The Effects of Clothing Styles and Colors on the Image Perception and the Evaluation of Age for Men

  • Shin, Yun-Kyung (Dept. of Clothing & Textiles, Sungshin Women's University) ;
  • Lee, Myoung-Hee (Dept. of Clothing & Textiles, Sungshin Women's University)
  • Received : 2010.04.15
  • Accepted : 2010.04.30
  • Published : 2010.05.31

Abstract

The purpose of this research was to investigate the effects of clothing style and color of male casual wear on image perceptions and age evaluations. $4{\times}2$ (top color${\times}$trouser color) and $2{\times}3{\times}2$ (clothing style${\times}$clothing hue${\times}$clothing chroma) factorial designs were used as the experiment designs. Photoshop program was used to manipulate the clothing colors after creating photos of models wearing experiment clothing for stimulus. Subjects were 280 female college students from Seoul region and each subject responded to two stimuli. Factor analysis showed four factors of images of male casual wear; sociability, conspicuousness, softness and masculinity. Polo shirts were evaluated higher in sociability and softness than jumpers and nary blue trousers were evaluated higher in masculinity than beige trousers. High chroma clothing was assessed higher in sociability and conspicuousness than low chroma clothing. High chroma red jumpers displayed very sociable feel and low chroma blue jumpers displayed the lowest sociability. High chroma male clothing resulted in younger age perception but age was evaluated young when a black shirt was worn under the jacket when wearing a low chroma jacket.

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