) to evaluate the environmental impacts of three cosmetic products: CeraVe Daily Moisturizing Lotion, bareMinerals Gen Nude Powder Blush, and Gillette Foamy Regular Shave Cream. The analysis was conducted using OpenLCA software and free databases, modeling each product across raw materials, packaging, manufacturing, transportation, use and end-of-life phases. The results showed that the shave cream had the highest environmental burden to three out of the four categories, especially in consumption and carbon …

From Food To Fashion: Bio-Based Textiles Advancing Sustainability And Socioeconomic Growth In Emerging Markets, Andrew Burnstine

Faculty and Staff Publications & Presentations

The global fashion industry is undergoing a profound shift towards sustainability, driven by innovations in bio-based textiles derived from agricultural byproducts such as cactus, pineapple, banana, coconut, fungi, and bacterial cultures. This article comprehensively explores the technological advancements, industry adoption trends, socioeconomic impact on emerging markets, and barriers to widespread adoption of bio-based textiles. The alignment of these innovations with global sustainability initiatives, key industry collaborations, and policy interventions are also examined.

Combating Forced Labor In Global Supply Chains Through Modern Technology: A Case Study Of Uyghurs In Xinjiang, Samuel Donohue

Senior Theses

This thesis examines how modern traceability technologies can help combat forced labor in global supply chains, focusing on the case of Uyghur workers in Xinjiang, China. The research addresses the pressing challenge of verifying ethical labor practices in complex, multi-tiered supply networks, using the case study alongside an extensive literature review. It evaluates advanced technological solutions, including blockchain ledgers, isotope analysis, radio-frequency identification (RFID) tagging, and microbiome tracing as tools to improve supply chain transparency. Through qualitative case analysis and analysis of current research, the thesis assesses each technology’s capability to trace product origins and authenticate labor conditions. The findings …

The Role Of Artificial Intelligence In Transforming Physical And Online Fashion Retail: Enhancing Experiences, Driving Sustainability, And Fostering Innovation, Andrew Burnstine

Faculty and Staff Publications & Presentations

This study explores the transformative role of artificial intelligence (AI) in revolutionizing the fashion industry, with a focus on enhancing consumer experiences, promoting sustainability, and driving innovation in retail. It examines AI applications in personalized recommendations, virtual try-ons, and supply chain optimization, while also addressing societal implications. Sustainability is a central theme, highlighting how AI minimizes overproduction, enables circular fashion, and encourages conscious consumerism. Case studies, such as Nike’s AI-powered retail stores and Lynn University’s Surreal Fashion Show, demonstrate practical applications and innovations during the COVID-19 pandemic. This research synthesizes insights from reports by The Business of Fashion and McKinsey …

Understanding And Implementing Fashion Sustainability: An Academic Course, Paige M. Baldwin

Theses

This project outlined a fashion sustainability course meant to be taught at a degree-awarding educational institution. The course explores the environmental, social, and economic impacts of the fashion industry. Students learn about sustainable practices, materials, and design principles. Students also study consumer behavior, supply chain management, and government policies related to sustainable fashion. The literature and research looked at the current fashion industry landscape and the sustainability issues that are being addressed, the current educational landscape of fashion programs in the United States of America, and the current literature regarding building an effective curriculum in the 21st century.

“There Is No Fashion On A Dead Planet:”1 How A Mandatory Reporting Directive Shared By The Us And The Eu And Centered On Transparency Could Be The First Step To Increased Sustainability In The Fashion Industry, Adrienne Redman

Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business

The fashion industry hangs on self-expression and individualism, yet our methods of consumption and their resulting environmental impacts are far from an individualistic concern. This paper examines the global fashion industry’s substantial contribution to pollution, resource-depletion, and waste as evidence that the self-regulation model is insufficient to curb the environmental footprint of the industry. Self-regulation presumes that consumer awareness and the desire to purchase sustainably will be enough to limit the industry’s environmental impact. However, this presumption is undermined by a lack of standardized and enforceable regulations necessary for consumer-decision making. Instead, greenwashing and deceptive environmental claims have pervaded the …

The Phygital Design Process: Using Emerging Technologies To Create A Phygital Fashion Brand Rooted In Nostalgia, Madeline M. Mcdaniel

Creativity and Change Leadership Graduate Student Master's Projects

This Master's Project is a comprehensive exploration of the intersection of digital fashion design, nostalgia, and sustainable practices. Its primary objective is to create 'project CYBERBAE,' a phygital fashion collection that draws inspiration from early 2000s video game characters, trends, and aesthetics. The project utilizes advanced digital tools like Clo3D to demonstrate a comprehensive digital fashion design process that emphasizes inclusivity and sustainability. It also pioneers the development of a 3D virtual world, providing users with an immersive environment to interact with and experience digital fashion. This virtual space serves as a platform for a community of fashion, technology, and …

Confidence In Personal Style: A Self-Empowered Path Toward Sustainable Clothing Consumption?, Catherine A. Roster

AMTP Proceedings 2024

This study examined the impact of clothing style confidence on sustainable clothing behaviors. An Internet survey was conducted with a valid sample of 560 U.S. residents equally split by gender between the ages of 25 to 65 purchased from Prolific. Five sub-dimensions of the Clothing Style Confidence scale (i.e., style longevity, aesthetic perceptive ability, creativity, appearance importance, and authenticity) were predicted to positively influence four dependent variables: clothing care and maintenance, purchase of environmentally friendly apparel, likelihood of clothing rental, and interest in upcycled clothing. PLS-SEM was used for data analysis. For both males and females, higher style confidence was …

Consumers' Acceptance To Buy And Dispose Of Recycling Textile Products, Roa Alsayed

Theses and Dissertations

The textile industry is the second most polluting worldwide, following food manufacturing. It is one of the industries that is rarely scrutinized in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. This work analyzes the fashion industry from the perspective of consumer attitudes towards the purchase and disposal of clothing, and their behavior with regards to old garments. The study was conducted in Saudi Arabia and Egypt, two countries that achieved similar results in the fashion industry. The methodology is divided into three phases. First, the manuscript begins with a review of topics such as sustainability, consumer behavior in the …

The Threads That Shape Us: Fashioning A Sustainable Future From Silk, Bryne Croyle Johnson

Scholarly Horizons: University of Minnesota, Morris Undergraduate Journal

Silk has been used for centuries as a natural fiber, but has declined in popularity due to synthetic alternatives. In this pop-science article style paper, the history, present, and possible futures of silk are discussed at a generally accessible level. Anthropology, Biology, Sociology, and Environmental Science are brought together to present a case for a renewed interest in silk as a sustainable fiber.

Economic Feasibility Of Material Waste Management “Reduction, Reuse, Recycle And Repair’ Strategies In Egypt’S Footwear Industry, Amira Motawea

Theses and Dissertations

The study aims to provide a comprehensive examination of the feasibility of waste management strategies in the leather and footwear industry, both globally and within the specific context of Egypt. It explores the benefits and challenges associated with efficiently recycling, treating, or reusing material waste generated by the footwear industry, with a particular focus on Egypt. The study begins by discussing established waste management practices in the global fashion industry and focusing on footwear material waste.

The study examines successful waste management methods and systems employed globally, highlighting their potential applicability to the Egyptian fashion sector. A key aspect of …

Worker's Rights, Vijay Pereira, Daicy Vaz, Arup Varma

School of Business: Faculty Publications and Other Works

This chapter discusses the rights of workers. It focuses on Bangladesh, China, India, and Vietnam.

Threading Unity Throughout Itaa: A Collaboration Of Fashion Academics Across Content Threading Unity: Apparel, Marketing, Beauty And Interior Design Within The Fashion Industry, Alyssa Dana Adomaitis, Carter Gabriel Averbeck, Kendel Bolton, Denise Sutton

Publications and Research

Sustainability has been an academic research topic of late that impacts more than just the fashion industry for apparel. Besides the apparel industry, marketing, beauty, and interior design are aware of the promise of sustainability for both the environment and consumers. Sustainability reduces its environmental impacts of pollutants such as carbon footprints and unsold inventory, protecting workers who create garments, and animal welfare (Biela-Weyenberg, 2023) which can impact the supply chain. “The United Nations established the UN Alliance for Sustainable Fashion in 2019 to hold fashion brands to a higher standard to create environmentally friendly apparel” (2023, p.1). Through modern …

Clueless: Revolutionizing Sustainable Fashion And Combating Overconsumption, Tanya Ravichandran

Graphic Communication

“Clueless” revolutionizes sustainable fashion by combating wardrobe overconsumption and the industry’s carbon footprint, using AI to suggest personalized outfits from existing wardrobes tailored to weather and wear history. It enhances user engagement through features like outfit ‘shuffle’ and provides insights into wardrobe utilization and carbon impact.

It’s more than an app; it’s a step towards a greener wardrobe and a healthier planet.

Sneakerhead Culture: Consumers And Their Ecological Consciousness, Maria Cervantes

Apparel Merchandising and Product Development Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis aims to investigate the unique subculture of “sneakerheads” and their buying behavior/attitudes, catering carefully to the Northwest Arkansas community and their small community. Sneakerhead culture has gained significant popularity in recent years, with decades of history to back up the phenomenon. Sneaker connoisseurs collect these glamourous, expensive, and rare footwear and are keepsakes of self-expression and identity formation. The study employs an ecological approach to their purchases and seeks to find whether retail and non-retail sneakerheads are conscious of their ecological footprint. The research methodology involves a questionnaire that is catered towards retail or non-retail employees based on …

Technology Takeover And Transformation: Humans Vs. Technology, Mikayla Tjeerdsma

Theses

When looking at the history of the fashion industry up to the present day, technology can easily distinguish the progress of fashion throughout the ages. The direction of this research is to gain insight and a deeper realization of how technology is taking over and transforming those in and revolving around fashion by slowly taking over and replacing human involvement or presence. Statistics and research show due to the adverse effects of COVID-19, technological development within fashion has seen a significant increase. COVID-19 was either the final push towards making technological ideas a reality or was the birth of new …

The Importance Of Sustainability Within The Fashion Industry, Ashlee S. Hernandez

Theses

Blogging made its debut in 1993 and from that point on the internet would change forever. This project is a lifestyle blog that will highlight the diversity of the word sustainability, focus on the final product and the sustainable methods or practices to get to that final product and dive into the history of blogging and the history of fashion sustainability. This entire project will showcase specific items of women's clothing (the final product) and the sustainable methods or processes involved in creating those final products. This project specifically defines the similarities and differences between the terms eco-friendly, sustainable, green, …

Will Digital Fashion Be The New Normal In The Metaverse Era: Examining Consumers’ Perceptions Of Digital Fashion, Yanbo Zhang

LSU Master's Theses

Digital fashion might bring an innovative and revolutionary answer to address environmental and social issues in the textile and apparel industry because it could simultaneously deliver sustainability and fashionability. To stay in the lead in the fashion kingdom and maintain innovativeness, luxury fashion brands are embracing digital fashion. Instead of constantly balancing or trading off between exclusive values and accessibility, luxury brands could enhance both through digital fashion items. As such, investigating consumers’ perceptions and evaluations of digital fashion in general and luxury brands’ digital fashion in specific is critical to fueling digital fashion. Accordingly, the current research has twofold …

Online Atmospherics In Second-Hand Retail, Hope Manuel

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Within the retail sector, two sections have grown drastically with the help of each other in the past decade. Those two sections include online retail and second-hand retail. Online retail has grown remarkably due to the implementation of online atmospherics. This phenomenon led to the purpose of this study: to observe the online atmospherics present in online second-hand retail. To achieve this purpose, the literature related to online retail, target audience, motivations of consumers, reselling, and online second-hand apps was explored. For this study, five online second-hand retail sites were chosen. Eighteen of the most common online atmospherics were observed …

Big Business, Small Plastic, Hannah Johnson

Senior Honors Projects

No abstract provided.

From Fast Fashion To Sustainable Slow Fashion, Isabel Agatha Millward-Pena

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

The objective of this thesis is to express a need for sustainability within the fast fashion industry, in the form of cultural movement that acts as alternative to the current means of production, consumption, and philosophies. Sustainability within current popular discourses is often human-centered and lacking authenticity, thus I aim to highlight an alternative that is opposite of that. In doing such, I bring to light the negative effects of the industry through a case study on the fast fashion company SHEIN, who claim to be making sustainable efforts. I analyzed SHEIN’s 2021 Sustainability and Social Impact Report (SSIR), focusing …

Upscaling Textile Upcycling, Mason Scott, Brett High, Sophia Marcum, Rachel Schiffli, Andrew Flowers

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Our research project was designed to answer one question: is it feasible for the Goodwill Industries of Akron to use upcycled clothing as a sustainable revenue driver to fund their mission? Upcycled products are simply defined as products whose value has been increased by combination or alteration. This contrasts with product reuse or recycling which Goodwill already utilizes as ways to generate revenue. Goodwill’s primary source of revenue currently is the resale of donated goods at their brick-and-mortar stores, and we thought that upcycled goods were consistent with their established business model. We hypothesized that the same consumers that presently …

Fashion And Sustainability: Consumption And Shared Responsibility, Jie Gao Fowler, Timothy Reisenwitz, Rongwei Chu

Atlantic Marketing Journal

Indulgence in fashion has been indispensable in modern societies, as it is a crucial device for self-image and identity construction. With the advanced technology and globalization of production, the fashion industry has skewed towards fast fashion, making the latest trends available to mass consumers at affordable prices. This research aims to examine how Chinese consumers perceive sustainable consumption in the context of fashion. We endeavor to explore the factors that influence the engagement of sustainable consumption. This study aims not to argue whether sustainable fashion should mobilize or replace the current fashion system but to provide evidence on consumers' perception …

Exploration Of Small Fashion Retailers' Green Efforts In Supply Chain Management And Their Coping Strategies During Covid-19, Madison Huskey

Finance Undergraduate Honors Theses

The purpose of this paper is to explore the current business model of small fashion retailers and their green efforts in supply chain management based on the Six-R framework that consists of recycle, reuse, reduce, re-design, recovery, and remanufacture. This study also investigated the impact of COVID-19 on small fashion businesses. Qualitative data were gathered through in-depth interviews of owners/employees of four small fashion retailers that addressed sustainable supply chain management, customer segments, and challenges and barriers in green supply chain management, and the effects of COVID-19. Interview findings revealed that small fashion retailers are more likely to implement green …