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In this study, the use of various clothing descriptors have been used to provide some insights into clothing perception for 88 female students. The use of clothing descriptors to categorize different aspects of clothing is a vital component of clothing selection, given the assumption that explicit use of clothing descriptors may reveal implicit clothing categories. Season, income per month, and total clothing descriptors used were shown to differentially affect the use of various clothing descriptors such as brand, colour, quality, quantity, and size. The results of this study have provided partial evidence for the effect of IT on the use of clothing descriptors, perceived clothing functionality, and effects of financial constraints on brand perception. Moreover, clothing descriptors seem to be useful in illuminating underyling schemas and processes for clothing selection. Implications for future research are discussed in terms of clothing selection and purchase.

Single-shot multi-category clothing recognition and retrieval play a crucial role in online searching and offline settlement scenarios. Existing clothing recognition methods based on RGBD clothing images often suffer from high-dimensional feature representations, leading to compromised performance and efficiency.

To address this issue, this paper proposes a novel method called Manifold Embedded Discriminative Feature Selection (MEDFS) to select global and local features, thereby reducing the dimensionality of the feature representation and improving performance. Specifically, by combining three global features and three local features, a low-dimensional embedding is constructed to capture the correlations between features and categories. The MEDFS method designs an optimization framework utilizing manifold mapping and sparse regularization to achieve feature selection. The optimization objective is solved using an alternating iterative strategy, ensuring convergence.

Empirical studies conducted on a publicly available RGBD clothing image dataset demonstrate that the proposed MEDFS method achieves highly competitive clothing classification performance while maintaining efficiency in clothing recognition and retrieval.

This paper introduces a novel approach for multi-category clothing recognition and retrieval, incorporating the selection of global and local features. The proposed method holds potential for practical applications in real-world clothing scenarios.

This paper aims to understand whether product descriptor cues related to artisanal qualities can help marketers to delineate their clothing product offerings to consumers by influencing consumers’ perceived product values and the effect (if any) of consumers’ fashion clothing involvement on such value perceptions. In today’s intensely competitive market environment marked by minimal product differentiation, marketers are often using the terms artisan, handcrafted or similar to indicate that their products are different, produced with care, are of higher quality and even premium.

For the study, a 2 (Involvement: High/Low) × 4 (Cues: Control/Artisan-made/Part of a curated collection/Handcrafted) × 2 (products replications: Jeans/Handbags) mixed model repeated measures experiment was designed. A sample of 487 adult female US consumers was recruited using a market-based research firm.

Results indicated that framing luxury products as artisanal using product descriptor cues influenced the perceived value of these products. Moreover, consumers’ fashion involvement positively influenced their perceived value for artisanal luxury products.

The study is one of the few attempts in understanding the value of artisanal luxury products. Given the importance of the artisanal luxury industry to the global economy, focusing on how consumers perceive the value of artisanal luxury products is important to marketers and practitioners as well as academicians. From a theoretical perspective, the study indicates fashion involvement as a predictor of consumers’ perceived value, thereby filling a gap in literature. The study used two different product categories to aid in generalizability of the results.

Examines the fifthteenth published year of the ITCRR. Runs the whole gamut of textile innovation, research and testing, some of which investigates hitherto untouched aspects. Subjects discussed include cotton fabric processing, asbestos substitutes, textile adjuncts to cardiovascular surgery, wet textile processes, hand evaluation, nanotechnology, thermoplastic composites, robotic ironing, protective clothing (agricultural and industrial), ecological aspects of fibre properties – to name but a few! There would appear to be no limit to the future potential for textile applications.

Examines the fourteenth published year of the ITCRR. Runs the whole gamut of textile innovation, research and testing, some of which investigates hitherto untouched aspects. Subjects discussed include cotton fabric processing, asbestos substitutes, textile adjuncts to cardiovascular surgery, wet textile processes, hand evaluation, nanotechnology, thermoplastic composites, robotic ironing, protective clothing (agricultural and industrial), ecological aspects of fibre properties – to name but a few! There would appear to be no limit to the future potential for textile applications.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate Generation Z's physical expectations of being pregnant and their outlook for maternity wear shopping.

Females in this cohort (n = 207) participated in an online survey that included questions about perceptions of pregnancy, physical self-concept and forecasted shopping behaviors.

Results indicated that this group is concerned with physical changes of pregnancy and expect to treat each area of the body in a different way. Women's expected physical concerns of pregnancy predict how much they anticipate accentuating their pregnant body. Gen Z anticipates wearing loose maternity garments and they envision a thoughtful, in-store shopping experience for styles that are equally fashionable and comfortable, such as dresses.

This study should be extended to future generational cohorts like Generation Alpha, along with Gen Z outside of the United States and women in the United States who are non-white. Further studies should take a longitudinal approach to gauge changes in this cohort's expectations as they progress through pregnancy.

This paper provides maternity wear retail brands and designers a foundation for product development and marketing geared toward this large cohort.

The study is the first to inquire about Gen Z's outlook on pregnancy, specifically their envisioned changes to each body area and the role of maternity garments to fulfill needs and concerns.

The purpose of this paper is to improve the efficiency of pattern-making for suit lapels in the apparel industry, to master the perceptual knowledge of suit lapels and to establish a mapping relationship between suit lapel styles and perceptual judgment.

In this paper, notch lapel, peak lapel and shawl lapel are studied, and the authors extract the structural features in the order of drafting as the input values for model training. At the same time, after the expert screening, four perceptual evaluation dimensions based on a priori knowledge are selected as output values, which are finally classified using a decision tree algorithm.

The results show that different design parameters produce different perceptions of people's vision and, thus, different perceptual judgments. The decision tree model can effectively classify the perceptual judgment of the lapel shape.

The findings of this study help garment factories to provide optimal judgment of basic parameters before the production of a suit lapel and to improve the efficiency of the design.

This paper aims to discuss the emergence of the contemporary Urban Street Gang (USG) on Merseyside. In terms of gang scholarship in the UK, Merseyside has been greatly neglected despite regular reports in national mainstream media that suggest Merseyside USGs represent some of the most criminally active and violent members in the UK.

A specific methodology has been omitted because the author while providing a viewpoint from Hesketh (2018), also wishes to encapsulate observations from the remaining two pieces of research conducted on Merseyside (Smithson et al., 2009; Robinson, 2018). For this reason, a summary of the methods used in each of the three studies is provided.

The paper will highlight observations drawn from all three research studies that were prevalent with USG members throughout the Merseyside county at the time of each study. They include aspects surrounding territoriality, belonging and identity through dress style as well as USG structures and motivation for joining. In particular, the paper will address also address the role of drugs which has transformed the structural make-up of many Merseyside USGs from relatively loosely knit-street corner groups involved in anti-social behaviour (ASB) to more structural-deviant entrepreneurial enterprises.

The paper calls for more research to be carried out on Merseyside. Limitations would include the omission of young women in each of the three studies.

The practical implications are as follows: a need to focus on the impact of bridging within excluded communities; a need to focus on emphasising that drug dealing is a crime that carries serious consequences, and not a form of work (grafting); a need to focus on young women and criminal involvement; and a need to concentrate on developing strategies that counter the allure and attraction of risk-taking behaviour.

The paper addresses the impact of social exclusion and the need for equality to counter young people becoming involved in criminality and gangs as well as adult organised crime groups.

The paper is based on what have been so far the only three in-depth studies carried out on Merseyside.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of product description cues as a way to differentiate luxury products for the absolute luxury consumer and the effect of individual traits such as need for uniqueness, product involvement, and product knowledge on consumers’ perceptions of expected price.

An adult sample of 253 female US consumers were recruited for an online survey.

Consumers’ need for uniqueness was related to their level of clothing involvement, which in turn was related to clothing knowledge. Fashion clothing involvement was positively related to participants’ product knowledge which in turn positively influenced participants’ perceived change in expected price of products in response to various product descriptors or cues related to absolute luxury products. In addition, younger consumers were found to be more involved in fashion clothing than older consumers.

This study extends the research into the luxury market and identifies elements of the marketing mix which might be manipulated to better inform potential customers about the luxury product. The study further emphasizes that product descriptors or cues can have an impact on price judgments, especially for highly involved and knowledgeable consumers. This is especially important to academicians as well as marketers since high fashion involved consumers have often been seen as drivers, influential, and legitimists of the fashion adoption process.

It is a pleasure, as a visitor to your country, to find myself invited to talk to this audience about information retrieval. The invitation, as it came to me, contained the implication that there was a considerable curiosity here about my activities in this field in the United States. Some preliminary reconnoitring before the meeting convinced me that this was indeed the case. Your curiosity, then, furnishes me with an excellent excuse to talk about a number of things that I have been doing over the past few years.