Cultivating User-ship? Developing a Circular System for the Acquisition and Use of Baby Clothing

Abstract

This paper sets out to explore the significance of the production, sale and consumption of clothing as a product service system rather than as the more familiar “shop-window” product offered for individual sale. While there are a number of studies of occupational clothing systems, relatively little is known about clothing systems tailored for the private market. This article presents a case study of a recently launched subscription service for baby clothing, which offered a range of eco-certified garments for rent as more or less complete wardrobes. Drawing on fashion scholar Kate Fletcher’s concept of “techniques and processes of use” and on Actor-Network Theory, the study follows the company from its tentative beginnings through its first year in a process that provided an opportunity to study a clothing system “in the making.” Particular interest is paid to how the leasing system and product design features are mutually constitutive and to how the system interconnects with practices of use and maintenance among subscribers with a special interest in laundry regimes and durability. Taking this empirical example as its point of departure, the article concludes with a discussion of how product qualities and processes of use are intertwined and co-constructed.

Keywords:

• baby clothing
• leasing system
• product service systems in fashion and dress
• sustainability
• practices of use

Notes

1. Examples include Resecond (http://resecond.com/om-kjolebutikken, accessed October 9, 2015) and Tøjbiblioteket (The Clothing Library) (http://voresomstilling.dk/projekt/tøjbiblioteket/592, accessed December 2, 2015).

2. The subscription system offers clothing for children from newborn to approximately two years of age. In the rest of the article the term baby is chosen as a convenient shorthand for the first two years.

3. Whether this is actually the case is uncertain. Anecdotal evidence and our empirical material indicate that children’s garments are to a large extent shared in informal networks between families and friends as well as through secondhand sale. To our knowledge the question of whether children’s clothing does, in fact, suffer from a structural problem of underuse has not been thoroughly explored.

4. Several terms can be used about the company’s business model. The company itself preferred the term “sharing” to other more commercial-sounding terms. Drawing on the existing literature, rental seems to be mostly used when consumers pay a fee for short-term use of particular garments (e.g. Armstrong et al. 2015; Min and DeLong 2015). In this case, customers would sign up for continued membership for up to two years. Therefore the terms subscription or leasing seem to be the most appropriate and precise.

5. GOTS stands for Global Organic Textile Standard.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Trine Brun Petersen

Trine Brun Petersen is Assistant Professor at the Department of Design and Communication, University of Southern Denmark. She holds a PhD in design and behavior from the Design School Kolding/Aarhus School of Architecture. Her research interests focus on uniforms, occupational clothing systems and fashionable clothing for children.

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Vibeke Riisberg

Vibeke Riisberg is an experienced textile designer, Associate Professor at Design School Kolding Denmark, and holds a PhD in the evolution from analogue to digital processes of printed textiles. She has conducted research in institutional contexts such as office environments and hospitals. Recent research interests include handling of textiles in service systems, design and aesthetic experience.

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