Thesis (M. Sc.)--University of Alberta, 2009. / Title from pdf file main screen (viewed on July 16, 2009). "A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Textiles and Clothing, Department of Human Ecology, University of Alberta." Includes bibliographical references.

The Master's thesis "Mapping of the dresses market for an e-shop" should work as a basis for a future business, an e-shop with dresses, providing a customized product -- dresses, which the customer can design himself using the online configurator. The goal of the thesis is to map the market environment, competition and to determine the consumer behaviour and his desires when shopping online. Theoretical part consists of entrepreneur theory, marketing mix, e-commerce and market research. Practical part will introduce the e-shop and the whole market research including both secondary and primary one. The result of the thesis should be a recommendation for the e-shop realization.

Thesis advisor: Maia McAleavey / A time of rapid industrialization and burgeoning consumerism, the nineteenth century was full of things, a physical reality that is mirrored in the heavily material story worlds of Victorian literature. My dissertation investigates how objects do things in texts, exhibiting a mattered, agentic existence that decenters the human and proposes a materially-centered textual reality. In the writings of Charlotte Brontë, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Wilkie Collins, and others, a particular set of objects-portraits, dresses, dolls, and letters-is characterized by their shared representation of the human body and the ways in which they act with, against, and independently of the characters they represent. These texts and objects emphasize the essential material components of textual realities and the ways in which objects have agency within the narrative to redefine the mattered framework of the text. The objects in this study operate on a spectrum of agency that emphasizes their role as active matter in their parent text. Going beyond the historical and cultural models that usually inform readings of things in Victorian literature, I investigate how these objects are active in upending the primacy of the human and constructing new assemblages of possibility and potentiality that cannot be accessed by the human alone. Each chapter traces the development of the agentic object in one or more texts as they reshape the structure of their fictional reality to allow objects to exist alongside with, rather than subservient to, their human creators and audiences. Acknowledging the ways in which things in texts have functioned historically and culturally in the nineteenth century, this dissertation examines how they operate textually, offering a differently centered narrative world that reimagines the role of objects as primary actors in constructing fictional realities. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2018. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: English.

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This work aims to explore the possibilities in re-design by using secondhand party-dresses as the main material to construct new garments with a focus on street wear silhouettes. Deconstruction is commonly used when working with secondhand and will also be used in this work, as well as draping. The goal is to find new expressions when working with re-design and to only focus on one type of garment (the dress) and use streetwear as a tool to build silhouettes that rely on the typical garments used in street wear. The idea is to explore what these two styles and shapes (evening wear versus street wear) can bring forward to the re-design field. This work will find a new style and silhouettes from these two worlds (unfashionable dresses and streetwear)with the help of experiments by deconstructing and draping the dresses and treating them as ”raw-material ”to make clothes. As it is now, re-design is heavily looked upon as patchwork, often in smaller pieces and the clothes used as materials are often bundled into one category- something that is a disadvantage to the future of re-design. This work shows the results of focusing on one garment as a base to re-design. It lets the designer come closer to understand how to work with the garment in the progress of making new clothing. Also to highlight the transformation a rarely used (because of its exclusive use to special occasions) an evening dress (often uncomfortable, inappropriate for everyday wear) can go to become a more used and functional garment by making use of street wear aesthetics (looser fit, everyday-appropriated wear).The work shows both wearable examples and more exaggerated shapes, to show that this method can be adapted to be used both commercially and for showpieces. Approximately 55 were purchased to have a catalog to chose from. After gathering pictures of street wear from different medias, the garments were picked out (such as hoodies, t-shirts) and also pin pointing details (buttons, zippers etc) and this set the frame for what variables were used when starting to create the new garments. Each garment was made out of 1-4 dresses. The point was not to make street garments, but to find what will become of these dresses after going through the process of street-wear silhouettes and details to become more updated and wearable clothes. In the end, it turned out to be a fruitful clash of silhouettes and materials suited for both men and female collections. The variations in shape and colors set a tone of its own. Instead of letting that secondhand dress hang in a vintage store waiting for some compassion or an 80’s themed party just to be thrown back into a second-hand store the next day, and even for the future special occasion dresses, worn once then never again, this method can be applied to transform and bring them back to usage. This method can expand the life of these dresses, limits only to the wear of the fabric which could be well over 100 years more of use.

Women in East Africa appear to be in a unique position worldwide: their everyday dresses are not only significant in their habitual textile codes, but also as textures exhibiting meaningful verbal elements in complex density and seemingly endless variety These textual elements are proverbs or proverbial phrases written in Swahili, which seem to interact with the colour and design of the cloth (termed kanga), being either abstract or figurative in ornament, which the female wearer may choose according to cunent personal and interpersonal dispositions The paremiologist will find a traesury of signs, texts and contexts, which extend the conventional notions of literature and the verbal arts It appears rather curious to the reviewer that the Swahili proverb cloths have only recently come into scholarly focus, perhaps because of the meanwhile more advanced studies in gender relations and popular culture (though, for instance, truck slogans as another medium of proverb-like sentences were already recorded some 30 years ago)

This a/r/tographic dissertation offers opportunities to interrogate curator identity and curator ways of being in both public and private spaces. Instead of an authoritative or prescriptive look at the curatorial, this dissertation as catalogue allows for uncertainty, for messiness, for vulnerable spaces where readers are invited into an exhibition of disorderly living. Stitched throughout the study are stories of mothering and the difficulties that accompanied the extremely early birth of my daughter. Becoming a mother provoked my curating in unexpected ways and allowed me to reconsider the reasons I collect, display, and perform as a curator. It was through the actual curating of familial material artifacts in the exhibition Dress Stories, I was able to map the journey of my curatorial turns. My engagement with clothing in the inquiry was informed by the work of Sandra Weber and Claudia Mitchell, where dress as a methodology allows for spaces to consider autobiography, identity, and practice. It was not until the exhibition was over, I was able to discover new ways to thread caring, collecting, and cataloging ourselves as curators, artists, researchers, teachers, and mothers. It prompts curators and teachers to consider possibilities for failure, releasing excess, and uncaring as a way to care for self, objects, and others.

Women in East Africa appear to be in a unique position worldwide: their everyday dresses are not only significant in their habitual textile codes, but also as textures exhibiting meaningful verbal elements in complex density and seemingly endless variety These textual elements are proverbs or proverbial phrases written in Swahili, which seem to interact with the colour and design of the cloth (termed kanga), being either abstract or figurative in ornament, which the female wearer may choose according to cunent personal and interpersonal dispositions The paremiologist will find a traesury of signs, texts and contexts, which extend the conventional notions of literature and the verbal arts It appears rather curious to the reviewer that the Swahili proverb cloths have only recently come into scholarly focus, perhaps because of the meanwhile more advanced studies in gender relations and popular culture (though, for instance, truck slogans as another medium of proverb-like sentences were already recorded some 30 years ago)

"The purpose of the present study is to observe how the consumers select ready-to-wear dresses in a small oil town, which had a population of 3,336 in June, 1940...A brief summary of the entire study follows. (1) Of the 215 customers, 60 percent were sales customers and 60 percent stated the price they wished to pay. (2) The 135 dresses purchased were about equally distributed among $7.95, $10.95,$16.95 and $29.95 values. (3) The color desired was specified by 83 percent of the customers. Navy and tan were the two leading colors. (4) While 97 percent of the women designated the size they needed, only 83 percent purchased the size requested. Size 16 was bought by more women than any other size. (5) Customers had little knowledge regarding trade names and materials. Of the dresses sold, 64 percent were rayon. (6) About 90 percent of the women designated in some manner the type of dress they desired. Almost 50 percent of the purchasers selected tailored garments. (7) Slightly less than half of the customers check on the quality of workmanship or the material in the dress. Only 15 percent of the women asked for a guarantee of any type. (8) Ten percent of the women objected to the alteration of the garments which they contemplated buying and did not make a purchase because of this."--Leaves 35-36.