Fashion Practice, Volume 4, Issue 2, pp. 221238DOI: 10.2752/175693812X13403765252389Reprints available directly from the Publishers.Photocopying permitted by licence only. 2012 Berg.

Durability, Fashion, Sustainability: The Processes and Practices of UseKate Fletcher

Kate Fletcher is a researcher, writer, and design activist, whose work over the past fifteen years has shaped the field of fashion and sustainability. She works with fashion businesses, non-profits, and government. She authored Sustainable Fashion and Textiles: Design Journeys (2008) and co-authored Fashion and Sustainability: Design for Change (2012).kate@katefletcher.com

Abstract

Longer-lasting materials and products are often promoted as a strategy to increase resourcefulness and sustainability across product groups in-cluding fashion. Yet these gains depend on changed user behavior and consumption patterns, which in fashion in particular are influenced by social and experiential dimensions, not just material products. Obsoles-cence of fashion products, driven by aesthetic change and tied to chang-ing social preferences underscores the psycho-social nature of factors which affect fashion garment lifespans. This is reflected by ethnographic

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evidence that shows that garments which defy obsolescence do so in informal or unintentional ways, rarely as a result of design planning or material or product qualities. This article suggests a point of depar-ture for design for durability that shifts away from a familiar focus on materials, products, and userobject relationships to instead explore material durability as emerging from strategies of human action. It suggests that durability, while facilitated by materials, design, and con-struction, is determined by an ideology of use.

KEYWORDS: fashion, durability, design, sustainability, use, social practice.

Introduction

Durability enjoys an easy relationship with sustainability. Resilient materials and products have potential to lengthen product lifetimes. Longer lifetimes in turn provide us with more opportunities to access a products utility. By extending the potential for satisfaction with existing pieces, no additional ones are required. New consumption is forestalled, resources are saved, waste is reduced, needs are met.

It is perhaps unsurprising therefore that durability is a foundational idea of the area of study known as design for sustainability, a discipline that has enlarged its scope and field of action over the last two decades and which aims to envision and give form to alternative ways of living (Manzini 1994; Walker 2006). Much of the development work of the theories and practice of design for durability, such as those pioneered by the organization Eternally Yours (van Hinte 1997, 2004), have been developed in product design. Over the last decade many of these ideas have migrated to fashion where they have been appropriated both at a materials-level and to influence productuser relationships. Experienced practitioners of design for durability have long recognized the limita-tions of many of these approaches. Many of the same issues that dog the success of durability as a strategy to influence consumption patterns in product design also influence the outcomes of the fashion design process; most notably, user behavior. Expending resources and effort to extend the life of products pays few dividends unless, as users, we make use of the utility provided by longer-life products, and subsequently change our patterns of consumption. Despite the user-dependent nature of the factors that affect on-the-ground lifespans of products, most work in this area focuses on durability as originating from a product itself and that products potential for robustness and enchantment, not from the lifeworld and social actions of the user. Yet the incongruity of relying on things to influence peoples behavior to in turn foster longevity of those things is amplified in the context of garments by the deeply social nature of fashion: what one person chooses to wear, and to wear for a long time, is also affected by the decisions and actions of others.

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In this article, I engage with a dialogue of evidence and draw on extensive knowledge of design for sustainability in fashion, and on pri-mary ethnographic research conducted in six locations in Europe and North America to explore durability and its relationship to fashion in practice. I first offer an introduction to obsolescence and then review durability within the familiar frameworks of materials, fashion prod-ucts, and emotional engagement with garments. I then shift the focus away from products to instead explore durability as emerging from social relations and human action, and what Karen Tranberg Hansen has called clothing competencies (2003: 306). I conclude by sug-gesting that fashion as a system of dress can act to promote longevity of garments by viewing durability as an outcome of activities linked to satis fying use of clothing. I propose that durability in fashion can-not only be promoted as a product-based phenomenon, but rather it emerges from an individual and collective practice with dynamic impli-cations for our use of materials.

It should be acknowledged that for some, the notion of pursuing durability in fashion at all is problematic, not least because durability, and the associated ideas of resilience and constancy, would seem to deny fashion its essential, ever-changing nature. Moreover, as an economic and cultural process, fashion is challenged by the idea of a more dura-ble material culture. For as, a market-driven cycle of consumer desire and demand; and...a modern mechanism for the fabrication of the self (Breward and Evans 2005: 2), fashion and associated ideas have come to be almost exclusively organized around industrial capitalism and con-sumerism based on rapid product obsolescence and continually increas-ing throughput of resources. As Joanne Finkelstein states, if we are relying upon the properties of procured goods for our sense of identity, then we are compelled to procure again and again (1991: 145). Here the dominant, consumerist story and imagery of fashion is reinforced by business, cultural preferences, and views on what is both desirable and practicable (Fletcher 2012) with well-recorded serious environmental implications (Allwood et al. 2006). Within this dominant story, alterna-tives, including those that promote longer-lasting products as part of a bigger strategy of paced consumption, resourcefulness, and human well-being are rejected. Yet this was not always the case. As Gronow (1997: 79) notes, originally fashion was not consciously created; it was born as a side-product of purposive social action. And if fashion, by definition, is always relevant to its time and context, then social action, including that supporting durability will also shape fashion.

Obsolescence and Fashion

Since the publication of Vance Packards The Waste Makers in 1960, knowledge of obsolescence has been building as a key way to influence

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both supply and demand of products by influencing users perceptions of their products continued usefulness. As Burns (2010: 43) states, Plan-ning for durability was no longer a priority. Obsolescence in its earliest form, meaning to wear out, had evolved into the newly discovered use of psychological obsolescence...as a means to influence consumer spending. This change, which coincided with the growing capacity of factory production of clothing and increasing supply of materials after the restrictions of the war years, marked a shift in the perception of clothes from a durable consumer good with an intrinsic material value, to a non-durable consumer good with novelty and brand value (Fine and Leopold 1993, cited by Skov 2011: n.p.). Indeed particularly in the saturated fashion markets of industrialized economies where most new purchases of clothing are additional or replacement acquisitions rather than sales to new customers, a tendency towards a short service life and low intrinsic material value is an inevitable effect of the market-based system of mass consumption and production of fashion (Stahel 2010: 160). For the prevailing business models bottom line to keep showing growth, garments have to become obsolete, at least in psy-chological terms. Yet irrespective of their waning psychological appeal, the vast majority of garments endure physically. When these pieces are confined to the back of the wardrobe, they do not dematerialize.

The legacy of psychological obsolescence associated with the fashion industry is found both in growing levels of discarded clothing (Allwood et al. 2006: 16) and, where they are not disposed of and additional ones bought, in the increasing numbers of rarely used garments stock-piled in homes. Statistics for the UK reveal that the volume of clothes bought each year is nearly double that which is discarded, suggesting rising rates of ownership and storage (Textile Outlook International 2009: 100). At least some of this consumption of clothing can be seen as essential to meet the fundamental human need of protectioninsulating and shielding the bodythough this physical need is quickly satisfied with minimal resource use. In the economic period of satiation cur-rently enjoyed by those of us in the rich North, it is using materials and marshaling resources for development of our physic life that is the chief challenge for sustainability. In the context of fashion, the resource inten-sity of our need for identity formation, communication, and creativity as expressed through our dressed bodies is also the chief challenge for durability, though few have explored its implications.

A process of analyzing and categorizing the different mechanisms of product obsolescence has been underway for the last fifty years. Burns (2010: 45) synthesizes this debate into four modes relevant across prod-uct groups. They are: aesthetic (where changing appearance renders existing products obsolete); social (shifting societal preferences and norms lead to retirement); technological (changing technology renders functioning product obsolete); and economic (cost structures promote disuse and replacement rather than maintenance). In the fashion sector

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the primary, though not exclusive, tools of obsolescence are aesthetics closely connected to social preferences and cultural conditions. Here a cycle of invention, acceptance, and discard of a continually changing series of temporary modes of appearance is disseminated across social groups. Stewart Brand describes obsolescence another way; fashion can only advance by punishing the no longer fashionable (1994: 54). Indeed perhaps no industry has better perfected the cycle of invention-acceptance-dissatisfaction-invention than fashion; and has so success-fully de-linked it from physical need or function. In the fashion sector each new circuit of this cycle offers little in the way of material develop-ment or progression. Rarely does a new item better protect our bodies physically or offer enhanced functionality; rather we buy afresh to make visible our identity both as an individual and part of larger social groups within a particular place and time.

There is a substantial body of work exploring the relationship between products and modes of obsolescence in order to attempt to lessen their effect (see for example Cooper 2010), yet little of this is specific to fashion and clothing. While many of these ideas are por-table between product types, garments differ from other products such as electronic devices, domestic appliances, and furniture in a number of key ways that act to change the relevance and application of con-cepts and strategies. For instance, an item of clothing has a softer, more mutable surface as compared with the hard surface of many consumer products. As such, strategies to extend the durability of clothing or tex-tile materials become almost always expressed as a change in surface quality. By contrast, in a product with a hard surface, an unchanging visual and material quality is possible that allows for a more predictable aesthetic over time, with different implications for design for durability. Further, while garments can be seen as having much in common with other domestic objects, items worn on the body have an intimate quality that confers upon them a personal, sometimes private, status different to other household products. Inevitably such intimacy changes the rela-tionships that influence longevity and the relevance of strategies, such as sharing, which may be both bolstered or undermined depending on the piece. Other differences reflect the significant role played by garments in identity formation as compared with other products, as an aide to nego-tiating the space between the inner self and the outside world; and the dominance of the aesthetic and social modes of obsolescence in fashion compared with the influence of other modes such as technology in the retiring of many other products. Taken together such differences warn against the wholesale transposition of generic durability approaches be-tween product areas. This being said, as we work to lessen or even break up the accelerators of obsolescence, there is little doubt that while being mindful of the factors that govern a specific products longevity, shar-ing knowledge and practice across product groups is likely to generate innovation.

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In this article, I now explore two groups of design for sustainability strategies for durability in the fashion context, starting with material- and product-level durability.

Material- and Product-level Durability

While ideas of design for durability at a conceptual level challenge con-sumerist culture and the contemporary fashion system; long-lasting and robust materials are easily assimilated into existing garments and prod-uct optimization methodologies and are often aspired to as a feature of good design. Actioning durability as a materials-level strategy is both practical and palatable and over the last twenty years, the benefits of pursuing long-life materials as an aid to enhance durability of clothing has been recommended as supportive of sustainability goals (see, for example, Mackenzie 1997). Seemingly this idea still has currency. In 2012, the organization WRAP, which now facilitates the Sustainable Clothing Action Plan for the UK recently commissioned research into durability in the fashion and clothing sector that emphasizes garment durability as contingent of such specific material phenomena (WRAP 2012).

While it is true that garments are material things, potential physical longevity of the garment depends less on the fabric itself than on the piece as a wholethe constructed material object. For a garment will last only as long as its least durable component. A product (as distinct to a material) strategy of durability attempts to balance a pieces lifespan across component parts to build a shared, similar longevity of seam, fabric, fastening, facing, etc. It allows for workmanship to be as durable as the hardworking fabric on a garments cuffs, hems, and knees. It matches a fabric with poor dimensional stability or wash fastness with low-grade seam construction. Such tactics build an internally consistent product strategy for durability that prevents squandering resources by over-specifying resource-intensive long-lasting components in conjunc-tion with others that only have the potential for a short life.

For garments that physically wear out and no longer function and for those that are made obsolete by economicsthat is where it is cheaper to buy a new piece rather than mend an existing onematerial- and product-level durability delivers benefits. Indeed more broadly, knowl-edge about the strength and wearability properties of materials and the methods of garment construction that are the most long-lasting is valu-able. Yet the tangible sustainability benefit of enhancing the material durability of clothing is contingent on two key assumptions. The first, that if you make garments physically robust, then people will continue to use them. And the second linked notion, that that this extra utility afforded to the product by designing for physical resilience, translates into lower levels of consumption: i.e. fewer pieces are bought because

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the existing one lasts longer. However, these suppositions are shaky at best. Anecdotal evidence suggests that for certain garments, such as workwear, it may be the case that durable fabrics and construction enable overalls and protective gear to be worn longer and delay re-placement consumption. But for fashion clothes, which already endure physically long past their period of use, putting resources and effort into enhancing the physical durability of seams and fabrics is worth little if it is aesthetics or social preferencesor even changing waistlinesnot material robustness that determines a pieces lifespan. Making a gar-ment last is very different to making a long-lasting garment.

Emotionally Durable Design

A substantial body of work, most notably by Jonathan Chapman in his book Emotionally Durable Design (2005), has shaped ideas around psychological mechanisms to construct meaning in material culture that attempt to foster sustained use of products by consumers. Ideas of emo-tional durability contend that products are discarded when they display an absence of meaning. And by cultivating an emotional and experiential connection between person and object, we can disrupt our dependency on consumption of new goods to construct meaning and our sense of self. As part of his doctoral research in which he surveyed the product relationships of over 2,000 users of domestic electronic products, Chap-man (2009: 33) developed a six point experiential framework to initiate engagement with emotional durability and design, specifying points of intervention and pathways which offer starting points and lend struc-ture to investigations:

Narrative:usersshareauniquepersonalhistorywiththeproduct; Detachment:users feelnoemotionalconnectiontotheproduct,

have low expectations of it, and thus view it favorably because it makes few demands;

Surface:theproductageswellphysicallyanddevelopsatangiblecharacter through this process;

Attachment: users feel a strong emotional connection to theproduct;

Enchantment:usersaredelightedbyaproductandtheprocessofdiscovery of it;

Consciousness: the product is perceived to have free will. It istemperamental and users need to acquire skills to interact with it fully.

Other thinkers have also developed categorized approaches to emotionally durable design. Batterbee and Mattelmki (2004) for example classify three groups of objects with meaningful associations: meaningful tool (the object enables satisfying activity), meaningful association (the

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object acts as carrier of cultural or individual meaning), and living ob-ject (the object fosters an emotional bond). Alistair Fuad-Luke (2010: 147) collates a number of different approaches to extending productuser relations. A summary is offered here:

Extended durability via high quality, good design, reliable, upgradable, maintainable products;

Sharingproducts; Co-operatively designing and producing products togetherwith

users; Retentionofnarrativeandaestheticappealthroughusepersonal-

ization and aging with dignity; Creating personal narratives through customization, personal-

ization, and memory Increasingsensorialvariety; Makingsocialconnections.

Notwithstanding the challenges of transposing these ideas between design sectors, there has been a groundswell of work in this area in fashion in both commercial and research contexts. This work includes, among others, the garments created co-operatively with users such as by Antiform (antiform 2012), which has resulted in the production of an eight-piece collection with sixty-four local people (beaders, knitters, artists, seamstresses, and volunteers); those designed to be shared such as by the small knitwear brand, Keep and Share (keepandshare 2012), which creates unisize pieces with few fastenings to aid the possibility of collaborative consumption and the creating a rich use history and personal narrative; the London-based studio and shop Here Today Here Tomorrow (heretoday-heretomorrow 2012) that through its workshop and training courses erodes the social and practical distance between the making and using of fashion; the modular garments of DePLOY (Deploy 2012), which can be used in different configurations to increase variety without consumption; and the garments in the final collection of MA student Saida Bruce designed to promote enchant-ment by incorporating hidden details that become revealed over time (saidabruce 2012).

Critiquing the Efficacy of Durability Strategies

Yet irrespective of the originality and value of this work to animate a product in order to foster engagement and delay disposal, the findings of consumer studies research reveal that consumption patterns are not necessarily impacted by emotionally durable design. Sian Evans and Tim Cooper note, attachment doesnt necessarily lead to lifespan optimis-ing behaviour (2010: 334). Simply because users have formed a bond with a piece, does not mean it will be used or replacement consumption

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prevented. They go on, In cases where such attachment was identified, new products were no less likely to be purchased; attachment merely led to accumulation and storage of seldom-used items (2010: 334).

Chapman (2010: 65) himself recognizes the limitations of designing for attachment and engagement:

Although a designer can certainly elicit within users an emotional response to a given object, the explicit nature of the response is beyond the designers control; the unique assemblage of past experiences that is particular to each user, their cultural back-ground and life journey determines this. Designers cannot craft an experience but only the conditions or levers that might lead to an intended experience. What those required conditions are, however, is still unclear to design.

This is corroborated by research that reveals that those products that defy obsolescence do so in informal or unintentional ways, rarely as a result of design planning (Park 2010: 81), and which shows that consumers often behave in a way so as to reduce the lifespan of prod-ucts, with an idiosyncratic approach to maintaining quality (Evans and Cooper 2010: 321). It is also reinforced by the findings of my ongo-ing ethnographic research project, Local Wisdom (localwisdom 2012), which show that satisfying, resourceful practices of use of garments are rarely motivated by durability. Such insight acts to downplay the potential of the traditional design process to influence the way in which a product is used and durability promoted and it instead emphasizes durability as contingent on user behavior. It suggests that design for durability requires a different approach.

Here I am indebted to the work of anthropologist Karen Tranberg Hansen (2003), who in her research exploring secondhand dress in Zambia is confronted with a similar inadequacy in the dominant approach to understanding her field. For Tranberg Hansen, the prob-lem is that material culture, with its emphasis on socially constructed things or commodities, falls short in explaining the fashion practices she observed in Zambia which are dominated by social exchanges and relationships. In her analysis she overcomes this by, shifting the focus from things to social relations and interactions. With this shift, the point of departure is not the things themselves but rather the strategies within which they are embedded (Tranberg Hansen 2003: 301). She takes Jonathan Friedmans suggestion to approach objects and relations from a different perspective, turning around Appadurais (1986) now founda-tional idea of material culture that things have social lives, arguing that her evidence from the streets of Lusaka reveal instead that, things do not have social lives. Rather social lives have things (Friedman 1991, cited in Tranberg Hansen 2003: 301). In so doing her point of departure becomes people.

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In the remainder of this article I, like Tranberg Hansen, affect a changed point of departure to develop a more expansive and accurate understanding of the relationship between fashion and durability. Such a shift changes the focus of investigation of durability from the object (with or without its qualities of enchantment and attachment) to the behaviors, habits, and material expression of the person using it. Dura-bility becomes embedded in the techniques and processes of use.

Local Wisdom

Since 2009, I have been conducting social practice research through an ongoing project, Local Wisdom, that explores the tending, fixing, and satisfying use of clothingdescribed as the craft of use (localwisdom 2012). This project draws on ethnographic methods alongside design process to open up the deep inner space of the wardrobe and amplify its insights so as to drive change towards practices of sustainability in fashion. The project attempts to connect the world of material relation-ships, so often the preserve of industrial activity, with that of social rela-tionships, the majority of which, belong to the consumers life world (Skov 2011: n.p.). Thus it seeks to explore sustainability in fashion not just as a material phenomenon but also as a broader and more dynamic process of human actions, relationships, and their associated material effects (Lifkin 2010: 118). The projects aim is to generate knowledge, insight, and inspiration from social practices that are often ignored by industrial interests. These individual, material, and social actions and processes associated with garments are recorded using portrait photog-raphy and object histories and so far have been gathered in eight loca-tions in Europe and North America. The process begins with the setting up of a community photo shoot, typically in a public building, in a varied selection of rural towns and cities. The shoot is widely advertised in the vicinity; signs are put up in newsagents windows, in local librar-ies, and sports centers. Advertisements are placed in local newspapers and interviews given on community radio networks. The project con-nects with local networks as varied as the climate change campaigning group Cape Farewell (capefarewell 2011), local fashion weeks (e.g. in Berlin and Dublin), and the Transition Towns movement (transitionnet-work 2011). An open invitation is extended to the public to attend the shoot and share the stories of how garments are used. The project aims to pay special attention to use-related garment practices, as distinct to production-related ones. That is, to uncover the behaviors that go on around, with, and to clothes during their period of use, rather than their production (either industrially or hand- and homemade). On the day of the shoot, a photographer and audio equipment to record the garments history is set up and the team waits to see who turns up and which garment practices emerge.

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The qualitative data generated by Local Wisdom is limited, personal, and specific. It is not generalizable to the wider population nor does it allow us to make predictions about the behavior of individuals other than the members of the public who volunteered to their share garment use practices with the project. Yet what it does do is offer tentative insight into the post-purchase use practices of garments, which have been shown to be both the source of most customer satisfaction and environmental impact (Peattie 2010: 254) but about which relatively little is known. It is often reported, for example, that mechanisms for collecting and feeding back the experiences of users seldom exist (Nor-man 1998: 142).

The everyday garment use practices explored in Local Wisdom are not focused on durability in particular, yet many of the qualitative object histories gathered reveal evidence of long-lasting garments. Practices as varied as dressing to reflect a personal history, to support self-reliant communities, to defy the contested values of a garment producer, and to resist cultural pressure to launder are often played out with garments that are established parts of our wardrobes, though not only those that are physically robust (these range from a silk dress, to a denim jacket; a cotton jersey top to woolen knitwear). Such evidence tentatively rein-forces the view that durability is not fostered through resilient materials and design intention, but through the practices of use. Other practices uncovered by Local Wisdom explicitly articulate use over the long term, such as those that mark evolving life stories on and through our clothes and those with three or more owners. In these practices, while mending and altering were common, the physical durability of the garment per se appears less critical to the pieces durability than a users habit of mind fostering long-term use. It seems that durability in fashion is mainly a product of nurture not nature. Its potential, present within most pieces, is uncovered as garments are used.

The use practices that foster durability are social practices that facilitate and emerge around the extended iterative use of those gar-ments through time. Rarely, if at all, do these craft of use practices need much in the way of extra material consumption or money to make them possible. Rather they are contingent on individuals finding creative opportunity in routinized types of behavior with existing clothes. That is, in honing the skills of use and investigating the informal pathways of influence in fashion that spring from wardrobes, to start the process of recognizing where widespread action can take place. Wardrobes have been described as representing a philosophy of having...both liter-ally and figuratively (Skov 2011: n.p.), yet in the case of the craft of use, a different representation emerges, the wardrobe as a philosophy of being.

The craft of use also provides a challenge for those engaging with change, involving a transition from the certainties of controllable things in space to the self-organising complexities of an endlessly ravelling and

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unravelling skein of relationships over time (Brand 1994: 71). In order to cultivate a process of tending and use of garments, the one-off act of creating a piece within knowable, fixed parameters becomes subsumed by an infinitely more complex task of engaging with the social context of garment use. In the hands of users, garments have a life of their own. And it is this life of action, relationships, and material effects that influ-ences how long these pieces last. The craft of use is thus an expression of the potential for satisfaction and individual agency with garments and a celebration of already existing extended use practices.

Three Vignettes from the Local Wisdom Project

A Life of Action

I call this my three stage jacket. It began about forty years ago as a very slim waistcoat that was given to me. I knitted a panel and put it into the back just to be able to fasten it together at the front, you see. And then about fifteen years ago I added sleeves and a collar and some trimmings. And then, only about five years ago, I became a bit too big to button it up so I added latchets across to the front so that I can fasten it. (Figure 1)

Wear to Wear out

This is a dress that Ive had for 25 years and share with my sister. We sort of have it for 5 years each and then post it back to each other and its like fancy dress for me... it brings out a different

Figure 1A life of action. Image courtesy of Local Wisdom. Photograph: Fiona Bailey.

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part of me. At the moment I just wear it for special occasions but I once met a woman who was in her 80s and who wore evenin-gwear all the time. Shed made a decision years before not to buy any new clothes and to wear everything until it wore out. Shed worn her way through her wardrobe and had got to her evening-wear. So when Im in my 80s Im going to wear this dress... (Figure 2)

Sulphuric Denim

This was my Dads jeans jacket when he was a teenager and he was a chemistry student in the early seventies and he wore this in the lab and he got sulphuric acid all down the front so its got acid burns through it... I kind of like the fact that he was wearing this when he was, sort of, nineteen, twenty, in a lab and burning holes in it... Plus its just a shoddy jacket... The fabrics pretty horrible...the waistbands just been cut off and folded over. I like, I guess, honestly bad workmanship if you know what I mean. Ive never been one for washed products and rips and tears and destruction artificially so generally that means you get stuff that reflects how you wear things, what you do... (Figure 3)

User-ship

Such empirical evidence supports the view that durability is an outcome and not an aim of using products. A point underscored by durabilitys

Figure 2Wear to wear out. Image courtesy of Local Wisdom. Photograph: Fiona Bailey.

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nonlinear relationship with user satisfaction. Mackenzie et al. (2010: 307) suggest that while lack of durability of products is a source of dissatisfaction to consumers, neither is perpetual durability valued: a lifespan considered reasonable is a prerequisite for satisfaction, but does not ensure it. Thus product life extension becomes a nested sys-tem within broader discussions about satisfying fashion practices that recognize the importance to durability of a garments materialityits fabrics, construction, and designand the overriding influence of these practices on a products eventual length of life.

Figure 3Sulphuric denim. Image courtesy of Local Wisdom. Photograph: Kerry Dean.

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Walter Stahel describes this expanded view of durability as user-ship (2010: 175), that is something that emanates from performance rather than products. Evoking ideas of user-ship as distinct to owner-ship moves the durability debate away from product-centric business language that has largely dominated product lifetimes discussions to date and back to a debate of wider society; reflecting the reality of du-rability as a behavioral issue related to material objects. This is not an insubstantial task, for we are largely locked in to fashion conventions, habits, social norms, and industry structures that reflect a vision of our-selves as consumptive individuals, not as users, and where many of the practices of satisfying use are little valued and driven underground. Not only are such practices personal, variable, and slow to enact, they also fall outside the narrow spectrum of fashion activity that is valued by consumer society.

In this space a different role for design practices for durability emerges. Here the aim is to foster and amplify the skills, habits of mind, and abilities of users to create and engage with fashion from within a context of satisfaction and resourcefulness. This fashion-ability, craft of use, or clothing competence (Tranberg Hansen 2003: 306) is a set of skills, ideas, and identifiable practices that are conducive to promot-ing the satisfying use of garments and to the creation of fluid appearance in dress appropriate to both time and place that is expressed in a fashion moment. Here fashion is contingent on clothes worn in ways that requires peoples (users) active collaboration. Other authors call this competence task knowledge (Evans and Cooper 2010: 334), some-times framed as an extension of practical household management skills and perhaps has similarities to early experiences of fashion as a practice of making, often in groups. Evidence from the Local Wisdom project suggests that such competencies promote the extended use of garments. It is here that fashion as a process can be seen to bolster durability and begin to offer an alternative to the throwaway society.

Conclusion

As in other product sectors, strategies that attempt to foster durability in fashion are limited by the behavior and consumption practices of users. Despite this, most activities that promote durability start from materials and products, not users. The ability of a traditional design process to reach into the life world of the user and influence behavior appears to be weak, and in the context of fashion clothes, weakened further by fashions social nature, which sees it influenced by human exchanges and actions and not just material objects.

In this article I have articulated a new point of departure for ex-ploring durability in fashion, supported by evidence from ethnographic research into satisfying practices of garment use as well as research in

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other product areas. It reveals that long-life garments exist, but that their extended lives are determined more by an ideology of use than by a garments physical robustness or the strength of the userobject relationship. In short, durability is user-based rather than product-based, though played out in material form. This suggests that in order to promote greater resourcefulness and longevity of products in fashion, it is to clothing competency and the craft of use that we must turn our attention. For such processes recognize the social and experiential dimensions to fashion, which, facilitated by a garments materials, design, and construction, influence how long clothing lasts.

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