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Despite mature consumers' monetary power and their growing share of many product markets, research especially on mature women's buying behaviour and attitudes is still scarce. The purpose of this paper is to explore and analyse mature women's buying of clothes.

The empirical material consists of observations made in a department store and of interviews with a sample of ten Finnish women aged 50 to 63 years.

The study yielded empirically grounded elements of mature women's buying processes: the need for clothing, fashionability, clothing fit preferences, brand preferences, retailer preferences, shopping style, and price. Based on an analysis of the findings a new model of mature women's buying patterns was developed.

Albeit limited in size, the study provides a starting point for further research on mature women as well as on buying clothes in general.

Based on the found preferences, the study offers useful suggestions to clothing designers, manufacturers, retailers, and marketers on how to target mature women more effectively.

The paper opens up a hitherto neglected research topic by presenting empirical findings and a model specifically developed based on mature women's garment buying processes.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how Arab women managers construct their social identities through the meanings they ascribe to their clothing while pursuing managerial careers.

An interview‐based qualitative approach is adopted for describing the meanings that the United Arab Emirates national women managers give to their clothing.

This paper identifies multiple coexisting identities in Arab women pursuing managerial careers. While the contradiction is found in the identity as a woman and as a manager, the normative dimensions of identity formation such as being a Muslim and an Emirati serve as enhancing for women's gendered managerial identity.

The value of this paper is twofold: first, contributes to the knowledge of the topic of Arab women in management which is understudied in academia; second, it particularly sheds light how women managers meaningfully use symbols, such as dress, to construct and perform gender realities in a career context.

The purpose of this paper is to study the influence of collective self esteem, age, income, marital status, and education of Indian women in predicting their fashion clothing involvement.

Data were collected by contacting women in their offices, colleges, and malls in five different cities of India (n=397). The self‐administered questionnaire contained items from collective self esteem and fashion clothing involvement scale.

Fashion clothing involvement of Indian women is influenced by age, importance to identity, and public esteem.

There is a large representation of the younger consumer group in the sample. This makes the study findings relevant for targeting young population groups. Distinction has not been made in the sample according to student, working women, and housewives. Further research can be undertaken to understand if women's fashion clothing involvement varies according to their working and non‐working status.

The findings can prove helpful to international and national apparel manufacturers and brands in planning branding and marketing strategies to promote fashion clothing among Indian women.

This is the first study to understand the fashion clothing involvement of Indian women with respect to collective self esteem.

This study investigated fashion involvement, pre‐purchase clothing satisfaction and clothing needs of petite and tall‐sized consumers. The differences between petite and tall‐sized consumers were compared, and the relationship among the three variables was examined. Petite and tall‐sized women's shopping characteristics were identified. The data were obtained through mail survey method. The final sample consisted of 177 petite and 144 tall women. Data were statistically analysed to fulfil the purpose of the study. Descriptive statistics, such as frequency, mean and standard deviation, were utilised to define the characteristics of the sample. Analysis of variance was tested to compare beliefs about clothing attributes. T‐test and analysis of covariance were utilised to determine if there is any difference between petite and tall women in terms of fashion involvement, pre‐purchase clothing satisfaction and clothing needs. Pearson Product Moment Correlation and Pearson Partial Correlation Coefficient were utilised to test the hypotheses. The results indicated significant but relatively low relationships among fashion involvement, pre‐purchase clothing satisfaction and clothing needs. Fashion involvement and clothing needs were positively correlated, while pre‐purchase clothing satisfaction and clothing needs were negatively correlated for both petite and tall‐sized women.

This study aims to identify the challenges of Muslim women in terms of their dress code in Western society by including their clothing needs in the strategies of the fashion industry and marketing. The study focuses on wardrobe choices that have helped overcome these challenges and facilitated Muslim women’s integration into western society.

Descriptive statistics were used in this study through a questionnaire that was distributed among 265 randomly selected Muslim women in London, UK. The results have been presented in charts showing the percentages and frequencies of the different behaviors and challenges that were faced by Muslim women in the west.

The majority of the study sample preferred to use a variety of modern fashion trends from global brands to integrate with the community. The essential criteria for the Muslim women’s clothing choices include head hair cover and conservative full-length clothes that are non-transparent that cover the neck and chest area.

A study has investigated the clothing needs and behaviors of Muslim women in the west for their community integration. It analyzed the results and linked them with the role and contributions of designers, producers and fashion marketers in accepting the western society of Muslims and their integration with its members.

With the signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994, Mexico entered a bilateral free trade agreement which not only lowered its own tariffs on imports but also lowered tariffs on its exports to the United States. We find that women’s relative wage increased, particularly during the period of liberalization. Both between and within-industry shifts also favored female workers. With regards to between-industry shifts, tariff reductions expanded sectors that were initially female intensive. With regards to within-industry shifts, we find a positive association between reductions in export tariffs (U.S. tariffs on Mexican goods) and hiring of women in skilled blue-collar occupations. Finally, we find suggestive evidence that household bargaining power shifted in favor of women. Expenditures shifted from goods associated with male preference, such as men’s clothing and tobacco and alcohol, to those associated with female preference such as women’s clothing and education.

The area shrinkage of the body under pressure is very important to evaluate the comfort of pressure sense, and it is an important index that appraises compression garment. The purpose of this paper is to obtain the area shrinkage mass of the waist cross section by using the finite-element method (FEM), and the waist of women’s pantyhose could be designed with a different degree of elasticity during the course of design based on clothing pressure comfort.

This study aimed at the problems existing in the wearing of women’s elastic pantyhose, took the waist of pantyhose as the research object, and the contact between human body and pantyhose as elastic contact. The finite-element model of the waist cross section and elastic pantyhose fabric was acquired through CT scan and Mimics software. After simulating on the corresponding displacement distribution of the waist of sample elastic pantyhose during the process of dressing by using ANSYS, the authors divided the waist cross section into 24 equal regions according to angle (every 15 degrees as a region), and then the area shrinkage mass of each region was obtained by area calculation formula. According to the tendency of area shrinkage distribution, the waist of women’s elastic pantyhose could be designed for different regions of tension considering the pressure comfort, so as to guarantee that the wearing comfort can be maintained on the premise of ensuring the functionality of the elastic pantyhose.

In this paper, the authors obtained the area shrinkage mass of elastic pantyhose at waist cross section, and this area shrinkage distribution could be used as an objective evaluation index for pressure comfort. All these solutions are of great significance to the optimization design of pantyhose and can provide theoretical basis for the structural improvement of functional pantyhose and the prediction of clothing pressure.

This paper simulated the area shrinkage mass for the waist of elastic pantyhose by using FEM, and the waist of women’s elastic pantyhose could be designed for different regions of tension considering the pressure comfort according to the area shrinkage distribution tendency, so as to guarantee the wearing comfort during the wearing process.

Looks into the concept of changing sex role perceptions with regard to manufacturing and retailing. Investigates the potential of opposite sex markets and suggests that the relevant target market might consist of both sexes. Presents results which suggest that there are two major market segments – those who purchase alone and those who are assisted by a woman in purchasing clothing.

Most recent prescriptions for firm development in the garment industry have focused on methods of reducing labour costs, with less emphasis placed on targeting high margin niches. This paper examines how the early ready‐made womenswear industry in the UK moved from a wage‐cost containment strategy before the First World War to exploiting fashion‐sensitive demand in the inter‐war period. The economics of fashion‐sensitive demand meant that the most efficient structure for the industry was to have many small producers, specialised in sub‐processes, and all closely located. However, contemporaries failed to understand the efficiency properties of the ‘industrial district’ type of local economy which emerged in London's East End in the first half of this century, a failure which eventually contributed to the dispersion of industrial activities and to the eventual decline of the industry.

The last few years have seen a transformation in the retail fashion market, with the emergence of a host of new companies aimed at carefully defined market segments. How has this affected the traditional sales of fashion according to retail sector? Roy Holliss examines these changes; one is that some 22 per cent of all clothing is now purchased from the specialist fashion multiples, with a peak of over 30 per cent in the 15–24 age group.