The concept of environment-friendly have been described diversely according to the era and ersearcher. They describe it as 'Naturalism', 'Green', 'Environment-friendly', 'Eco', 'Sustainable', 'Well-being', and 'Lohas' etc, but the essential point of t...
The concept of environment-friendly have been described diversely according to the era and ersearcher. They describe it as 'Naturalism', 'Green', 'Environment-friendly', 'Eco', 'Sustainable', 'Well-being', and 'Lohas' etc, but the essential point of them are all the same: respect for human and nature. In this study, the all terms will go by the name as 'Environment-friendly'. And the environment-friendly fashion means to seek physical health and mental satisfaction, contribute to reduction of material consumption, and circulation of environment, and consider of local cultural development and social well-being than ordinary fashion design.
The purpose of this study is to comprehend the values in the environment-friendly fashion and examine the specific contents for design elements, based on the concept of Horn and Gurel(1981): 'Fashion is a visual expression of our thought'. The preceding studies focused on analysis of visual images of environment-friendly fashion, but this study aims to examination of values and design elements such as line, color, textiles and textures in the environment-friendly fashion which could be contribute to product development of environment-friednly fashion brand.
For this, not only content analysis of related domestic and international studies posterior to 1990', but also in-depth interviews with exprts and consumers of environment-friendly fashion were carried out to reveal the relationship between values and the design elements. Firstly, for content analysis, the 32 studies (total of 28 domestic studies and 4 international syidies) collected. The content analysis' unit was set and classified through listing words and sentences that contain the key words of the design factors drawn from the concept of environment-friendly fashion, binding them separately by similarity, and subdividing them. Secondly, for in-depth interviews, laddering research of Aaker, Kumar and Day(1995) was used as the method of interview, and the interviewers were 15 environment-friendly brand experts including directors, deisgners, shop masters and 17 common consumers. Open coding in constant comparative method of Straus and Cobin(1990) was used for analysis of the recoerded interviews.
The results of the content analysis and in-depth interview, it is obvious that the personal value of environment-friendly fashion has been increased since 2000, as well as the environmental value. Need and preference of customers for environment-friendly fashion design were diversified and consumers consciousness are more advaced even than experts. Thus, it is not enough to consider the effect on environment only. Understanding the personal, environmental, economic, and social value from the viewpoint of customers, finding the potimal design factors, and reflecting them in development of products are necessary to pave the way for advanced environment-friendly fashion. People's personal values were expressed on natural style, minimal style, transformable style, sportive style, and detail line, organic natural fabrics, development of environment-friendly fabrics, functional finishes, sensible textures etc. Experts should have a sense of responsibility to lead future environment-friendly fashion to right direction, and provide diverse information what consumer understand, for example, the use of environment-friendly fabrics. Also they should strive to consider the all process in choosing line, color, and material for future environment-friendly fashion design.