The clothing psychology of uniform wearers in Hong Kong

Abstract

Clothing is an effective way to manage our self-image. Higher order needs, like belonging and self-esteem can be satisfied through clothing. People regard clothing as a self-validation tool individually or collectively, therefore, clothing has become contiguous to the body in a physical sense and psychological senses. Work uniform is adopted for pu rposes of identification, visibility and expression of organizational roles allowing the public to identify individuals as members of a certain corporate, their job nature and also enables insiders to interpret their rank, duties and privileges. Uniform wearers who become psychologically acute to the feedbacks from society have significant impact on the wearers' performances and thus an investigation of the psychological activities of uniform wearers could be instructive for uniform design improvement. This paper describes an in-depth survey on uniform wearers' clothing psychology in terms of uniform liking problem, understanding of company's uniform policy, image assessment and feelings of wearing uniform at different stages, ways of uniform wearing pattern, dissatisfaction with their uniforms together with a prioritizing problem of factors influencing uniform design. The results obtained will benefit uniform designers, manufacturers and providers to get a clearer picture of their markets catering their customers' needs in a better way.