Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

How To Excel In The Fashion Industry, Elizabeth Weaver

Senior Honors Projects

How to Excel in the Fashion Industry

Elizabeth Weaver

Faculty Sponsor: Claire Lacoste Kapstein, Textiles, Merchandising and Design

Co-sponsor: Art Mead, Economics

The fashion industry is most often thought of as a glamorous business filled with successful designers and supermodels. For fashion students, however, the industry they seek to enter upon graduation is drastically different. Students entering merchandising and retailing related careers will spend a large portion of their time analyzing data and working in Microsoft Excel.
As a graduating senior with a dual degree in Textiles, Merchandising and Design and Economics, I wanted to create a project that could …

Development For The Past, Present, And Future: Defining And Measuring Sustainable Development, Max Cantor

Senior Honors Projects

In 1987, the United Nations released the Brundtland Report, which defined sustainable development as “development which meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” While this definition provides a relatively stable theoretical base from which development economists and political scientists can begin to tackle issues surrounding sustainable development, the inherently amorphous nature of this definition has also created a fair amount of ambiguity in both the economic literature surrounding sustainable development and the subsequent attempts by economists to measure it.

Historically, those interested in the science of development have typically …

The Psychology And Behavior Of Consumers In The Fashion Industry, Jessica Delace

Senior Honors Projects

I have always been interested in all aspects of the fashion industry, from apparel production to retail sales. After interning in the sales department of a New York based designer, I became fascinated by the customers who spent over $10,000 to revamp their wardrobe every season. Were these women buying their clothes based on their own preferences, or did they buy the original $3,000 design to fit their lifestyle as a New York City socialite?

After completing a literature review on the psychology of apparel consumers, I wanted to determine if shoppers’ preferences were based on their own opinions, or …