What do fashion and psychology have in common? Sure, they’re both careers, but when combined together, they can also help reveal important information for helping companies and individuals. Dr. Carolyn Mair is the woman who developed the first (and only) master’s courses that connect psychology and fashion. She created this program at the London College of Fashion, but before you start filling out applications, it’s important to know what the psychology of fashion really is.
In an interview with Jessica Schiffer for Who What Wear, Mair explains that the term “fashion psychology” should in no way be paralleled to “wardrobe therapy”. Instead, this study will take psychological study and apply it to the world of fashion, “From design through the entire supply chain to consumption and disposal” she tells WWW.
These applications typically focus on beauty, “Body image, self-esteem, confidence, the sexualisation of women, and the selection/treatment of models” as well as economic issues like compulsive spending and over-consumption, disposal that leads to landfills and other pollutants, and ecological issues in regard to production such as depletion of natural resources from natural production and the pollution of water sources due to dyes.
Mair herself focuses specifically on sustainable fashion and the way that older women see themselves portrayed in the beauty world. Most only see products like wrinkle remover and youth serums advertised toward them, and it pushes the assumption that remaining young is all older women worry about.
The studies conducted under Mair’s areas of fashion psychology are helpful in informing those in the marketing profession, ecologists, economists, designers, retailers and psychologists that deal with self-esteem issues in their clients.
Since Dr. Mair’s master’s program has become established, another fashion psychologist, Dawnn Karen, has broken onto the scene as well. Karen is the only fashion psychologist in North America and teaches at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City, but her approach is a bit different than Mair’s.
Karen uses talk therapy to examine what people express through their clothing. She wants to know how clients feel about themselves, how they view the world, and how they think the world views them. Although most psychologists have already grasped these concepts and use them in some degree, Karen is taking it bounds further and developing the idea that it’s its own area of psychology. In an interview with Nylon she explained, “I didn’t create it. It was already there, but I built a brand.” She digs deeper, wanting to figure out why people choose to present themselves the way they do and why it’s so hard for people to change that style.
It’s not all as “fashionista” as it sounds though. She was invited by the former Prime Minister of Ukraine to speak about the burkini incident that happened in France in 2016. She’s helped clients who want to present themselves a certain way during court cases and entertainers who are crossing into entrepreneurship. According to the interview, she only has two rules: no shopping trips and no one-time clients. She works to make actual change, starting from within, and the process is gradual. Otherwise, she feels people are “going to just put clothes on top of emotion.”
With these new areas of study coming into reality, the world of possibilities keeps getting larger for collegiettes trying to find a post-grad program that speaks to them. Even if you have no interest in pursuing a career in either of these fields, the work that has been done by these two women may come in handy in the future.