Fashion and Well-being Lecture
I attended the fashion and well-being lecture on 17th February, which focused on the general concept of well-being and contextualised its importance in fashion. With the promotion of well-being as the focus of the 2018 Copenhagen Youth Fashion Summit and the estimated worth of the current global wellness market being $4.2 trillion dollars, and growing fast, the concept couldn’t be any more apt. Positive Psychology is the root of well-being and by using psychological theory, research and intervention techniques we can then begin to understand the positive, creative and emotional elements of human behaviour- or in other words one’s well-being. According to Seligman (1992) individuals are no longer passive vessels responding to stimuli, instead they are decision makers with choices and preferences, who control their own well-being- making them subjective. This feeds into the idea that there are two theories of well-being- Hedonic well-being (subjective) and Eudaimonic well-being (psychological).
Hedonic well-being consists of changing one’s being for the ‘better’. This is done by maximising positive affect, reducing negative affect and generally increasing life satisfaction. The Pleasant Life (PA) model includes this idea of having as many pleasures as possible and in the context of fashion, Hedonic Treadmill theory can be applied- this is the notion that the person needs to keep consuming more and more in order to maintain this same level of happiness. But this provokes the question is more always better? The paradox of choice states maximising choice, maximises freedom but by maximising choice that increases the decision making required to reach a final decision. Therefore, choice then can have a negative effect as it produces paralyses- you may become less happy with the choice made and, in the future, you then have higher and potentially more unrealistic expectations.
Eudaimonic well-being is the idea that in order to change one’s well-being for the better one needs to seek self-actualisation and cooperate in meaningful experiences that enable personal growth. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs can be applied here as according to Maslow, we have five categories of needs: physiological, safety, love, esteem and self-actualisation and in order to progress to the higher needs within the hierarchy one needs to feel they have sufficiently satisfied the previous need. This reiterates the concept that one needs to experience things in order to progress.
In the context of fashion- fashion has the ability to enhance an individual’s well-being. For example, clothing choices play a pivotal role in identity formation and consumers with stronger materialistic bias use clothing for impression management, to convey success and to receive happiness from it. Additionally, organisations within the fashion industry have the ability to enhance employee’s well-being. This is by allowing creativity and flow which increases motivation and thus positive emotions. Conclusively, from this lecture I learned that well-being plays an important role within day to day life and that an individual can be detrimentally effected if their well-being isn’t fulfilled.